Beyond a joke…

Emotional states seldom change as quickly and completely as that of the man who excitedly lands into a comedy club, only to find there are but a few lonely seats left… and, naturally, they’re all in the front row.

In most entertainment contexts, a stage-side seat is considered to be the best in the house.

The closer the better, right?

At the boxing, if you get a fighter’s snot, spit or blood on your face, you’ll walk about with it hanging off your person for the rest of the night.

“See that stain there, lad?” you’ll proudly announce, puking a stranger at the bar. “That there’s Michael Conlan’s dried-in phlegm.”

Same goes with a concert.

People pay through the nose to get as close to their idol as possible. Then, bizarrely, to emphasis just how near to the sun they flew, they’ll go home and tell all their friends about how their favourite singer, a person they paid £400 to see from knicker-landing range, has dodgy plastic surgery, narcotics-filled nostrils, or, if they really splashed the cash, a disgustingly odious body odour.

But at a night of stand-up comedy, all that is reversed. There is no worse spot to be than right in front of the talent. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Queue undramatic-but-hopefully-still-moderately-entertaining anecdote…

Last Friday, I was in Daly’s Comedy Club for the first time in a while.

On first impressions, not much had changed: The same heads were there, the pints were flowing, and the seating was still unassigned.

One thing was markedly different though… I was late.

“Jeez,” I grumbled as we got through the door. “Could you not have gotten ready any quicker?”

It was about eight o’clock and there was a small handful of empty seats scattered around the foot of the stage.

As we pondered whether to take two in the second row, a fast-acting pair of pragmatists came and sat on what we were too busy staring at.

Spooked, I looked towards the door and seen another few seat-hungry arses shuffling in.

“We may cut our loses and take these ones,” I said, climbing atop a high stool to the immediate left of the stage.

“This could be bad,” I began to catastrophise. “This could be very bad.”

At this point, what I needed was several nerve-settling pints. If I could have taken them by intravenous drip, I would have.

Unfortunately, the bar had closed, and, in any case, some other fella was using the only fluid infusion station in the place.

Anyway, as the lights dimmed and the show began, a terrible thought came into my head: What if they turn around to me and start slating the hum documentary? Then a worse one: What if they don’t realise I am here and start going on about ‘the state of that beardy bucko from that daft programme?’

In flagrant violation of all comedy club etiquette and norms, I ran downstairs and called for drink, before sneaking back into the room and slithering onto my seat with serpentine stealth.

As Conor Keys scanned the room for potential victims, I swallowed a pint like an anaconda choking down the better end of a calf.

He took into a married couple on the front row, who were out for the husband’s birthday.

Some wee ginger fella got a right roasting, his beamer eventually causing the big man to abate his assault.

And some doll in her early 20s, steely as anything I’ve ever seen, took every attempt to prod, goad or embarrass in what I can only describe as a spirit of nihilistic equanimity, so powerful that her would-be tormentor had to move onto the next one.

As the show went on, I started to realise that the hum documentary has already probably made its way to the outer edges of the local collective consciousness, and definitely the public conversation.

I soothed myself with the thought that soon it would disappear into the vast blackness to which most minor local events soon ascend.

Then, just as I was leaving, somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

“Here lad, tell me this: How much did they pay ye?”

Looks like it hasn’t been absorbed by the abyss just yet, I thought.