what's your comic persona

Piracy is not a crime.
It's a lifestyle choice.

A while ago when I told an old friend of mine I was becoming a comic and he asked me, maybe in a way that after he said it I felt like I should have come up with a better answer than I had done, or that I should have had something pre prepared, he asked me, do you have a comic persona?

This worried me.

Do I need a comic persona?

Is this his way of saying you, as you are, aren't really funny enough, so what's your comic persona.

[you could do the whole of this dressed as a pirate]

So, I said, well, you know, I reckon all the really good comedians I've seen they're kind of themselves but, like a heightened version of themselves. Like there must be quite a lot of David Brent's in Ricky Gervais, right?

So he said, so basically you're going to just be yourself, but funny.

And that's how I ended up here this evening.

And I know what you're thinking, and you're right.
Day to day, I don't normally have the parrot.

But for the purposes of comedy, of your entertainment, I felt I needed to push the envelope, or whatever people say in offices.

So, that's the parrot. It's me. But more so. Day-to-day I'm not rocking the parrot accessory. Because ultimately I'm fearful that if I go down the parrot route, and say I'm in the job centre signing on, they're not going to take me seriously.

Basically, I'm a pirate. That's my vibe. Swashbuckling. Walk the plank. That kind of thing. I'm old school though. Not one of these modern pirates sin little speedboats high on Khat toting AK 47's. No I'm more mid 1500's kind of thing. Keira Knightley kind of thing.

So that's me. Probably best not to ask me anything about boats or the history of piracy when we're done here, because literally I don't know a damn thing. I haven't done the research. And I think it's safe to say if you get this far (shows outfit) and you haven't done the research, you're probably not going to.

Some upsides of being a pirate and a comic. I'm unique. You'll see a lot of other so-called observational comics out there, really good ones. Ones that make a point of saying "don't ask me yeah, if I can tell jokes, I don't even know any jokes, I'm an observational comedian. I make people laugh by observing everyday life"

Well, that's fair enough. And they've made me laugh with some of their observations.
But as for me, I'm not an observational comic.
But I am a pirate.

How many people can say that?

Other upsides of being a pirate comedian. Get quite a lot of overseas gigs.
Done quite a lot of stuff in Somalia.
Seem to go over quite well there.

Some other upsides.
Pirate heckling seems to be quite limited in scope. People just tend to either shout out pirate phrases they've heard.

[gap]

Or, just silence , really. Just silence.

Well, thanks for lending me your ears. I've got to shoot now and get this parrot back to the hire shop before 10pm.

Before I go I suppose I could tell you what the sexual term 'pirating' means but top be honest it's just going to make all the women in the room hate me and think I invented it, so I'm not going Io do that.

Although, if you lot demand it of me, we could do it another way that doesn't incriminate me.

I've broken down the term pirating into three section and if members of the audience would care to read one section each then technically no one will have read it and so you won't be to blame.

Up for that?

Shiver me timbers is that the time. I must be going. Arrrggh.

Remember folks, to errr is human, but to arrrggghhh is pirate.