How did I get here?

These are quiet days, I have no more preview and I will not travel to Edinburgh until Friday. So, given that this blog started in a quite abrupt way, I thought of using this time to do a bit of recap.

I have been doing stand-up comedy for a year, having started in July 2008. Everything started from the writing. I have always liked writing, including humoristic stuff. A couple of Christmas seasons ago I wrote a satirical piece about the British tradition of office Christmas parties, a spoof of a serious anthropological study. I tried to send it to a friend of mine from my work account, but instead I sent it to the MD of my company, who shared the same first name! Instead of firing me, he decided to read it in front of everybody during the Christmas party of my office. He said that it was something he received from an employee, but he decided not to mention my name, completely misjudging my desire for attention. He got some good laughs, which of course pleased me, but I was also irritated by the fact that somebody else was getting the laughs for what I wrote and the MD of my company, of all people, I mean on top of ripping the fruit of my day work! It was time to take control of the means of comic production.

Meanwhile, I was discovering the existence of comedy clubs: I could spend few quid and have a good laugh, at the same time stretching to the limits my English comprehension skills by being confronted with exaggerated accents, audacious puns and obscure cultural references . A friend of mine invited me to an open mic Wednesday at the Comedy Cafe in Shoreditch, so I discovered that there was such a thing. And I also discovered that I wanted to give it a try. By the way, a month ago I did play the Comedy Cafe and for me it was a very special night, since in a sense it was where "everything began". My God, I'm falling into every cliché of the "celebrity" autobiography! At least I'm not using a ghost writer.

So, I decided that to gain the required confidence I needed to join a course. At the end of my course I did a showcase, I got the first laughs and I was completely hooked. The next major step was doing the Laughing Horse New Act of the Year competition, where I reached the semi-finals. This gave me some visibility with Laughing Horse, so when I discovered that they were running the Free Festival I applied for a half a hour slot. And here I am.