LATEST NEWS - 13/12/2011
Well, an update every 3 months seems to be all I can muster. Remember, though, I try to write 2-3 blogs, so you can keep updated on the 'Blog' page.
It's been a great year, I have to say. The book (also available from the website) has done very well in its first 9 months, and I'm always blown away to have people I've never met get in contact with nice feedback. Book 2 will be out next year, but probably the end of the year.
Gig-wise, I've been busier than ever and I'm looking forward to having some welcome time off over Christmas with wifey. The 2012 diary is already filling up, so hopefully I'll see you at some point soon in your locality. Before the end of 2011, I'll be listing my favourite gigs and moments from the past year, but for now, can I wish you a very Merry, peace-filled Christ-mas? I can, and I have.
Kyrie Eleison!
LATEST NEWS - 01/09/2011
Is it really September already? Where has 2011 got to, I ask you.
So, I've just come back from Greenbelt where I met my musical hero and spouted verbal diarrhea in his face like a massive twonker. Not enough sleep and too much cider.
The summer of writing was successful without being hugely successful. Book 2 (The Gig Delusion) is coming along, and at least I know what it's about now. I might try and put up a few samples before long, so you can know what it's about, too. David Nobbs, creator of Reginald Perrin, said of Stand Up and Deliver 'I read it on the train and I was so gripped by his tale of his first gig that Retford and Newark passed by without my even noticing them. I felt terrified for him, and I could identify with him because when I first started speaking in public I was very scared. I enjoyed it and it made me laugh out loud. Luckily I wasn't in the quiet coach.'
What a lovely man he is.
I now have a hugely busy 3 months of gigs, but at least that means that I can do stuff like pay for food and shoes. In addition, I have just finished writing my second article for Sorted magazine. You can find out more at www.sorted-magazine.com, should you wish. There's also talk of a podcast for Sorted with my friend, Joe Sparrow, but we will see.
So, that's about it for now. Hopefully see you around.
AK
x
LATEST NEWS - 17/06/2011
So, we've added a couple of things to the website, and taken away the guestbook for good. Frankly, I was sick of getting spam messages telling me a mexican guy could help my sex-life. In the end, I just gave him a call.
Here are some recent reviews of my book, which you can buy from this site - hooray!
"A great read and highly recommended!" Inspire Magazine
"Totally unputdownable and our book of the year!" Sorted Magazine
"Meticulously accurate, entertaining, surprisingly moving. Kind projects an accessible, warm, upbeat demeanour that makes for an easily enjoyable read." Chortle.co.uk
"5 stars" MediaNet.org
The tour dates for the book tour are filling up, so if you want us at your venue, get in touch - before it's too late!
Book 2 is no longer going to be called Grandad. I think I have decided to call it 'The Gig Delusion'. Although 'Comics Wanderings and the Exclusivity of Christ amid Competing Worldviews' is a very close second. Not really.
In other news, I discovered a lovely motel off the A40 in South Wales, called The Forge. It was like a little deserted holiday village on the side of a motorway. I was pretty much the only guest, so it felt a bit creepy. I half expected to drive away, look over my shoulder and see that it had been boarded up and derelict for 100 years. Maybe I haven't actually sold it to you that well. Never mind.
Finally, I'm going to be writing a regular column for Sorted Magazine come September. Watch out for that.
TTFN
AK
LATEST NEWS - 05/05/11
So, the book is out and doing well. It's been lovely to have so many people get in touch and say nice things about it. Thank you if you're one of those people! The main question that accompanies the compliments is almost always 'Who was "Sean" from the gig at the Glee?' The answer is 'I'll tell you in 20 years'. I don't care how well you can keep a secret - my lips are sealed!
There will be a book tour starting in the autumn. I'll be doing it with Carl Beech from CVM. If you know a venue that might like to host us for an evening, please get in touch. It's going to be a lot of fun, I think. If it isn't, I'll come back and edit that last sentence. In the meantime, I will be writing Book 2. I was going to call it 'Grandad' but I've changed my mind about that now - sorry. I may just do what Blur did with 'Song 2' - although Book 2 sounds a little pompous and academic. Maybe I'll print the periodic table as the front cover. Well, I'm glad we sorted that out.
