(Featured in issue one of Pebble zine)
Arron Ferguson, from the rising comedy couplet NOT The Adventures of Moleman, jests about performing alongside a man too tall for buses, 2am satire fried chicken and generally talking funny...(tumbleweed), perhaps we’ll leave the puns to him
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| NOT the adventures of Moleman Illustration by Guy Larsen |
The act
I just do what makes me laugh. Mainly, I work as part of a double act for sketches, but away from the sketches is kind of like one-man variety show kind of thing crammed into five minutes, if that makes any sense. When writing, we tend to start with everyday stuff, then take the bits that are odd and keep adding to that until eventually it ends up funny.
The secret to being funny
I don’t know why you’re asking me that; ask someone successful! I think, ultimately, it’s just, a) making sure you do what makes you laugh and don’t worry about other people, not even the audience, because ultimately, the thing people respond to the most is seeing someone having a good time. And, b) the key - making sure you have your own style that no one else is doing, which is impossible to master unless you keep gigging. So many great acts on the circuit, but all of them, including myself, start off being too much like their favourite comedian.
The chalk and cheese comedy duo
Arguably, the best person to pick to be in a double act is someone you get along with, but at the same time is someone who pisses you off a bit. Then you’re providing different stuff. I can happily say Richard, who I’m in a double act with, is definitely a better actor then me, but then he’s not so good at things like handling hecklers, improvising around stuff that may go wrong, and that’s what I add. I can be the one who knows what to say when a prop breaks in the middle of a show.
How to get paid
You have to hunt online to find pubs that do open mic nights, and then you hope that eventually one of the people running them will like you and start helping you out with it a bit. That’s what we were doing, really. Going on Twitter, and people come back and say they’ve done a good
gig here, it’s nice. Also, there are lots of good Facebook groups, one
called the Comedy Collective, where people will post: ‘I run a club,
come every Wednesday and get a slot’.
Tips to newcomers
This is massively a product of the era that we live in, but try and provide content in a million different mediums. I think comedians starting out now, for a chance to make a living out of it, need to perform live, they also need to be actively hilarious on twitter, they need to be making YouTube videos, they need to be making podcasts. I think that’s the best way to succeed, hit every single market you can.
The Edinburgh Free Fringe
Doing theatres in London, people are paying six pounds to come in,
it massively changes someone’s mindset. They put six pound over a desk when they walk in, then they’re prepared to enjoy themselves and they go for it. Whereas if someone just wanders in for free, then there’s a ‘f***ing entertain me’ attitude, ‘I can leave, I didn’t pay for this.’ We were lucky and ended up getting invited to start five-ten minute slots at variety nights. One of them was on a bus, which was pretty awesome. The other half of my sketch act is very tall, he’s six foot three and he couldn’t sit on the bus!
Taking his audience to KFC
No one can prepare you for what the Edinburgh can do to you. It does change you. I mean, despite being quite a sensible, grown-up young man, the second I had three weeks built up of festival atmosphere, I just kind of snapped and improvised. And said, “Who in the audience wants to go to KFC?” and they all came. We were just there at two in the morning, drinking champagne and eating chicken from a bucket. It got really weird, but that’s what happens. It’s incredibly strange but you should just trust it.
Tips to newcomers
This is massively a product of the era that we live in, but try and provide content in a million different mediums. I think comedians starting out now, for a chance to make a living out of it, need to perform live, they also need to be actively hilarious on twitter, they need to be making YouTube videos, they need to be making podcasts. I think that’s the best way to succeed, hit every single market you can.
The Edinburgh Free Fringe
Doing theatres in London, people are paying six pounds to come in,
it massively changes someone’s mindset. They put six pound over a desk when they walk in, then they’re prepared to enjoy themselves and they go for it. Whereas if someone just wanders in for free, then there’s a ‘f***ing entertain me’ attitude, ‘I can leave, I didn’t pay for this.’ We were lucky and ended up getting invited to start five-ten minute slots at variety nights. One of them was on a bus, which was pretty awesome. The other half of my sketch act is very tall, he’s six foot three and he couldn’t sit on the bus!
Taking his audience to KFC
No one can prepare you for what the Edinburgh can do to you. It does change you. I mean, despite being quite a sensible, grown-up young man, the second I had three weeks built up of festival atmosphere, I just kind of snapped and improvised. And said, “Who in the audience wants to go to KFC?” and they all came. We were just there at two in the morning, drinking champagne and eating chicken from a bucket. It got really weird, but that’s what happens. It’s incredibly strange but you should just trust it.
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