Had a gig near Preston, Penwortham, in fact i’ll be in same village this week, but diffrent venue. anyway, it was a couple of days after my John Lennon’s birthday gig – see below – and i attempted the ‘let’s see what i can do with 5 shots in me’ joke. But it misfired, if you’ll excuse the pun, and as a result the audience stopped laughing and just stared at me for 5 minutes. I really had to pull the stops out to get them to respond. i walked off stage and bang bang bang, i interacted and tried to chat. They started laughing – ah relief.

But some bloke at the back coughed, not constantly but loudly a few times times. Third time he coughs i ask him ‘ you a smoker or wha ?’ (even though this man was at back of room it was a fairly small room, so everyone was visible and within conversational grasp). His answer shocked me:

“Mind your own fucking business!”

and he meant it. meanie. But the audience, i mean the rest of them, i think sided with me more after that. a few years ago an event liek this would have shaken me, but i kept my cool. by the end it was all good, though i still couldn’t quite believe how my opening joke had messed up.