On feedback

Hello. It’s 10pm, I’m sitting at my kitchen table with Dog the cat. It’s Sunday. We’ve just watched the final of the Welsh Open Snooker. A whirlwind from the Hawk Barry Hawkins. Takes the match 9-5, and the title Welsh Open Champion at long last. We’re both delighted.

I’m going to Morocco tomorrow. The trip to Jordan, which I so haughtily assumed would go ahead in the last episode, did not go ahead. So we’ve rerouted to the Morocco and the wonderful Atlas Mountains – I’ve got my eye on a particular 6-day hike in the High Atlas Mountains. Bag is packed. All that’s left to do, as before any good holiday, is have a sleep tea and do some panic podcasting.

Do you enjoy this podcast? I’m doing my level best to keep giving you good stuff to ram up your earholes, and I hope it’s doing the business for you. If it is, please do leave a little comment to let me know who you are, what you like, tell me a secret, introduce me to your grandmother, whatever you like. It’d be lovely to know that you’re happy, and if you’re not wholly happy, why not.

I ask because I’d genuinely like to know, but it also ties in with something I’d like to talk about today, which is feedback.

When I was in my final year of uni, I started co-hosting a radio show on the uni radio station. It was called Music Memoirs, and I did it with my friend Elyse. We would alternate who planned the episode, and that person would pick a theme. Themes ranged from ‘lunch’ to ‘cops and robbers’, one week we just did one called ‘drivel’, and each time each of us would pick two songs on the theme and talk about what the theme meant to us, sometimes we’d have a ‘guest’ who picked a song and we recorded them talking about it for a bit and then we’d talk about them talking about it. In principle, the show was about associating music with stories, and we did do that, but we also talked a lot of rubbish and played games with each other. We did some really great stuff – like, every week, whoever’s turn it was to plan had to find a loose rhyme of the word ‘discs’ and then we’d do a variety of Desert Islands – so ‘desert island discs’ became ‘desert island biscs’ (biscuits), ‘desert island crisps’, ‘desert island fish’, one week it was just ‘desert island Chris’ – which Chris would you take to a desert island. Elyse said Chris Hemsworth, I said my mate Chris from primary school who I haven’t seen in about a decade. I figured it’d be a nice chance to catch up.

We had been doing it weekly for a few months when I decided, on a quiet Wednesday evening, to listen to my own radio show. I settled down with a glass of wine; I sat facing a blank wall, popped my noise cancelling headphones on and lined up an episode about MarioKart which we had done a few weeks previously. 

Within one minute my hands were clamming up. I was hearing myself properly for the first time, as a listener, and I was horrified. God, I say ‘kind of’ so so much. My laugh is too loud and quite annoying. Do I have a lisp?

I was absolutely stunned at how little I can hear as I’m speaking. I hadn’t a clue about how often I say ‘um’ and how sometimes, when I don’t really think what I’m saying is particularly witty or interesting, I just mumble it. I had no idea how that sounded.

The first record after that was vastly different to all the previous ones. For the first time I was really paying attention to my delivery. I still couldn’t really hear myself while I was doing it, but I knew some things that  made me better. And I listened back that week, too. Still lots of toe-curling moments where I wanted to blow up the entire internet and then zip myself up inside a bag. But it was better. And the week after that it got better again. And then it got a bit worse again, and then a bit better.

By the end of the year, I could’ve told you twenty things that made me a better radio host. To begin with, most of them were just ‘don’t do this’, but gradually I started to make stylistic choices about what sort of presenter I wanted to be. Before I started listening back to it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what my style was. But by listening, evaluating and trying again, I found out.

About 4 months ago, I did standup comedy for the first time. I did a five minute open mic slot at a pub in South London. And I was shite. I was unbelievably nervous and I looked it, I forgot what I was saying, there was one joke that went well and the rest was bad. It was a ‘bringer’ gig, which means a condition of performing is that you have to bring a friend. They do this so that there’s an audience. If no one had to bring friends, few people would, and then there wouldn’t be an audience. Just other comedians, hoping that no one else got as many laughs as they did. Hateful, hateful people.

I brought Frank. I met Frank a few months ago through a social football team and I thought he was a lovely man. We see each other once every couple of weeks and talk about our feelings (modern manly men alert), so I felt very comfortable asking him if he would come to my first comedy gig.

When I was writing my material for that first set, I thought the concept of a bringer was quite funny. There was something entertaining in the forced participation of it. Like we were all just out for the day. A performance that was significantly more to indulge the performer than the audience.

I thought it was funny to say that I’d asked Frank to come because Frank and I didn’t have any friends in common, so if it went badly enough, I’d just never speak to him again. I thought that was a bit of fun.

And it was a bit of fun. On another evening, performed better, possibly by someone else, a great bit of fun. But I was nervous and didn’t know my material well enough and it wasn’t good. 

Frank was super duper supportive afterwards and just kept telling me how incredible it was that I’d done it. That was a massively kind and emotionally intelligent way to deal with someone who had clearly just embarrassed themselves publicly. And it rescued my comedy career. Because I didn’t dwell in the embarrassment much and quickly got onto thinking about what was good, why it was good and how I could improve.

