Saturday, May 8, 2010

At least 40th Best Stand Up Ever (I should better be)

I'm finding very difficult to decide what I can and what I can't write on this blog. Problem is, I'm a very open person and I want to use this blog to let out steam by expressing my hopes but also my concerns. But I'm not alone any more, I'm going to run my next Edinburgh show with a professional organisation that even has PR people and I don't want to piss anybody off by saying very un-PR things. I'm sure that Gordon Brown feels exactly the same. By the way, I'm very good at ignoring my own advice, so let's proceed.
My venue confirmed me the definitive timeslot and ticket prices. The timeslot is not bad at all: 5.35pm. It's late enough but not too late, which is good for my "sober" style of comedy (in the sense that it works better when the audience are in that state). But I'm worried about the ticket prices: £8.50 on the first two days, £9.50 on weekdays and £10.50 on weekends, with £1 less for concessions. I really started panicking when The Stand published its program: on weekends my show will cost £0.50 more than Stewart Lee's! I expressed my concern with the venue and their first reply was that this pricing was, according to them, the one better likely to lead to "revenue optimisation". I then pointed out that audience optimisation was equally if not more important for comedy, and they promised to help me with running promotions. Let's see. Well, if I needed extra motivation to work hard towards a really good show now I found it. Besides, I take fewer and shorter pauses and I repeat my lines much less frequently than Stewart Lee normally does. That's better value for money, isn't it?

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