My first Stand up comedy gig was at the Fringe Bar Paddington in 2004 as part of Raw comedy, I’ll blog about that or what I remember of it at a latter date. Naturally, after doing 2 years or probably about 26 gigs I thought I’ve mastered this so let’s do an hour long festival show at one of the World’s biggest comedy festivals, what could go wrong.

In one of those believe it or not moments, amazingly not much did.

Due to some shrewd business deals and generous mates (thanks Phil) I managed to make a small profit on the run. We’re talking like 10’s of dollars worth of profit. I also got some good reviews and made some great friends.

Everyone should run out and do a festival show!

Though as good as the festival was for me I did make a few mistakes and with hindsight if I could do it all again I would, with a few changes.

Venue wise I got lucky as mine, Club F4, which is still there in Little Collins just under a different name didn’t charge me venue hire. This saved me thousands of dollars. The only condition they had was that the hour show had to have a 10 minute break in the middle to sell drinks.

The venue was a short walk from the Melbourne town hall which was pretty much festival HQ.

I do have the script of my first festival show, not sure if I have footage, I’m pretty happy with most of it. If I were to do it again and who knows maybe one day I will re-perform it for the 10’s and 10’s of MW fans, I would make a few changes.

The show, The MW Oh Show’s Quarter Life Crisis!! (when I started stand up I did so under a stage name The MW Oh Show, yeah this is where wrestling influenced me, I also really liked exclamation marks) was a mixture of story telling and jokes. The first half was about leaving my call centre job and the second half was straight stand up.

If I were to do it again the whole show would be the call centre story as I now know how to weave jokes and story together a lot better than I did then. Bit harsh on myself as the call centre story is funny.

The best part of doing a festival is meeting other comedians and seeing other shows. My show ran 6 nights a week at 8 pm, so I didn’t get to see a heap of shows but I spent pretty much any spare time (when not flyering) at showcase shows or the Festival bar.

Flyering (back then) was pretty much the best way to get people into your show if you didn’t want to spent thousands on advertising. Let’s be honest, as cool as my poster is if you were to see this all over town next to a comedian you have seen on TV you will more than likely go and see the known commodity than the other bloke.

Flyering involved standing outside the town hall trying to engage people into conversation just enough to tell them about your show and hoping that they take a flyer and maybe think about coming to your show.

It could be heartbreaking, especially when you see a flyer with your face on it in the bin (maybe why my second show flyer didn’t have me on it) and awesome when you step on stage that night and see people you flyered at the show.

It was also fun hanging out with other comedians whilst flyering, talking crap and suffering together.

This blog is turning out to be a longer walk down memory road than I had planned so I might leave it here and come back to this when I have more time.

If you have any questions about festivals or putting a show together get in touch am happy to help out.

For those wondering what the critics thought, The Age said: ”He’s a lively, likeable guy with a hint of oh-so-fashionable geek chic.”

The Pun (a comedy newsletter that I think is sadly gone) said:” I laughed out loud, both in disbelief and awe.”

Glowing reviews, well, the genius of grab quotes make them look better than what they were.

See below my flyer, of which I had 5,000 to hand out. Got through about 3,000 of them.

Till next time, oh yeah if you want to experience a little of my festival show my entrance music was Supermassive Black Hole by Muse.