I'm currently gigging all over the place. I keep meaning to update my gig diary - rather than leaving it completely empty - but it's a lot of hassle, and besides, I'm a easy target for terrorist extremists. If anyone's going to take me out, they're going to have to work for it.
Anyway, ttfn...
AK
LATEST NEWS - 03/03/11
For all you inquisitive types, here is the first part of the first chapter of my book, Stand Up and Deliver - out next month (pre-orderable from Amazon NOW!)
******
My first gig came out of the blue.
I was driving to play football with a friend of mine when my mobile rang and flashed up “Unknown Caller”.
I don’t know about you, but I always get a little bit frightened by that. You’ll learn as we go along that I have an overactive imagination, so when I see “Unknown Caller”, I just picture a man in a cloak with bony fingers and no face. I have this horrible fear that I’ll answer the phone to the grim reaper, he’ll simply say “It’s time”, and I’ll slump, lifeless, back into my chair.
This whole series of thoughts was making me very tense, and so I answered the phone like someone opening the front door of a long-abandoned Victorian house.
“H-h-hello?”
“Hi, it’s Jane from Mirth Control Comedy. Are you free to do a gig in Bath tonight?”
Realizing I’d managed to stave off Death for another day, I breathed a sigh of relief – until I understood what was actually happening.
I was being offered a chance to do stand-up comedy!
I’d never done it before, and had only just registered on the agency’s site as a newbie act looking for gigs. But here I was, being invited to travel down south and actually perform.
The reality of the situation – living in Stoke-on-Trent and on my way to play football – meant I would have to set off straight away, wearing nothing but a football strip and thus leaving my friend Steve to walk the final two miles to the match. I had no choice…
“Yes, I’m free,” I replied, hoping that Steve would feel an extended pre-match warm-up might do him some good.
“Great, it’s the Cellar Bar in the centre of town. Show starts at 8.30, get there for 8.00 – you’ll be on in the middle. Bye…”
The line went dead.
“Steve, there’s good news and there’s bad news,” I said.
Steve is still in my top friends on Facebook and I’m godfather to his son, so I won’t tell you what he said – but Gordon Ramsey, had he been there, might well have asked him to tone it down a bit.
“Score a goal for me!” I shouted back to Steve as I drove off, leaving him stranded. The hand gesture he gave me in return suggested that he would try to score two.
As I hit the M6 south at Junction 15 and the road to Bath stretched out in front of me, I remember thinking something quite profound that has stuck with me ever since:
“This is the worst idea anyone has ever had!”
But I was on my way. I was finally pursuing my lifelong dream and, though I didn’t know it at the time, a new career was about to start. I stopped at Stafford services to buy a pack of mini pork-pies and ring my Mum, to tell her the news. My Mum has an acute gift for the profound, fully equal to my own, and when I told her about this momentous occasion, she replied, “Oh, if I’d known in advance I could have done you a packed lunch!”
Rock and roll.
The moment I passed the Cellar Bar in Bath, my legs turned comprehensively to jelly. As I exited my car, shaking with fear, I must have looked like some hideous ventriloquist’s dummy that had sprung to life and turned on his master.
I’d spent most of the journey trying to remember some of the jokes I’d written over the previous few weeks, after I’d had the initial crazy idea to “hit the boards”. On the phone, Jane had asked me to do five minutes, but I’d never timed myself and so had no idea whether I had too much or not enough material. More than that, I had no idea whether anything I’d written was in any way funny. In a moment of grotesque clarity, I longed for the Reaperman to call for a catch-up – or at least send a text, if he was trying to keep billing costs down.
Walking into the Porter Cellar Bar and down the flight of steps to the comedy club, I shuffled past the healthy line of punters waiting to pay to get in. A woman with a cash box accosted me. “Can I help?” she asked.
