Brenda Monk Is Funny (31 page)

‘He’s always been such an authentic comic,’ Brenda managed to squeal, as Josephine gripped the door frame.

They came to a halt.

‘Yeah, well,’ said Josephine, wiping her eyes. ‘Yeah.’

And she left the room. The sound of a bedroom door closing followed a moment later, and Brenda poured herself the final dregs from the bottle of wine and knocked them back with medicinal haste. She got up, put on a pair of cotton shorts and a T-shirt, brushed her teeth and got into her cupboard. She fell asleep two hours later which was not at all bad, considering. It was a fitful, dreaming night of high, restless sleep – trapped in wooden boxes and kicking her way out, or standing in fields of golden corn under a hot sun, with low-flying aircraft buzzing over her head. Each time Brenda woke in the pitch black of her cupboard, she pressed a button on her phone and saw the hours passing, like some abstract conveyor belt she could not step off. She had entered the tunnel and there was only one way to go – forwards. For the entrance had crumbled behind her, she had detonated it herself.

Final day, here at last, bright and sharp as a pin.

The show began at 9pm, and would take place in a medium sized venue within the temporarily erected complex of marquees in Bristo Square that housed fourteen individual comedy club rooms of varying sizes, three bars and a cafe. Brenda slept until midday, crawled out into the light to a flat that seemed empty but was probably sleeping, made some coffee and tried not to eat her own thumbs. She was nervous but more than that, she felt the weight of destiny on her. This evening’s show was a lock and if she was the correct key, she would turn into a professional stand-up comedian overnight.

Brenda fixed herself a bowl of cereal but could barely eat it and threw it away, hoping no-one would notice that she was wasting their precious food. She would go shopping tomorrow and replace it. Today she could do nothing but think about tonight. There was no point in trying to control it, she just had to give in. There would be no relief unless she obliterated her mind with booze and drugs and although she was confident she could find enough of either in less than ten minutes here she had no intention of destroying her chances like that. She had seen comics, promising comics, do that before and it was not a pretty sight, especially when it was played out on stage for all to see. A big-match temperament, that’s what she needed. She remembered reading about that in a Jilly Cooper novel as a student and not being a natural polo player, she had wondered what it was. Now she knew – the ability not to crumble when the stakes were high. And not only that, but to actually get better the higher the stakes got. Did she have the stuff? She would find out tonight.

In the meantime, Brenda had another problem, one she had been trying to ignore since she found out, but was now served as an unwelcome reminder as she perused the competition flyer that sat in a stack on the kitchen table. One of the judges was a well-known female comedy critic, Frances Weiss, who had said on record many times that she did not think women were naturally funny, or rather that she had ‘yet to see a female comedian that really made me laugh’ and so for the time being she was ‘forced to conclude that there weren’t any.’ Why she had said this no-one quite knew. Perhaps it was simply the unpalatable truth that no-one with female genitalia had ever tickled her funny bone, perhaps she was just being provocative in order to get attention or attract more readers to her blogs and columns, perhaps she honestly felt that no woman could match her favourite male comedians. And she certainly did have her favourites. Jonathan was one, and just as she made no secret of her attraction to him, he did nothing to dissuade it – why would he? The reviews she gave him were out of this world. Maybe she just plain didn’t like women, but whatever it was, this was not going to help Brenda tonight. Some had argued that her public remarks should bar Frances from judging a competition such as this, but in the end it made no difference. For actually as far as the competition organisers were concerned her presence on the panel spiced things up, sold more tickets and led to increased media coverage, publicising both the competition and the chain of comedy clubs that offered the prize. So there she stayed, in prime position. Brenda was determined not to allow herself an excuse for failure though. If she was good enough, she could overcome a bias against her.

And in any case, there was one further problem that might eclipse all the others in the form of John Nunn, the newly-famous newly-rich comic she had attempted to hug at the New Year’s Eve party just eight months before. He was hosting tonight’s final and Brenda was praying he wouldn’t remember her. If he wanted to he could subtly turn the audience against her before she even stepped on stage. They wouldn’t notice him doing it – they would laugh along – but he could just plant the idea in their minds that she was a bit sub-standard, or a ‘token woman’ or whatever it was that would make them a little nervous or pitying before she got to the microphone and that would be devastating. Brenda needed all her faculties tonight, and she congratulated herself on her restraint the night before.

