I’ve never done stand-up comedy, but I have given some presentations at conferences where entertainment was expected alongside the information-sharing, and it is nerve-wracking! For a writing group competition on the theme “Satire”, I produced this piece, which was placed second.
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THE AFTER-DINNER ENTERTAINMENT
“Good evening, gentlemen!”
Liv’s voice boomed out of the microphone. She needed to concentrate on walking. She felt as if her hips were trying to propel two slithering eels in stilettos. It did not help that the so-called Master of Ceremonies, some elderly worthy of business management, had given her a very ordinary introduction. He mustered barely a ripple of applause for her. She tried to look confidently down from the stage at the two hundred conference delegates clustered around tables groaning with booze. She dragged her cheeks back to her ears to show the biggest smile possible. Whether she looked happy or demented did not matter. She just had to disguise the feeling that her head was exploding.
“Good evening also to ladies – looks like there are a few – Good evening to those who identify as cats – and anyone else who is here to make the diversity quota look good!”
She detected a little murmur of amusement from the audience. Some delegates were making an effort to listen. Others were waving wine glasses around and carrying on conversations, probably about cost management, or maybe rugby. This lot looked like “rugger” fans. Still, she was the one with the microphone, so she could drown them out if she used her lungs well enough.
“Have I offended anybody yet?”
She heard groans, and felt a bit of anxiety-driven chest pain. Ouch!
“No? Well, be patient, people, and I’ll keep working on it. I don’t do it to upset you, of course, or even for money! I do it for the sacred art of satire! Really – we all know how powerful satire is. It defeated Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler – they just gave up the ghost when armies of comedians threw witty insults at them.”
Ah! A few isolated whispers of laughter. Liv noticed a guy on one of the front tables, who was looking interested and sympathetic. She chose him as her beacon to turn to when things got rough and smiled at him directly, and then whisked into her next line.
“I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to be at the Convocation of Water Company Executives Annual Dinner. I know you like acronyms in business – now C-O-W-C-E-A-D – is that cow-seed? Shouldn’t it be bull-seed, or bull-something else?”
A bit of crudity was bound to engage with some. As a ripple of amusement spread through the delegates, the blood pounding in her temples started to ease.
“No, dear water company executives, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to be here, because the pleasure is all yours, isn’t it? Nice food, nice drinks, nice to relax with your colleagues, catch up on a bit of office gossip – yeah – what’s not to like?”
“The comedian!” A deep voice at the back yelled, getting a laugh.
Liv had prepared for that, but she had to be quick. “Sorry, have I interrupted you watching porn on your work phone?” Now the audience was laughing at him rather than with him.
“Actually, thank you – what a prime example of why comedy is bloody hard work!” The audience chortled at the very idea that comedy was difficult.
“No – really – I am a very hardworking person. All work is hard when I’m the one working on it, but comedy scripts? It’s like pushing water uphill. Perhaps there’s a water engineer out there who can tell me how that works.”
She peered out from the brightly lit stage. A few shiny faces were smiling at her, especially the bloke at the front. She starting pacing, trying to remember her lines. All of a sudden, she tripped over her own feet and swayed dangerously close to the edge of the stage before righting herself. That got some belly laughs, as slapstick generally does.
“Thank you! I knew you were out there! Too bad it wasn’t deliberate! Now, as the MC told you, my name is Cranberry Jam. That’s a stage name of course. As a performer, I have to be careful about my identity. I mean, I get stalkers and social media trolls and all sorts. Honestly, what is it about being on a stage imploring “look at me-me-me!” that attracts these people?” She heard some isolated tittering.
“Anyway – I bet you don’t have to worry about that do you? I mean water company executives – who’s going to make your life hell?” She put her hand to her ear. “Did someone say “customers”?” Liv thought that she heard some warning growls.
“Yes, they must be a real pain. As if you didn’t have enough shit to deal with.”
At last! A big ironic chuckle! But now she must slip in some satire –
“Or NOT deal with, as the OFWAT fines suggest….” A collective groan urged her to move on. Her nerves were jangling again.
“Really, I was delighted to be asked to entertain you tonight – until I started trying to compose some water jokes. There’s nothing funny about water is there? It is so essential to life on Planet Earth that it takes itself very seriously…I mean…God takes it very seriously, too. That’s why it has to be sprinkled on us at birth, surely? And there are so many holy wells around.”
Liv wondered if water executives ever saw water as a divine gift, rather than their product.
“Yes, very difficult to write jokes about water, especially when you are the sort of person that wakes up each day looking for a new opportunity to go down like a waterfall.”
She waited for some appreciation for her self-deprecation, and got it.
“So! You will be pleased to know that there are three very good reasons why I’m not going to bombard you with witticisms about sewage spills, e-coli, leaking pipes, passing on the cost of fines to customers and asking for taxpayers’ money after paying massive dividends to asset-stripping investors.”
