DOING COMEDY DURING WORLD CUP

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

My first experience with FIFA World Cup, which I hadn’t heard of until the US hosted in 1994, was in 2002. I was staying in the spare room of a comedian who was obsessed with the whole tournament, and it didn’t seem to matter that the host countries were Japan and South Korea, so with the 8-hour time difference, a game that started at 1:00 pm Japan time started in England at 5:00 am. He would be up at 4:30, regardless of how late he may have gotten back from the previous night’s gig. This year, with US, Canada, and Mexico hosting, the whole cycle is reversed, so tonight there is a match between US and Paraguay that starts at 2:00 am Greenwich Time. I’ll have to read about it tomorrow.

In 2006, Germany hosted, so there was only a one-hour time difference. For some unexplained reason, I was booked on June 15 in Lowestoft, on the Eastern coast, to be the only entertainment for the evening at a venue that was all dolled up for World Cup, and designated me, a musical, AMERICAN comic, to be THE comic to feature on this special night. I was being paid very well for my 45 minutes on stage, and it wasn’t my place to question their choice. My agent usually gave me the date and the venue, and I would show up and do what I do. Somehow it worked with this audience. I remember getting an encore, even though I was still vague on what World Cup meant to the people here. There was certainly nobody there that I could talk about my love of the San Francisco Giants baseball team with.

I started off this particular gig by screwing up when I first arrived. I checked into my lodging in the mid-afternoon, and because it was summer and moderately warm, I went to the window to open it up and let some air in. I had my guitar still strapped to my back, and as I leaned over to open the window, the guitar bumped against the television, knocking it onto the floor, screen side down. Fortunately, it was a pretty cheap, antiquated TV, and it still worked when I tested it out. To keep on the up and up, I went directly to the front desk and told them what happened. They were cool about it, and I assured them that the TV was ok. All well and good, until about two weeks later, when my agent called me and said the venue told him I had knocked over a TV. I told him I went directly to the front desk and told them what happened, and that the TV was fine. Well, my punishment was I was never booked in Lowestoft again, which for some reason, I was really impressed by. About 12 years later, Maggie and I spent a night there on a holiday through the Eastern coast. Whatever I liked about it in 2006 didn’t seem to be there in 2018. Like most of England in winter, it was freaking cold, wet, and windy.

I had to deal with a more political situation at World Cup 2010, hosted this time by South Africa, where the time was exactly the same as UK. I had a gig one Saturday night in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, about 40 miles north of London. On this particular night, the start of the gig was delayed because there was an England match that night, with their opponent being, unfortunately for me, the USA! I had been here long enough to know that this scenario was very intimidating. If the US won, there would be resentment to me on a large scale; if England won, I’d just get heckled. I had to spend that extra energy plotting how I would construct my set in case of a victory by one team or the other. Thankfully, the final score was 0-0, so I had a wonderful gig, even though by all measures England should have easily won that one.

This year, it won’t affect my work at all, since the games are on late. As I stated numerous times on stage, if the US ever actually wins the World Cup, and discovers how much money is in it for the winner, they’d probably never lose it again. I root against my home country in all international competition, as they always seem to turn it into some kind of verification of superiority. You can bet that if they win it this year (the first host country to win it since France in 1998), Trump will claim he had something to do it, and Gianni Infantino, that bootlicking dweeb President of FIFA, will give Trump some meaningless award.

June 12th, 2026



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