In reply, I asserted something that, over 600 gigs later, still feels a bit odd and a bit beautiful:
“I’m one of the comedians.”
I felt like a complete fraud saying it, reminiscent of that scene in The Great Escape where Richard Attenborough bluffs his way onto the bus past the Nazi officer by pretending to be French. I was half expecting to be shown through, and the woman would say “Good luck”, I’d say “Thank you”, we’d both display looks of dawning realization and panic, after which I’d be chased through the streets of Bath and eventually shot as I tried to cross some train tracks.
Bizarrely, she bought my story, affirmed they were expecting me and showed me through into the bar.
The show started and I sat through the compère and opening act, thinking how good they were, how confident they looked and how loose my rectal muscles felt. That is one of the drawbacks with comedy: the terror. No matter how good you get, nor how many gigs you perform at, from the moment you arrive at a venue until you go on, you constantly need the toilet (or at least I do). I was experiencing this now for the first time, and I couldn’t honestly say at that moment what was scaring me more: the thought of the crowd not laughing, or the thought of the crowd laughing a lot as I went on and, instead of telling jokes, just stood there transfixed by the light and retaining zero control over my bowels.
Before I knew it, the show had rocketed into its first break of the evening, which meant one thing: I was next.
I went into the Green Room where all the other acts were dissecting the first section of the show. Ninia Benjamin had opened the proceedings and had gone down a storm. She was scrutinizing a piece of paper, using a biro to tick off certain words – presumably symbolizing bits of new material she had road-tested. Also present were a double-act called Electric Forecast (or Big Cook, Little Cook if you are of the CBeebies persuasion). Unaware that this was my first gig, they were asking me questions like, “Who’s your agent?” and “You got any TV projects on the go?”
“Well, not really. I’m trying to work my way through every episode of Friends in a week, but apart from that…”
I tried to chat politely, but amidst all the happy banter, rib-tickling and general joviality, I had never felt more lonely or quite as stranded.
Everyone else in the club seemed completely at ease with their role for the evening. The barman knew how to pour pints; the audience knew how to sit down and watch what was in front of them; the other comedians knew how to say something funny and wait for a roar of laughter to come rolling back. It had all happened before and would all happen again. But not for me. I was a virgin, a newbie, a rookie: an island of panic in a sea of certainty and self-assurance.
The fifteen-minute break ended. The crowd excitedly retook their seats, a strong scent of beer and wine now filling the underground space. The venue, being subterranean, had a dank clamminess to it that emanated from the walls and tickled my throat. It reminded me of visiting Smuggler’s Cove in Newquay as a child.
I wish I was there now.
The other acts went “out front” to watch the show, while the compère, Sally-Anne Hayward, waited for the soundman to play the A-Team theme so she could retake the stage.
“I’ll just do about five at the top, then bring you straight on. Is that cool?”
“Sure.”
“Have a good ’un!” She winked at me, I heard the sound of machine-gun fire as the theme tune kicked in and she was back on stage, leaving me alone in the Green Room.
Apparently, if you have a problem and no one else can help, you can hire the A-Team.
Well, yes, I have a problem – I’m about to humiliate myself in front of 100 people. Where’s Hannibal now?!
Please, B.A., for all the times I watched you do it as a boy, please drive a van through this wall now and get me to the Mexican border – I’ll make it on my own from there.
In those five or so minutes before my first ever foray onto a stage, I called out to God more plaintively than perhaps I’ve ever done since. Over the previous weeks, I’d felt a strong calling to give comedy a go. I’d flirted with it, wrestled with it, dismissed it, laughed it off, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was what God wanted for my life.
Well, God, if this is right, it’s time for you to prove it to me. I’ve failed at so much – please don’t let me mess this up. Help me, Lord…
“Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome to the stage, Mr Andy Kind!!!!…”
I stepped into the light.
It’s curious, the minutiae you remember from key moments in your life. I can’t remember all the material I used that night. Nor can I remember what I was wearing as I stepped from the safety of the Green Room out onto the modest stage. But I do remember that a man in the front row looked like Moira Stewart, and that the woman with him wore a crimson shawl over her right shoulder.