The delegates reached for their drinks and starting booing. Liv could feel sweat popping from the pores on her back.
“If you’re angry with me, please throw your chocolate mints!” Some of them did! One of them whizzed past her ear. Instinctively, she put up her left hand and caught one that was flying towards her. The audience cheered and clapped! She bobbed a few curtseys, waving the mint in her hand like a cricketer smugly emphasising an unlikely one-handed catch.
“Oooh! That was exciting, but I think I’d better get back to the story-line. Three reasons not to be rude about water companies. Here we go! The first is that satire is DEAD. I mean, how can a humble comedian speak truth unto power, when power is sending itself up anyway? People just expect politicians to promise integrity before an election and do a favour for a donor to their party days afterwards. You can’t generate outrage about it, let alone laughs.” She heard some rumbles of amusement.
“And you guys? You can get your own laughs out of Joe Public. We see you on the news saying, in a very serious tone, “There was some rain, so we had to discharge sewage into the harbour.” Cow-seeders…there are people watching, people without even a Geography GCSE, who know that they live in a place where rain is normal. They think that you are being satirical and laugh like drains! Drains which aren’t blocked, of course. No comedian can beat that, we really can’t.” Liv knew that this might be risky, but she felt the need to provoke.
“And the website stuff is even better – vision statements, mission, values – all that stuff about serving customers and the environment. When I read some of these important statements out to my friends in the pub, they howled with laughter – literally, they were howling, roaring, exploding with laughter. Don’t worry – when I use it in my next routine at the Dog and Duck I will give you proper accreditation.”
The noise from the audience was something like a grumble. Liv had better stop digging this hole before her dry throat choked her.
“Not funny?” Liv shuffled to the front of the stage and leaned over. “Well, let’s see if you can generate something better with the wonders of technology!”
“Good folk of the watery world, the second reason I am not going to say rude things about the water industry is because of something called AI roasting. This is nothing to do with Sunday lunch. The IT industry has heard people asking them to stop online trolling because of the harm it does, and in a satirical response (they do it too, cow-seeders), some companies have come up with a way to make people better at trolling. If you want some insults about anybody or anything with an online presence, just type the name into an AI roaster and it will generate something for you – you can choose what kind of output you want – graded from brutal to gentle…”
She stopped and watched as many of the vague figures around the tables tapped furiously into their phones. “Look at you all, searching for ways to insult your best mate! What does that say about us as a species?”
The delegates were still tapping away.
“Let me save you some time. If you type in your employers’ name, it will find all the press coverage about sewage spills and OFWAT fines and come up with stuff like “your customer service is as cold as the dead fish floating in the rivers you are supposed to keep clean”. It’s not great satire, I mean, you can tell that it’s a bot. But to be fair, it does it in a few nano-seconds, and it would take me hours to come up with anything better.”
“Hey, Cranberry!” A female voice called from the middle table. “The bot says your jokes are so lame they need a wheelchair!”
That got a laugh. Liv smiled.
“Ha! If the bot thinks I’m lame then it hasn’t been watching Channel 4’s new sit-com – there’s more virtue-signalling than at a nun’s consecration.” This scored an equaliser on the laughter quotient.
“Now I’ll come to the last reason I am not going to tell any more “you are the root of all evil” jokes about water companies tonight. It’s because…” She paused for effect, then whispered loudly into the microphone. “I actually try to love my audiences.”
The delegates thought that this was hilarious. She gasped with relief.
“No – really! I want to see the world from your perspective. Satire can be so bloody self-righteous, don’t you think? Two sides to all stories – right?” She paced a bit, and the audience was quiet, waiting to see where this was going.
“So I did a bit of research about what you have to deal with at work every day.” She paused and paced again, then stopped and looked at the woman on the middle table. “We customers – we are dirty geezers, aren’t we?”
Now the audience cheered and sounded engaged.
“Fatbergs! Fascinating but so gross! So gross that you ought to get Damien Hurst to make statues out of them. Yes, fatbergs, cow-seeders. We customers make them and expect you to deal with them. What do we put down our pipes, eh? Cooking fat, wet-wipes, cotton buds, more cooking fat, paint, plasters, recreational drugs, sanitary products, even more cooking fat, masses of hair, some of it pubic, used condoms – YUK! What a recipe!”
The audience clapped and banged their tables – this was their view of the world.
Liv looked down for the friendly guy and addressed him.
“One of the things you guys like to do at your conference is “Ideation”, is that right?” He nodded; others nodded.
She looked up and assumed the air of an exasperated English teacher. “Why are you too lazy to say “idea generation” in full, people!?”
This got some chuckles. Maybe they hated their own jargon.