It was a balmy evening as Brenda walked the short distance to the venue. She was early, very early, just as she had intended. She wanted to breathe in some of the atmosphere and let the excitement move through her. All around were people with somewhere to go, walking in groups, chattering, discussing shows they had seen or wanted to see, clutching Festival programmes or leafing through them to find something to see. There was dance, theatre, music of course but as far as Brenda was concerned, there was only comedy. There was the ‘grown up’ Festival too with its distant opera stars and guest conductors and the Book Festival in its tranquil garden. But comedy, comedy, comedy was all that flowed through Brenda’s veins. The rest of it may just as well not exist. And if you kept to certain venues and streets and squares here, nothing else did exist – it was a world within a world, and as Brenda reached the conjoined marquees she could see that they had built an entire inflatable village for anyone who wanted to forget everything and just live in a place where laughter was the only currency.

Brenda chose the quietest of the three bars, bought a Jack Daniel’s and coke and sat down at a wooden table with a small cactus in a flowerpot in the middle. She watched people for a short while and sipped her drink. There was a couple having a clench-jawed row about ten feet away from her and she felt a flood of relief that she was unattached at this very moment in time. A group of young men perused the large board which detailed all the shows going on in the fourteen rooms here and chose what they wanted to see. Any name that was familiar from TV was automatically put on a shortlist, Brenda noticed. Two girls sat on the floor drinking smoothies and taking pictures of themselves on their phones.

At that moment, Brenda’s own phone buzzed. A text message. She hesitated before opening it, for the slightest thing could put her off her stride now, but saw ‘Dad’ in the ID and pressed green.

‘Good luck chicken, break someone’s leg, Dad x’

Brenda smiled, finished her drink and had a last look at her notebook before getting up to leave.

She walked to the front of the long queue of people snaking round the edge of the venue waiting to be allowed in. Brenda knew that none of these people had come to see her or any of the other finalists on the bill. They were here to see John Nunn, THE John Nunn. Brenda could only hope the punters knew the bulk of the gig would be taken up by unknowns like herself, otherwise this was going to be even tougher than she imagined.

She reached the front of the line.

‘Sorry, doors aren’t open yet,’ said an unexpectedly officious student ticket-stub collector, already in position to marshal the crowds.

‘I’m in the show,’ said Brenda.

The ticket-stub collector looked her hard in the face.

‘Well, I’ve never seen you before.’

‘No, you wouldn’t have. It’s a new act competition.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Brenda Monk.’

‘Hold on please.’

He lifted the radio he’d obviously waited his whole life to use to his mouth and clicked the talk function open.

‘We have a Brenda Monk here. A Brenda Monk. Is she authorised to enter? Over.’

While he waited he looked her up and down, clearly not hugely impressed.

‘Security’s tight because we have John Nunn in the building tonight,’ he said with great import.

‘Yes, I know,’ Brenda replied and congratulated herself on not kicking him in the shins.

The radio buzzed back.

‘Yeah, over.’

The ticket-stub collector slightly reluctantly stood aside. Brenda wondered how long it would be until she was sufficiently recognisable to enter her own gigs unchallenged.

She passed the two black clad stagehands who were quickly sweeping up the debris left by the preceding show (it had clearly involved some kind of glitter cannon), walked to the edge of the stage and pushed her way behind the heavy black drape – these were makeshift spaces and did not have elaborate backstage set ups. Behind the curtain was a small area with chairs and a table of drinks and snacks laid out for the final, or rather, the final’s VIP guest MC. John Nunn was nowhere to be seen. He was unlikely to fraternise with novices like them. But he was a professional and would no doubt turn up at some point to briefly familiarise himself with the people he was going to be introducing on stage. Brenda could not honestly say she was looking forward to that moment, but kept telling herself there was no way he would remember her. He must, she surmised, meet thousands of idiots wanting to hug him every week. She would just be another messy blur, morphing into the faces of the masses.

