Tim Dowling: disaster strikes at a gig – they laugh at my jokes

The autumn tour of the band I’m in continues, zigzagging across the south. In Gloucester, a dedicated fan named Jane gives me a hard time during the interval for telling a story about a mug in the first half.

“I’m sick of that joke,” she says.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” I say.

“It’s just not funny,” she says.

I think: comedians don’t completely change their act every night just in case someone turns up twice. And also: we’re a band. The jokes and stories are just there to get us from one song to another, or in case something goes wrong.

The story in question – which is true – concerns another fan called Angela driving all the way from Scotland to Cambridge to see us play, just so she could get her hands on one of our souvenir mugs. I know this because Angela’s friend approached me at the interval that night to ask if we could dedicate a song to her.

“Otherwise,” she said, “it’s a long way to come for a fucking cup.”

While the average audience member seems to find this funny, to Jane – who has seen us play dozens of times – it’s just a long story about a considerably less dedicated fan, a one-mug fan.

“Don’t tell it again,” she says.

“Are you coming to Canterbury?” I say.

“We’re both retired now,” she says, pointing to her husband. “Be afraid.”

The support of our dedicated fans has meant a great deal to us over the years, which is why we always make ourselves available in the intervals. Also, we sell more mugs that way.

In the interval in Plymouth, another dedicated fan asks me why we’re not playing in Monmouth.

“I don’t know,” I say.

It’s hard to hear him above the clamour for mugs at the merchandise table, but he seems to be saying that there’s a venue he knows in Monmouth that would be perfect, bar one small problem: the owner of doesn’t like us.

“That’s a bit of a stumbling block,” I say.

“He just doesn’t see the point of you,” he says.

Before a sellout crowd in Lyme Regis I tell a joke so reliably bewildering that I’ve deliberately constructed a routine around it falling flat. But this time a number of people laugh at the joke in the first place, which completely throws me.

“That was a great gig,” the guitar player says afterwards. “One of the best ever!”

“But they laughed at my joke,” I say. “That has literally never happened before.”

“I know,” he says.

“Maybe I told it funny by accident,” I say. “So unprofessional.”

“Maybe you just need a new terrible joke,” he says.

“They’re not as easy to write as people think,” I say.

But the next night the joke fails as badly as it ever has: an entire audience is mortified on my behalf. I wring as much mileage out of the awkwardness of the moment as I can, in case it never happens again.

“They loved that joke in Lyme, by the way,” I say.

Between numbers, I scan the room to see if Jane and her husband are in, but beyond the front row the audience is blanketed in darkness. There is no way to tell which dedicated fans, if any, might be present.

As I stop to tune my banjo before the last song of the first half, my back briefly to the crowd, I hear the guitarist announce that we will shortly be making ourselves available in the interval, over by the merchandise table set up along the left wall of the room.

He shows off our new souvenir hat, and the latest mug design, holding up samples he has strategically placed at his feet. He reminds the audience that you cannot buy the mugs from our website, because of the likelihood of damage during shipping. You can only buy them, he says, at gigs.

There is a pause, and even though I’m facing the wrong way, I can imagine the guitar player looking to his immediate right, expecting me to chime in with a well-worn story about a dedicated fan who once drove all the way down from Scotland just to get herself a mug. But I still have my back to the audience, and I have now retreated to a shadowy part of the stage to the left of the drum kit.

For a long moment, the only sound is me repeatedly plinking the banjo’s fifth string as I tune it all the way up to D, so high that I worry it will break.

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