Poster Stash Uncovered 1

Hello there

This is going to look like I went into the garage to find posters to post here.  I genuinely didn't do that. Also, I don't live at that address on the poster tubes any more.  So don't go pestering whichever poor sod ended up living there.

On Monday, I spent the day doing one of my routine tidies of the garage.  Actually quite an extreme one too. There was some mega-binning going on. The last time I cleared the garage, I'd sorted out all my posters and been surprised that there appeared to be loads missing.  I assumed they'd been knackered and I'd just flung them out at some point, but on Monday, because it was a proper deep-tidy, I happened upon a few more poster tubes behind some shelving.

I always get a bit excited when I find poster tubes, because I think there's one more chance of finding my signed Rik Mayall stand up poster, but it's gone.  Just accept it, Ian.  It doesn't exist any more.

I did find a load of - what can definitely now be described as - vintage posters from my life in showbusiness (I am saying that sarcastically, lest you think I am genuinely luvvied in my old age).  I didn't do a proper photo-shoot of them, or scan them in, but I did take pics of them in a candid way.  Rolled them out and did a snap.  There's far too many for just one post, so I can happily stretch it out into another one in the near future (woo).

These today are mostly posters from when Big And Daft used to run comedy clubs, so it's a nice illustrative companion piece to some of our reminisces on Reboot really.

Wanna come into the garage and I'll show you my wares?

Of course you do...

(I've not sorted these into date order - I'm showing you in the order they unrolled - it's depressing enough seeing I was trying to do comedy in a different century).

This was the first play I ever wrote.  It was about some toilet attendants that put on Hamlet.  I'd read Keith Johnstone's Impro - as everyone should (or it's on Audible if you want a real creative eye-opener) - and it directly led to this.  Jon was in it, typecast as a a handsome lead character.  It won the National Student Drama Festival's selectors commendation for moments of blissful hilarity, but this really did me no good in my career.  

That was the sequel to it, in which my character shot the lead character dead in the final act.  The start of me pulling the plug on things, and the start of me working on my birthday (you'll see that date a few times).

I don't even know what this was for.  It was a show I'd written for the lad who played the lead character in Toilet Humour, and I think I was just making a poster for the sake of it. Just as dreamers do...

Now, this, it could be argued, was my first ever stand up comedy gig.  I'd compered stuff at school, which was also arguably stand up, but this was my first, in public, stand up comedy.  Which means I am celebrating 25 glorious years in showbiz this year, even though I stopped performing four years ago. Please leave tributes in the comments, and maybe your favourite memory from my glittering career.

Now we get to the Big And Daft comedy clubs phase...

I have absolutely no recollection of this gig or this venue.

This venue had another promoter running it for years, who got sacked.  We poached it, and everyone fell out with us.  Except the acts who liked us enough to do it.  This is the one that Rob Bryden did a try-out for Marion & Geoff at.

Probably should have put this before the last poster.  That's the teaser we put up in the pub for a few weeks.

Now I'm really out of chronology.  This was our first club in Finchley, and it had been going a year by the time of this poster (told you I was observant).  Let's go back to when it was just me running it at the start...

Oh hang on that's a completely different venue.  This is a rejig of the poster that was the first Finchley one though. Watford was a really difficult gig.  On that first night somebody tried to punch me for saying something untoward about Mother Teresa.  I managed to duck and counter though and it all just turned into a big brawl.  The budget for the whole gig was £100.  So that was worth the risk eh...

Back to the Torrington.  That's how I spent my 25th birthday...

Ah here we go - right back to the beginning when it was just me hosting.  Mr Cyril was Rob Rouse.  This here, was the night that Big And Daft as a three-piece formed, when myself and Jon asked Rob to join us.  I will forever regret asking Rob and not Mickey.  We could have been millionaires now.

Back to Watford.  The landlord gave us another £100 on top of the regular money to book a name.  A month later he offered the same deal again and the name we got next was Dave Thompson who played Tiny Winky in Teletubbies. I think that was the last gig we did there.  On this one though, Al Murray basically coached myself and Rob on how to do crowd work, in a tiny little kitchen room at the back of the club.  He told us all about the techniques he used with audiences.  If they say this, I've got options to say either this, this or this etc. It was absolutely inspiring, and I will drop all humility and say that myself and Rob both ended up really, really good at off-the-cuff audience stuff. I have said it before, and shall say it again, Al Murray is definitely one of the good ones.

Last one, and lovely to see the name Norby West on there.  I think we should speak about Norby in a Reboot episode.  Jon, if you are reading this, can you remember that for me please?  He's away now is Norby, but his act was the "Grandad From Hell" and goodness me he was rude on stage.

That'll do for our trip down memory lane (my memories, not yours, you deffo missed it).  There were loads more posters from this golden era but most of them were the same designs with different names.

The next phase is going to be tour posters.  Some belters in there. Let's do that next week at some point.

Hope you are having a wonderful week

Much love from over here.

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