She appeared to be the first to arrive, and so took the opportunity to go back out and stand on the stage. This was a luxury the others would not be afforded, and she was glad of it. To get a sense of the space before the actual moment where she was performing, or rather, competing, would give her a very slight advantage and she knew she needed all the help she could get. The seats were on a steep rake – the best use of the space in order to maximise sales – built onto a large metal frame. The people furthest away from her on the back row would practically be above her head and she made a mental note to raise her eye-line high every now and again in order to include everyone. Too many comics made the mistake of only playing to the front three rows, and in so doing they effectively cut their audience in half. When this happened, as had been the case at one of Brenda’s early gigs, she now recalled, it was a disaster. In a club if anyone felt excluded they would lose interest in the act and start talking amongst themselves, making a noise at the bar and generally creating disturbance. This couldn’t happen here as it was a more theatrical set-up, but the principle was still a good one to stick to. She saw the three seats half way back with ‘RESERVED’ signs stuck to them – the judges. She wasn’t sure if she was pleased or not to know where they would be sat. She pushed it down inside herself where it belonged and tried to turn it into positive energy. Brenda felt the width and depth of the performance space too. It wasn’t ideal for stand-up as there seemed to be acres of black floor for one person. But these venues were designed for as wide a variety of shows as possible and this also needed to accommodate, for example, a fifteen-strong university sketch troupe who played with great vigour every afternoon at 2.30pm to about a dozen people. Best to remain stationary in the middle when the time came, she decided, rather than draw attention to the extra space by trying to cover it walking up and down.

Two people came in while Brenda was walking the width of the stage. They were chatting happily, cracking jokes and laughing with a high, nervous sound that indicated a very new friendship. These were the two finalists from the Manchester semi, it turned out. They were young, male, one white, one of Bangladeshi origin, but judging his accent British by birth. They were dressed almost identically in checked, short-sleeved shirts, baggy-ish jeans and leather lace up shoes – the influence of Peter Kay was very clear here. Brenda wondered if they were also going to do all the same jokes.

‘Hi, I’m Brenda Monk.’

‘Hi, Brenda Monk,’ the British-Bangladeshi Peter Kay said. ‘I’m Adil Nawaz.’

‘And I’m Davey Crockett,’ said the white-British Peter Kay. ‘It’s not my real name though, it’s a name I chose to piss off me dad. He hates Americans and…’

‘Hi, nice to meet you. There’s a backstage bit.’

Brenda sensed that Davey had been about to launch into his material and cut him off quickly. She couldn’t stand comedians who did their material at you off-stage, always testing it, making everyone an audience and actually deluding themselves that nobody knew what they were up to.

Adil looked around.

‘Rake’s high, isn’t it?’

‘Let’s hope there’s no hoes in tonight,’ said Davey, riffing off the word rake, ‘or spades…’

An awkward pause while everyone wondered if that was racist and then Davey laughed it off with an ironic chortle that immediately made it ‘self-aware meta-racism’ (he hoped) and therefore OK (he hoped). He checked Adil’s reaction, found none, and resumed normal service.

Brenda was bored with these two already. She just wanted the show to start, and to be standing on this stage for real.

A woman bustled in, all sensible hair, black slacks, black T-shirt and special curved-soled shoes that ‘mimic the natural gait of a barefoot tribesman’ in order to ‘relieve back and muscular pain’ that most people had now stopped buying on the basis that they looked awful and made one fall over on a regular basis. She seemed harassed and put upon, although Brenda suspected this was more of a lifestyle choice than a genuine reflection of any real stress.

‘Hi, I’m Barbara, I’m stage managing tonight, are you my acts?’ They nodded.

‘We’d like to open the house. Where’s my fourth?’

‘Here,’ said her fourth, sauntering in.

Brenda knew she was supposed to know this one from the semi-final, but could not remember him at all. She was relieved to hear him introduce himself to the others.

‘I’m Sean West, no relation.’

‘To whom?’ asked Barbara.

‘Fred and Rose,’ he replied, twinkling to himself at his own ‘wrongness’.

‘Oh right. No, I didn’t think you were.’

His high quiff and shaved sides gave him a punkish air, which he underlined with a checked shirt buttoned all the way up, skinny grey jeans with a chain running from his belt loop into his pocket. The jeans were so tight it was clear that nothing was attached to the end of the chain in his pocket, unless of course it continued through a hole in the denim and was tethering his cock. It was possible – Brenda had seen weirder. A pair of dirty white plimsolls completed the look. Brenda wondered what they thought of her own outfit: black V-neck, black skinny jeans, lipstick red patent brogues. She suddenly thought they might think she was referencing Jo Brand’s early stage uniform in some oblique way. This had never occurred to her before – had it been a sub-conscious homage? Not deliberately, but she quite liked the idea. It felt… apt, somehow. It placed her in a continuum of female stand-up comedians that had worked their way to the top, fair and square.