And that’s what’s brilliant about comedy. I’ve been performing music for ages, and I’ve found that I can come off stage after a big gig and genuinely have no idea how it went. I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to music, so I have a tendency to fixate on the ways it didn’t go quite to plan, but I don’t think I’ve ever got to the end of a music gig and felt ‘I’ve absolutely smashed that. Everyone loved it.’

Because it’s quite hard to know if everyone loved it when it comes to music. But comedy is different. With comedy, you find out instantly what was a good joke and what wasn’t. You get instant feedback.

I’ve done about ten standup nights now, and I don’t think I’ve ever improved at something as quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pretty shit. I must stress, I was real bad. But I’m writing better jokes and I’m performing them in a different ways that get a bit better, sometimes a bit worse, and then a bit better again every time.

I’ve found a big part of working out what comedy works for me is working out what I look like to people. Apparently, this is a big part of clown training. You may be picturing a kids party entertainer with a red nose and huge shoes, but clowning is a highly studied, taught and trained form of comedy. I’m no expert, but it has a lot to do with physical comedy and the idea of playing as a form of entertainment. And one exercise many clown students do is this.

They walk onto a stage and, without saying anything, they sit down on a chair. The stage has just a single chair on it. They sit down and look straight ahead in silence. They do nothing. And after five minutes, they stand up and leave. After they’ve left, the audience writes down what sort of person they thought that person was. Whether they looked kind or arrogant, self-effacing or goofy, posh, normal, gentle, sneaky, French, etc. 

This is so, so useful to know. Because if I can walk onto a stage, know exactly what everyone’s thinking and then say it, that’s funny. People laugh if you say what everyone’s thinking.

It’s all about feedback. Two types of feedback there, though. The first type of feedback was the feedback I got from listening back to my radio show. This is the best type of feedback, I think, because it’s all you. You do it, you decide what’s good and what could be improved, and you make some changes. But I think we all know that it’s not always easy to look at your work objectively. For me, my writing is my baby. I keep doing things even when no one finds them funny. I say lean over to people in Sainsbury’s and say “wouldn’t I need to buy both if I wanted to Taste The Difference?”. That’s less funny than I think it is. Maybe I’ll wang on about feedback for 15 minutes and you’ll tell me, didn’t love that. And that’s fine. As long as you’re nice about it. And maybe send me a message rather than commenting it. But if you like this podcast and there’s something about it that you don’t enjoy, I want to know. Just like with standup, it helps me get better.

But of course, it’s a balance. If you’re doing something creative, it’s quite important that you are your own critic. Both positive and negative feedback are quite addictive somehow, and allowing yourself to swell with pride in the face of positive feedback tends to make you more vulnerable to negative feedback. And it all takes you a bit further from the honest expression which generally leads to the best stuff.

Anyway, I’ll stop banging on.

Also, just a teeny thing, before I introduce our lovely guest for this week. This is not a political podcast at all, but all this just makes me think of something that’s happening at the moment.

I don’t want to talk about what’s going on in the Middle East. I often find that, with this sort of news, right and wrong get badly blended, and as I sit in the comfort of my bedroom in London, I can’t possibly know what’s happening in the ‘room where it happens’ (to use a Hamilton-ism). I want to know the ‘why’s of it all as much as anyone, and I’ll happily discuss it, but this isn’t exactly a discussion, so I’ll lay off that.

I want to talk about Keir Starmer. Love him or hate him, Keir has a bloody hard job right now. A huge part of UK politics for the past many years has hinged upon our ‘special relationship’ with the US. We’ve been able to work together with the States and assume that generally we feel the same way about things, have similar agendas, and we’re pushing in the same direction. They were a safeguard, a sounding board, an ally.

But we were never the United State of the United States and the United Kingdom. We have always been individually ourselves. For most of the past century we have had a relationship which allowed us to be ourselves, have our own priorities and values and nonetheless be close. It worked.

It worked because we had similar values and neither of us forced the other to compromise those values.

In the run-up to the recent US-Israeli attack on Iran, Trump asked Starmer to let the US use the joint US-UK military base in the Chagos Islands. Starmer refused; he said that he would only use it for defence.

There is a way for the US to explain what is happening in Iran as ‘defence’. Trump would claim he is starting a war to avoid a worse one further down the line. So it may seem quite pernickety for Starmer to say ‘no, we said defence and we mean defence’. Trump would take that personally, and say something sinister like ‘you’re going to regret this’. And maybe he’s a man of his word, when it comes to threats at least.

But it wasn’t pernickety. It was a matter of values. Starmer chose not to let Trump bully him into compromising British values. There may be significant consequences to that decision. Only time will tell. But love him or hate him, I can’t help but respect Starmer for sticking to his guns on that one. Quite literally, I suppose. Between a rock and a hard place, when you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, commit to the bit. You won’t regret being true to yourself, but you might regret it twice if you don’t.

Anyway, blimmin heck. We’ve gone down a rabbit hole there haven’t we.

A joyful week to you all, you frumpy mumblers. Go get em.