A New Career?

 Over the years I see that I have often mentioned my desire to do some stand up, what I don't appear to have mentioned is that I have now done some, three performances to be exact! The first was to celebrate the International Transgender Day of Visibility way back in 2019 before the World shut down. I managed to put together a routine about being Trans ~ to be fair my paceing wasn't great and one or two of the gags were in questionable taste. I'm quite sure that if I had had the chance to do a few performances I could have tightened things up and made a good fist of it. But as a pure amateur I didn't have that chance.

"Dick" with his pussy

I'd rather thought that would be it, an ambition fulfilled, a very fun experience, but just the once. Then a couple of months ago two opportunities came up. First was at a cabaret night to celebrate the 80th birthday of a friend, All of us there were musicians, all the other performers were singers ~ given that it's now over 50 years since I've done any serious singing I thought I would give that a miss, and lets face it nobody has ever come away from a cabaret thinking "That was a great night, but what it really needed was a tuba solo" ~ nobody, ever! I was very happy with the short routine I worked out ~ as we were all musicians it was all based on music and musicians, a little niche but appropriate. People seemed to enjoy it, I certainly managed to get a few laughs. 

Then last week it was time to do another in Public, this time I had the idea first rather than have the booking then trying to work out the act. Since it is pantomime season (Oh yes it is!) I thought it would be fun to do a skit around having a transgender woman in the role of a principal boy, add to that the possible bad taste innuendo around Dick Whittington and his cat I couldn't resist.

In full flow

So Thursday evening saw me at The Oval Tavern in Croydon  as part of the line up for "Their Majesties", the monthly LGBT+ evening, mostly drag, but with one or two others who don't quite fit in. Like many towns around the UK Croydon no longer has a specifically LGBT venue, but The Oval offers us a safe space, and a special night on the last Thursday of each month, "Their Majesties"!

I had an absolute blast, it was simultaneously scary and great fun; a bit like me really!

It can't have been too bad, even though I forgot some of my lines I did get a few laughs, and I've been asked back to do another set on March 30th. I've no idea what I'm going to talk about, or how I'm going to make it funny, but it does coincide with the Transgender Day of Visibility again ~ as well as the
birthday of my good friend.

Photo and video credits to Patricia Curtis