“Well, aren’t you lucky!”

If I heard those words while being handed an oversized novelty cheque, I’d agree immediately. However, most of the time I hear those words in my profession, it’s usually after someone has found out what I’m being paid for a corporate show, or on a cruise ship as a passenger has learned that I won’t be performing every night.

This is one of the issues of life as an Unknown Comic – funny enough to make a living as a comedian, but about as famous as Geoff Jansz’s makeup person. There are quite a few of us, and because we’re not on TV, people often assume that we are not so much comedy professionals as “giving this stand-up thing a try”. As a result, people often put us on the same level of professionalism as that bloke they know from Accounts who cracks people up down the pub.

When this happens, I can’t help but think about those times when people weren’t so quick to praise my good fortune. My first ever paid gig is a good example; the headliner for the night was a regular on television, and the audience seemed to think that anyone who wasn’t him was blocking his path. I was clearly as welcome as bird flu, and was pack-heckled within an inch of my life. Accompanying another recognisable name on tour through country Victoria – to preserve his identity, I shall refer to him as “Steady Freddie” – is also burnt into my memory. One night, I was walking out on stage to start the show, but before I had even reached the microphone some local wit had called out “fuck off, you’re not the cripple.” No-one sat in either audience wishing they had my luck.

The cruise ships are where this sentiment appears most often, as if a group of passengers had been asked “who wants to be the comedian”, and I happened to shoot my hand up the quickest. It took about six months of phone calls, emails, showreel submissions and general nagging to get this lucky, not to mention the ten years of learning my craft so that when I landed the job, I didn’t have a room full of ocean going holiday makers wanting to make me go splash. That’s the unique thing about cruise ship work – once the show is done, you still have to live with your audience for a week, and often be fortunate enough to be heckled on a beach, or at a bar, days after the performance.

I’m not going to claim for a second that the dice have never rolled my way. I was booked to MC a show on the same night that one of Australia’s most successful comedians was doing his last tour of duty through the Melbourne comedy rooms (he now tends to pack out theatres rather than working the pubs). Through that coincidence, I ended up traveling Australia as his support act on and off for five years, becoming a better comedian and showing promoters around the country what I can do. I would love to say that this was a result of careful maneuvering, elaborate surveillance and an uncanny sense of cosmic timing, but it was pure fluke.

The thing is that the hard work of being a comedian is discounted too quickly for my liking. To use the old iceberg image, the half hour or so of smart-arsery on stage is above the waterline, while the writing, touring, and hustling for work is the seven-eighths underneath. The work is definitely worth it, though, particularly when the Unknown Comic gets to stand in front of hundreds of people who have no idea who he or she is, make them roar with laughter for a while, and have one or more come up after the show and say with an admiring (and occasionally slightly surprised) tone “that was really funny!”

Yeah… lucky, that.

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