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Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

In May, 2021, when UK was still in lockdown, though things were loosening up a bit, I got a call from someone I’d never met who lived in Wales. He had the same name as a British celebrity, but assured me he was not that guy. He ran a pub in Newport, or Casnewydd (kas-NOY-with), as it says at the train station. He also marketed an independent brand of spirits, and they were sponsoring comedy shows online. I don’t remember how he found me, but he was interested in putting me on, and I would just need to record five 5-minute segments. That turned out to be very simple, paid me £250 and I didn’t even leave my living room. Plus I got a sampler of the company’s booze.

Flash ahead 4 1/2 years, and he calls again in late October. This time, he’s running a talent show at his pub in the village of Nash, part of Newport, and somehow he put two and two together and determined that I would be the perfect person to host this mini-extravaganza. I never told him (and if he’s reading this now, he’s hearing it for the first time) that I haven’t done a stand-up show since February of this year at London’s Downstairs at the King’s Head, at which time I was stumbling on bits I had done for 20 years, and thought maybe it was time to call it a day. But the audience there was fantastic, and I seemed to be the only one who noticed my screw-ups.

So there I was last night in Nash. Given my self-imposed retirement from the stand-up world, I could have declined this Newport offer, but because I was essentially being hired to emcee, I figured there would be enough performers on the bill that all I would have to do is back announce and then bring on the next act. I guessed wrong on that one, as there were only four acts and the show was expected to go two hours. A lot of padding would need to be done, and it was pretty much expected that I would have to do most of that padding.

So I walked out on a semblance of a stage, where people were either set up to my right about 20 feet away or straight ahead about 30 feet away. I did my usual opening bits, which had various degrees of bombing as no one really knew whether I was a comedian or a musician. I did a fairly good impression of the latter, and that’s what pulled me through. After about 10 minutes of mostly indifference, I decided it was time to bring up the first act.

Thank god for that first act! He went by the name of Oscar Presley. He was only 13, but was a total Elvis and old Rock & Roll fan, and he sang a very good version of Burning Love to a backing track. That gave me a sensational idea, since Burning Love was the only track he had brought. I asked him while the next act was on what other songs he knew, and if he wanted to sing more I would happily accompany him on guitar. He asked “Do you know Hound Dog?” Of course I said yes, though I wanted to use my college friends’ version of “Does a bear shit in the woods,” which was “Does a cat have an ass?” Anyway, we did Hound Dog, and later branched out to Stuck On You, Suspicious Minds, and even some non-Elvis tracks, like Under The Moon of Love, a hit originally in the US in 1961 by Curtis Lee, but hit #1 in UK in 1976 in a version by the UK retro band Showaddywaddy.

Other acts included a couple doing a rather silly version of the 2003 hit Bring Me To Life by the US group Evanescence, and an older couple who did some great 50s style dancing and later some line dancing, plus the guy who hired me sang a country tune. And that was pretty much the entire lineup, nowhere near two hours worth of entertainment unless Oscar was going to sing about 30 songs. He didn’t, so the only other way to pad the show was for ME to sing about 30 songs. However, since Oscar was the only underage person in the venue, I thought I might as well test the waters and do some of my raunchier material, like a medley of my favourite rude song parodies, as well as my Trump songs, that all went over really well.

And then there were the requests from the audience, which worried me when the first one was for the Canadian hard rock band Rush. I couldn’t remember a single song of theirs, but fortunately there were older folks there that wanted more 50s and 60s, and I was home free.

I was just glad the folks who were there, all 25-30 of them, enjoyed their evening and told me so, as well as the owner. He had paid my train fare, hotel, and Uber to and from the gig, as well as a nice lump of cash, so thank god I figured something out. There was a cash prize of £100 for the top act, which Oscar won pretty handily. As for me, I keep saying to myself I’m done with the comedy biz, but then things like last night happen, and I think oh wait, maybe I’m not just a pub quiz master.

November 23rd, 2025



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