Blog: Outside Eye

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A few weeks ago I did what I thought would be my EARLIEST EVER gig, getting up early to do a show at UAL at 10.20am o'clock in the morning. However, on Friday last I got up similarly early and went to do an even EARLIER gig (or sort of gig) at 10.00am o'clock in the morning!.

It was a "sort of gig" because I was doing it for one (1) person, and that person was Mr Declan Munro for one of his Outside Eye sessions. The idea of this is that he watches you do a runthrough of your show (or similiar) and then basically gives THORTS. I had tried a couple of times to do this as part of a PROJECT what the Arts Council utterly refused to countenance, but this time I was able to wrangle it via some CA$H wot I had secured via work for TRAINING PURPOSES for ME, and thus I was booked in for a session to go through Data and Doctor Doom.

To be perfectly honest my main DREAM for all of this was that Dec would say "Oh this is marvellous, well done, here are 3 extra jokes that can be put in otherwise TOP MARKS". After all, I'd already done the Work In Progress show and REViSED everything accordingly, so I was mostly hoping for REASSURANCE and the afore-stated Extra Gags.

I got a WHOLE LOT MORE than that!

I originally knew Dec from many moons ago when Steve and I did Total Hero Team at the Edinburgh Fringe, with him looming large in my personal memory of that time as the person who INSISTED we Do The Show Right Here on the day that our venue was temporarily shut down. I bumped into him many times over the years, notably at the launch for Mr R Manuel's Fesshole book, where I discovered he was a DRAMATURG (i.e. someone who helps with THORTS on performances) and resolved there and then to SOMEHOW do something with him like this.

ANYWAY, what that means is that we did some catching up first of all, during which I told him of my hopes for a) reassurance b) more gags, and then I launched into doing the SHOW. It was a bit nerve-wracking at first because we were doing it in a small office where other people were coming and going, so I had to keep reminding myself not to sing at FULL BELLOW, and also because even one such as I who is used to SHALL WE SAY small, intimate venues with small, intimate audiences gets a little thrown by doing the whole thing AT one person.

Still, it all went OK, we had a little break, and then came back for about an hour of AMAZING THORTS. COR! It was incredible - I DID get the reassurance I craved, but then Dec talked me through a HUGE range of ideas, thoughts, CONCEPTS, suggestions, analysis and ALL THAT taking in many many things which had never even occurred to me but, now that he was saying them, seemed utterly obvious. One of the big ones was when he asked me what I wanted out of the show as a whole, and I told him of my hopes that, for instance, when the "Avengers: Doomsday" movie comes out it would be ME who media outlets would contact to talk about it. "You should actually say that in the show", he said, and OF COURSE I should! OF COURSE!

There were lots and lots of other thoughts like this which I shall not go into here for fear of SPOILERS, but goodness me he was full of GRATE IDEAS. Also, wonderfully, he talked me through THEORY and CONCEPTS of performance and stand-up that I had never really thought of. One really really BASIC one was to pause and focus on one person before delivering a punchline, so that there was no distraction and the audience knew it WAS the punchline. COR! I mean, that sounds straightforward when put like that but I have been TREADING THE BOARDS these many decades without even considering IT.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, AMAZING, and if this was a TrustPilot Review there would be five stars and even MORE super superlatives than what there are here now. It was also really EMOTIONAL - there is a whole lot of ME in this show and so having someone so BRAINY give it respect, attention and IDEAS was surprisingly moving. I thus staggered away and towards home EXHAUSTED but also DELIGHTED by the whole experience.
Now all I have to do is Actually Re-Write It! YIKES!

posted 16/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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