“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
Voltaire
And God of the comedy world is, as it turns out, Ian Stone. A few months ago, I visited Balham’s Comedy Store (blogged here), and witnessed the comedian reduce me to tears of laughter for a good 30 minutes. And as I relieved myself in the Little Boys Room (a phrase Gary Glitter must surely have uttered at some point…) at The Follys in Petersfield last Saturday night, I noticed he was visiting our little town the following Monday. Lucy H and I toddled along, and after a vaguely amusing compere and two young pretenders to the comedy throne (perhaps I’m selling them short… Rhod Gilbert and Simon Feilder were very funny), we got Ian Stone. And I was in tears within seconds, laughing continuously for 40 minutes. He even had to do a 5 minute encore, “for free” as he drily pointed out.
I heartily recommend seeing him, if only for his enormous nose.
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I saw about 5 minutes of Ian Stone last Friday. He was performing, if you can call it that, at a charity dinner in memory of a friend of mine who died of Cardiomyopathy.
I was enjoying his (exceptionally short) act, until he stormed off stage with the hump, as a few people were talking amongst themselves and had their backs to him. The whole audience was in agreement that as a professional comedian, he should be able to handle that situation.
It’s not as if he was even being heckled, it just bruised his obviously delicate ego that he wasn’t the focal point of a handful of people.
Apart from the fact that everbody else performing gave their time for free, he had been paid in advance, and wasn’t prepared to reimburse any of his four hundred quid fee for a job he didn’t complete.
This is an extract from a review, which in my, and about 200 other people’s opinion, is a load of bollocks:
“Ian Stone’s professionalism really becomes apparent when dealing with hecklers, or simply audience members who feel that a standup performance should be more of a two-way exchange. He puts down audience interruptions without breaking stride, using smart and relevant observations in situations that might leave less seasoned comics stumbling for words.”
Ian, you’re a TWAT.