Wednesday 27 July 2016

Hilarity in Shoes at The Lion

After an afternoon at the Science Museum playing retro computer games (hooray for holidays) I made my way to The Lion to MC Hilarity in Shoes on behalf of Matt, Jack and Victor - who were all otherwise engaged. Jack had arranged for a helpful guy at the venue to set everything up so once I was there it was simply a case of checking the mic level and working out the running order.

Andy Storey took the first half with his Edinburgh preview. His observational story telling style was well honed and good fun - even if he only got to showcase the last ten minutes to any real audience (people not performing in the second half). 

Still, this audience was a big boost to those in the second section. I opened with Clicking Like and got people shouting along before introducing a total of eight acts doing five each - including a closing set from the ever engaging Stella Graham.

MCing someone else's show is an interesting experience. I stuck with the rhyming couplet intro idea I introduced into Bear Jokes a while ago but also pushed myself to speak with the audience when the energy dropped from time to time. This doesn't happen very often with Bear Jokes or Tight Tens as the acts are all highly experienced and rarely die on stage (it doesn't happen at Famous First Words either - but that's down to there being precious few real audience in the building to start with...)

Anyway, I've yet to riff off anyone but acknowledging their existence is a good start if I'm going to do more of this in the future.

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