Clown Time Is Over (27/3/17)

Here's a monologue I wrote quite a while ago. Published here because it should be somewhere.

Clown Time Is Over

A lone mic stand is set in the centre of the stage, a single spotlight picking it out. A version of ‘Recitar’ from act one of Leocavallo’s ‘Pagliacci’ plays. The comedian approaches the mic. Dressed in ‘smart casual’ style - jeans, Converse, shirt, suit jacket. Takes the mic from the stand, taps it to check sound, blows into it and starts to talk as the music fades down.

COMEDIAN: 

There’s a joke. A very old joke. It’s one of the bedrocks of the ancient trade of the stand up. You’ll know this, you’ll have heard it recently. I’m not pretending to tell you something new.

Sums up everything, this; irony, sadness, the assumptions that others make of us and how what we do isn’t necessarily what we are.

Goes like this:

A man goes to the doctor. 

Breaks routine slightly for an aside

See? Classic set up already. Can’t go wrong with ‘a man goes to the doctor’, we’ve all done it, we all know it, the possibilities are endless AND

and this is very important

Your audience knows there are a million ‘doctor’ jokes, they’re daring you to come up with a new one, they know - absolutely KNOW - that you can’t, their arms are folded, they’re a challenge.

And stand ups? We love a challenge. 

Our biggest challenge? We turn tragedy into comedy on a nightly basis.  And comedy is nothing but tragedy plus time. How much time? Well that’s all subjective isn’t it.

So - the oldest doctor joke in the universe.

A man goes to the doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel.

Again, as an aside

Which, in fairness, it often is.

Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. 

Aside.

See? You’re identifying. We’re hitting universal truths here.

And the Doctor says, “The treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. 

Aside

Look, I know you’ve heard this - you know where it’s going but anyway

The Doctor says; Go and see him. That should pick you up.

And the Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.

Waits for reaction.

Told you that you knew it, didn’t I? But it does bring up a couple of useful points:

One - the people we go to for help at our lowest moments can’t necessarily help themselves. And two:

You can’t fucking trust clowns.

Bastards, the lot of them.

Pauses. Looks around. Squints toward the back of the audience.

You think you’ll see them coming. Not the clowns - you can’t miss them coming with their hideous faces and their shit shoes and their falling apart cars - no, the big moments. You think you’ll see the big moments coming. You don’t. They just appear. Suddenly. From nowhere. You think you’ll get chance to prepare. You won’t.

Pauses.

It was probably the third bottle of Becks that did it. See, you spend a lot of time on the road in the job I do. I suppose that’s ‘the job I did’ now. And people buy you drinks. Suppose they think they’re being nice. They enjoyed what you did so they bought you a drink. Can’t be anything wrong with that can there?

Well, no. Not until the night that you accept the third. The night you think that you’re okay - the first was hours ago, this one will be fine. I’ll be fine. The night that you see the flashing lights in the rear view mirror on the motorway and you know life’s about to get difficult.

And it’s all ‘Could you step out of the vehicle please?’ and I’m daft enough to say ‘can’t you get in, I’m way too pissed to get out’ because I’m funny, that’s what I do. I do funny. Less funny when the breathalyser result hits you. Lot less funny when you realise that you’re on the train for the foreseeable.

Which is how I met the bastard clown. Which is how I ended up here.

I’ve never believed in much, never been particularly religious, never really saw a need… But I’ll tell you this… If there IS a god - and I’m still far from convinced - then he or she…. is definitely taking the piss. Big time. Maybe he.....or she.... is like the ultimate heckler.

Pauses, looks around

I could murder a drink right now. There’s irony for you

Checks inside jacket pocket for something, doesn’t find it, looks puzzled then laughs softly to self

They don’t allow you to smoke in here either do they? Always envied the old comics on that front
All your Bernard Mannings and Mike Reads. Could just rock up at the mic with a pint and a ciggy.
Doesn’t just help with the nerves, gives you something to do with your hands as well. Slows the act down a bit. Take a drag, tell a gag, take a sip, next line.

Racist bastards. Bigots all the way through but they got to have a smoke on stage didn’t they? I’m going to miss smoking. I liked smoking.

All I ever had was patter. Endless patter, quick fire patter. Tires you out in the end. Always ‘on’.
All those nights on your feet? All the talking, all the remembering lines, thinking on your feet, sorting out the pissed hecklers? Makes you old before your time. If you’re lucky. I’d always thought of myself as the lucky type. 

Lucky and not scared. Not scared of the stupid things that people get scared about. Phobias. Never got phobias. And they keep inventing new ones;

Nomophobia. Honestly, genuinely, the fear of being without your mobile. The fear of not having a signal. How’s the signal round here? Limited, I’d imagine

Adopts a whiny voice

‘I’ve got a phobia of wardrobes’
Returns to own voice

No you haven’t, get a fucking grip

‘I’ve got a phobia of saucepans’

No you haven’t, you’re a dickhead, sort it out

‘I’m scared of clowns’

Everybody’s scared of clowns! That’s not a phobia, that’s sanity! If you don’t like the freakish bastards it means that YOU’RE normal.

Quietly again

I wasn’t scared of clowns. More irony for you.