And I remember the lights. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the glare of the spots as they bored into me, exposing me to an expectant room and causing me to squint instinctively.
I never factored that in when I rehearsed my flimsy set in front of the bedroom mirror. You don’t. You think it’s simply going to be a case of deliver punch line, wait for laugh.
But those lights burned. They burned and disorientated, leaving me more paralysed than a rabbit facing down a juggernaut. And then there was the perspiration. I may not remember the clothes I was wearing, but I do recall the moist patches under my arms, and the way they spread rapidly like a sweaty Genghis Khan.
I remember all of that. And I remember being really scared – scared that this was all a huge mistake. My mouth was drier than Jack Dee’s act, and my attempt at “Hello, how’re you doing?” got lost somewhere between the larynx and the teeth.
But most of all, I remember saying: “Every weekend, my Dad dresses as a clown for children’s parties. It would be more acceptable if anyone had asked him to.” Then I remember a short, deep silence where time seemed to slow right down and my hopes and dreams congregated like Big Brother contestants on eviction night.
And then, if I remember rightly, they laughed.
LATEST NEWS - 10/12/10
Well, I will be 30 in less than 2 weeks, so this may well be the last entry I make as a young person (no offence if you are old). It's been a good year, by all accounts. I was featured on Channel 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8aebitu04Q) and Songs of Praise (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00cbg36) - both of which were fun to do. Not been on Channel 5 yet - that's the plan for 2011!
My book, Stand Up and Deliver, is finished and ready to be printed. It's out in April. It's been confirmed that we'll be turning it into an audio book, too - which is hugely exciting. It's nice to have that finished before I turn 30, and I'm now working on ideas for another - albeit prematurely, perhaps.
And that's pretty much it, really. I'm already filling the diary for well into 2011, and hoping to run more workshops alongside the gigs. Remember you can add me on Facebook and follow me on twitter (andykindcomedy) - should you wish to, of course.
I'll try harder to keep the diary updated next year, but for now I'll sign off with my top 5 gigs of 2010, in no particular order. Thanks for being at one of them, if indeed you were:
The Northern Tennis Club, Didsbury
SMFC, Kingsburn Hall, Manchester
Laurence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield
Matt's Comedy Club, Worthing
Dorchester Family Church
So long for now...
LATEST NEWS - 25/08/10
Well, the book is coming along. The completion date is set for October 1st, with a release date set for next April. It's a bit of a slog, but I did ask for it.What else is there to say, then?
I'll be performing at Greenbelt this weekend - although not doing a full show this year. You'll be able to find me headlining Get up Stand up on Sunday night - and in the beer tent at all other times.
This Saturday (28th) at 7pm, if you tune into Channel 4, you might well see my face on 4thought.tv It should be watchable after Saturday on 4OD.
Finally, in September I'll be performing at the Worthing Comedy Festival. If you live nearby, you should give some serious thought to coming along!
Blessings,
ak
LATEST NEWS - 22/07/10
Well, good news. Over 2 years after I first pitched the idea (to a different publisher), and after several nerve-wracking stages of appraisal, my first book: Stand Up and Deliver (working title) - a semi-fictional reflection on my first year in stand-up comedy, has been officially commissioned by Lion Hudson. I'm very excited about this, although I now have to finish it by October.I may go and hire a shack in the woods, and live there for 2 months like a crazy man. Yes, on reflection, that is precisely what I'm going to do.
In other news, supporting Tim Vine was delight - what a lovely man...and a comedy genius. You should all buy his DVD - Punslinger - when it hits the shops!
All the best,
ak
LATEST NEWS - 21/06/10
Welcome to my new website. It looks lovely, I hope you agree. Many thanks to my friend, Dave Ingram, who is responsible for making the site look so good.
The site will be updated regularly. Get in touch if you think it's missing something - anything.
In recent news, Tim Vine has asked me to support him on a couple of warm-up dates for his new DVD. For more info, check out the 'Gigs' page.
All the best,
aK