Has It Really Been 20 Years?

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Yes it has, though I didn’t know that I was going to actually be leaving the country of my birth only three years later. It was in August, 2000 when I made my first flight from LA to UK, though what I was hoping for then was to establish an extra base out of which to work and go back and forth, spending more time wherever the bulk of the work was. I could only hope that UK could supply that bulk.

For most of the year 2000, I was trying to make ends meet by any means possible, since comedy wasn’t cutting it. I could get the odd road gig that might pay $100 or so, otherwise The Laugh Factory and The Comedy Store would toss me the occasional bone, and it would almost always be closing the show, going up at 1 am if I was lucky. Not exactly the ideal “showcase” spot. I had other part time gigs, including freelancing as a stage manager for various limited run plays, doing phone sales for my dad’s newspaper feature, and being a janitor in a yoga studio. I wasn’t starving, but I wasn’t happy either.

My friend Steven Alan Green, who was living in London at the time, was in the process of starting a charitable foundation for which he would produce comedy concerts, the first of which was going to be one night at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He invited me to be on the show, as my attempt to go to UK four years prior didn’t happen the way I’d hoped. I’ve already spent a couple blogs talking about that debacle, the result of which was a blotch on my passport that I had to explain every time I went anywhere outside the US until that passport finally expired. I would go through some extensive scrutiny when I was heading for Edinburgh in 2000, being detained almost an hour at Heathrow until the powers that be declared that Edinburgh was an international event, and work papers weren’t needed. I was shitting bricks until they finally let me through.

Edinburgh Festival was a great place to get your first exposure of UK culture, for starters because it takes place in one of the most historic and beautiful cities in all of UK. The action pretty much goes 24/7 and Steven had rented a large apartment for comics to crash. We pretty much slept till noon each day. It was great to see so much creativity in one place, and Steven himself had organised a pretty top notch bill of both UK and US comics for his show. Coming from LA were the improv group War Babies, with special guest George Wendt, known for his role as Norm Peterson on “Cheers.” He sat in with the group because his wife, Bernadette Birkett, was a member. There was a fairly decent turnout, though the local review of the show later commented on how little used Wendt was in performance, not that it mattered to him. I do remember reading in a local free paper a capsuled review of one show that merely said, “Don’t watch this show — EVER!” Nothing like a little subtlety.

What came out of my performance on Steven’s show was a couple local gigs in and around the festival, greeted rather enthusiastically by the local audiences and making me think I want to work in this country, but how could I pull that together? I went back to LA and pushing the broom at the yoga studio, but after my UK adventure, something just felt terribly wrong, so I immediately gave notice. I still had no full on game plan, I just knew that UK looked like where I should be.

Steven knew the main man in England to contact, as the guy had an in with customs and immigration, and could get work papers for his clients. Most of his clients were from USA, Canada, and Australia. Contacting him became my first concern when I got back to LA. I sent the guy an email, he replied quickly and said to send him a video. I had done a really nice set about three months prior at The Ice House in Pasadena, so I sent a copy of that. He emailed only a week after I sent it to say that it was one of a handful of videos he’d seen that year that made him laugh out loud. Long story short, it was only about six weeks elapsed time between that first email and my first gig in London in early November.

On that first trip to London, I was in UK for 14 days and worked 13 of them, and on a couple nights there was more than one gig. And just to sweeten the deal, about two weeks before I headed out there, I’d had a gig playing a wedding in Berkeley, where I wound up linking up with the sister of the bride, who lived in Germany. Well, London is a lot closer to Germany than California, so that part of my life worked itself out. By then, it had been a year and a half since my 2nd marriage had ended, so maybe it was karma or something closely related. She came to visit me my second week in London, and accompanied me on my final weekend, where we spent my 50th birthday in Cork, Ireland. We carried on a long distance relationship for most of the next year, and I got to see a lot of Germany.

Who knew that my adventure 20 years ago would result in a complete geographical relocation? It made sense though. I had given LA 20 years of my life, but the dream I was seeking there should have been realised soon after I moved there in 1981. It wasn’t, and though I had many exciting times over those years, the last few years were quite often depressing. I was faced with maybe having to give it all up and try to find another career. UK inspired me, and got me out of debt within three years, so I think I made the right decision.

August 2nd, 2020



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