So. No licence but still need gigs. Spent a lot of time on the train. A lot. Ask for the early slot, offer to take a smaller fee for the convenience, get the last train from wherever. You wouldn’t believe the sights you see on those last trains.

The smackheads, the alkys, the general idiots, the dregs. Survived every last one of them. The toilets though? Jesus

Aside - squints at audience again

Sorry, is everybody okay with me using his name? No issues with that is there? Ah well, whatever. Bit late to do anything about it really.

Where was I? The toilets. The toilets were something else. End of a day, everybody that’s on the train’s been drinking, the toilets have been used. A lot. You want to avoid using them if you can. Ankle deep in God knows what. Hold on. Wait till you get the station. Always safest at the station.

Yeah. Right.

I’d had a gig in Stockport. Nine O’clock call. Did half an hour, jumped a cab to the station. By ten thirty I was (sarcastic voice) ‘happily’ tucked up under a thick coat on the coldest train you’ve ever seen. On the hardest seat you can imagine. Real cattle truck. Big carriage, all the seats facing front. Long rows like the old bus seats. Just me and three other late night souls with no better options. All avoiding each other. All thinking it’s the others that might be the problem, that might be a bit mad.

Except this one old guy. This one old guy that wants to talk to everybody. He's worked his way through the others. Fairly sure he was handing out pamphlets, converting them to something. And he gets to me and he says, ‘Do you know where we are, friend?’

And I’ve got it. I know who he is;

He’s the pissed up twat that wants to tell you that Warrington Station is where Paul Simon wrote ‘Homeward Bound’ and then starts singing the sodding thing. And you want to punch them square in the face because;

a) they can never sing and

b) It’s WIDNES you daft bastard. He wrote it at WIDNES.

but apparently the police look down on that kind of behaviour as well. So you don’t. So you answer

So, I answered

'No idea mate.'

‘Do you know where you’re going then?’ he says.

‘Home’ I reply

‘No’, he says, ‘ultimately. Where are you going ultimately?’

‘I’m ultimately going home’ I say ‘and I’d like to do it in peace please.’

‘You’re not with me’ he says

‘No, I am QUITE DEFINITELY not with you’ I reply. Sharp me, always on

And he says;

‘Have you accepted our lord into your life?’

Ah. It’s that nutter. The religious nutter. The God botherer.

And I honestly, truly apologise to any of you who are bothered by that description but that’s how I felt. Then. I might be reassessing that opinion soon.

‘What do you think the afterlife will be like?’ he asks me.

‘Look mate’ I reply ‘I barely believe in this life at the moment, I’m not really thinking about the next one’

‘You should’ he says ‘It’s coming sooner than you think’

And he smiles

And it’s a really sweet smile, kind of harmless but evil at the same time.

Like he knows something.

Something bad.

And I think: ‘Sod this, I’m getting off at Runcorn’

So I kind of placate him for a couple of minutes until we get close and I do the whole ‘well, this is my station, it’s been lovely talking to you’ thing and I grab my coat and get off.

And I’m stood on Runcorn Station. In the rain. Obviously. And I know the last train’s gone. I know this because I was on the last train until God’s mate creeped me out.

But it’s okay ‘cos there’s a taxi rank. But there’s no taxis in the rank. There’s just this one figure stood there.

Starts to speak more quietly. Slows down, leaves longer gaps, lets each point hang in the air

In a shabby mac and a hat pulled down low almost meeting his collar

An old fashioned hat with like a brim and everything

Regretfully

The shoes should have given it away

The stupid shoes

The massive fucking shoes with the bulbous fucking toes.

But I didn’t think about them

I just asked the question

‘Excuse me, are you waiting for a cab?’

And I think ‘Obviously he’s waiting for a cab, what else would he be doing?’

But he isn’t.

And he turns around

Slowly

Very

Very

Slowly

And I see the hair. Orange hair. Unnaturally orange hair. Greasy. Might have been curly once, not now. Sticking out in tufts.

And I see the white of his neck, the patchy, dirty white make up, flaking away from his neck

And then he’s fully round and his face is white with that horrible painted on smile, the one that stays up even when your mouth is turned down

And trust me, his mouth was definitely turned down

But that freaky red smile stays up, grinning while he’s snarling

His eyes though? His eyes aren’t smiling.

They’re cold and dead inside these black diamonds of make up with a silver line round each diamond

I remember the silver lines. Why do I remember the silver lines?

I wish he’d said something. It would have made more sense if he’d said something.

But he didn’t. He just reached inside his mac and he pulled out this knife.

This small, dirty, fucking knife

And I felt it as it went in

Just here

Points to a spot just below the left set of own ribs and grimaces

And that was it.

Dark. The end.

All these stupid little coincidences? The third bottle of Becks, the police car in the right spot on the motorway, the Jesus freak - sorry - on the train? All brought me to die on a rainy street in Runcorn.

Stupid, Random, pointless, absurd.

Tragedy plus time. That my friends, that’s comedy.

What’s the next life like?

Same as the last one apparently, same small club gigs, same audiences wanting a laugh at the expense of the idiot with the mic.

You’re looking for a point to all this?

Don’t look at me. I can’t tell you the point. I don’t think there is a point.

All I can tell you is this.

You CAN NOT trust fucking clowns.

Lights go down, ‘Entrance of the Gladiators’ plays, The Comedian walks away.