“Well, here’s an idea from me – for free.” She paced for a bit and then stopped. “We’ve got water meters, right? To stop us wasting water. And it works because we are all penny-wise and pound-foolish.”
Liv bashed out some examples. “Reg? Get out of the bathroom. Drive down to the golf club in the Bentley and use their showers, I mean, what is our membership for” … “Daphne, that lawn sprinkler costs a fortune, let’s re-landscape the garden” … “Jocasta, darling, don’t drink out of the tap when we’ve got a fridge full of bottled water to keep you hydrated.”
The water company executives liked this.
“So, leaders of the water management universe – what you need is a little camera in every pipe coming from every building – and every time a forbidden item rolls past – stick a fiver on the bill!”
At last, guffaws of approval.
“Charge extra for the condoms!”
Smut worked.
Now, warm-up over, Liv did what the brief for the gig had required. Reading between the lines, Liv had deduced that “ideation” on the menu helped to make lavish business dinners justifiable to auditors. This was where she really earned her fee. So, she challenged the delegates to think of the silliest ways that they could discourage customers from doing bad things. They shouted them out. Liv shouted them back, adding a bizarre question or addition, and then the next hand went up.
Companies discharging chemicals into streams? Close off the pipes and let the chemicals back up into the office toilets, preferable when the chief executive is sitting on one.
Road drains needing a makeover? Get celebrities to sponsor them. What pop star could miss a photo opportunity in liquid-repellent coveralls?
Farmers not maintaining ditches? Name and shame them on the Archers fans’ social media.
Many more ideas bounced around the tables for the next twenty minutes, generating lots of laughter and enjoyment. Liv felt almost good now. The adrenalin flooding her brain was positive, invigorating.
When the flow of ideas started to slow down, the MC signalled to Liv. So, she boomed into the mike.
“Ladies and gentlemen, and cats – you will be delighted to know that I am running out of time. So finally, let me assure you that there is a special place in hell reserved for wild swimmers.”
The audience cheered.
“These are the people who identify as otters. I mean, what is wrong with using big tubs of chlorinated bathwater which are provided by councils so that sensible people can swim safely? Of course, I’ve heard that cold water is good for your immune system. Well, wild swimmers – suck up some e-coli and see if it works…”
She did not need to finish the sentence, the sweet sound of loud laughter tinkled into her eardrums.
“Thank you, you have been a lovely audience!”
The MC was striding purposely across the stage to shake her hand. “Thank you, Cranberry Jam!”
She bobbed a curtsey to the polite applause, waved, and nearly tripped over again, squeezing another laugh out of the audience as she left the stage.
As she hurried towards the hotel cloakroom to get her bag and coat, a large man loomed in her way. It was the friendly face in the audience. She was going to have to give him some time, but surely, he wasn’t after an autograph, and hopefully he was not after a grope? As he got closer, she could see that there were tears on his cheeks.
“I’m so sorry!” He sobbed.
Her heart swelled up with sympathy for the stranger who had been kind enough to appreciate her act.
“For what?” She dared to ask.
“For all the evil that water companies do…”
Liv started to sense that this approach was not all it seemed, and indeed, his sobbing soon contorted into laughter.
“It was worth saving the onion from the side salad to do that!” He quipped.
Liv was dismayed that Mr Sympathetic was actually a prat, but said politely, “you had me worried there.”
“Thanks for caring!” He laughed at himself again, and extended his hand to shake hers. “I’m George Partington, Events Organiser for the Association. I booked you because my daughter saw you in the Wellington Arms and liked you. Great gig, Cranberry. Some of those ideas might actually have legs. Maybe three legs if they have grown up near our treatment plants – b-boom!”
He laughed heartily again, clearly fond of his own humour.
“We have such trouble encouraging creative thinking these days, what with everybody wanting to work from home and feeling so demoralised by working in a hated sector. I hoped satire might work. Time will tell.” George seemed to expect her to be interested, sympathetic – to realise that life could be tough for water company executives. She just forced a smile.
“Anyway, mustn’t keep you.” George smiled back. “I’m sure that you’ve got a home to go to. The bank transfer will be sent – eventually. We are very bad payers, especially to small businesses – so don’t hold your breath. We’ve had wax dolls with pins in them sent with reminders, but that only puts you to the back of the queue again. It’s harassment of our hard-working staff, obviously.”
“I see.” Liv had been looking forward to that money.
“I must get back.” George raised his hand to say goodbye and turned towards the conference rooms.
Liv decided to be bold. She called after him. “You know, organisations can only be shit ones if people in them let it happen. Don’t you have the power to expedite my payment? I really need it.”
He shrugged as he strode off. “Sorry, love. To quote a cliché which is the harsh reality of my corporate life – it’s more than my job’s worth.”
Liv got her coat and bag and, shoulders slumped, she stomped out of the hotel into the cold and the dark.
