Stand-up and be counted

The night I went out-out on my own-own

Recently, I treated myself to a ticket to see my favourite comedian, Micky Flanagan, at the O2. Aisle seat. Second row. Right up the front. Bosh. Like me, Micky turned 60 last year and I’ve always loved his laser observations, delivered in that trademark cockney patter. I often tune into his wit and wisdom while travelling, especially when I need to hear a happy-making voice from home. Case in point; he helped me forget my nerves on a bumpy overnight flight from Moscow to Mongolia. Cheers Micky.

My husband was well up for coming with…but his filming dates were pushed and he couldn’t make it, so I decided to go on my tod. It had been a long time since I’d gone to a show alone, something I used to do much more in my 40s. Providing you make plans to get home safely, there can be something special in picking yourself up, sitting yourself down and engaging with an act in a way that perhaps you wouldn’t if you were socialising with others.

I think that’s why I was often singled out; Harry Hill invited me on stage for a game of Swingball, accompanied by the Wimbledon theme tune, and at a Nigel Kennedy concert, the maestro pointed my way and announced he was going to play a Vivaldi concerto just for moi. In fact, going solo to the ballet at the Royal Opera House was how I met my husband.

However, the run-up to Flanagan fun filled me with tech stress. First, I had to download the O2 app so I could upload my ticket’s QR code. This I had to show on arrival in order to obtain a paper ticket, at which point my phone would be locked in a pouch, only to be unlocked at the end of the evening along with 20,000 others. Hell’s-Bow-bells, when did entertainment become so complicated?

It didn’t help that anxiety and depression had got the better of me for the previous two months and I’d become rather hermity. Suddenly, I felt like a bunny in the spotlights. Daunted. Awkward. So much so that when I was making my way down the arena stairs, G&T in one hand, phone pouch in the other, I missed my footing and nearly fell, saving myself by jumping in the air and galloping down three more steps, drink splashing everywhere like a vintage bottle of Old Spice. Still, I raised the first laugh of the evening.

‘Being sans phone was enjoyable’

An hour before curtain-up, with no phone to call my friend, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Until I started looking around, enjoying the music and realised being sans phone was kind of enjoyable. No selfies. No scrolling. Like cutting the digital umbilical cord. By the time the crowd was singing Sweet Caroline, good times never felt so good.

Micky was magic. He covered cancel culture, musicals, covid, crying, care homes and even ageism…the last ‘ism people can still get away with. Then he said how having a fall was often the first sign of an oldie’s decline (blimey, I’d nearly had that fall at his gig). And while he wasn’t savagely confrontational about wokery, he wasn’t afraid of it either.

This was refreshing in a week that had seen the Cambridge Footlights offer young comedians a ‘sensitivity reading service’ to check that their comedy was ‘punching up’ (the idea that those with political, social or economic clout are legit targets) rather than ‘punching down’ (aiming at the less fortunate or powerful). I suppose on that basis, we shouldn’t have laughed at Father Dougal – only Bishop Brennan being kicked up the arse.

Micky, thank the Lord, doesn’t get bogged down in whether he’s punching up. He just gets on with it, even boxing his own ears and sometimes, landing one on the audience – and we positively roar with the punches. Because well-delivered comedy has the ability to make us laugh, not just at each other, but ourselves. Ultimately, it can help us all rub along without getting in a lather. As 20,000 of us left the venue smiling, with phones unlocked in seconds (fair do’s, the O2 was running like a well-oiled machine) I felt my insides had had a jolly good shake.

A final thought; when I was younger and feeling sad, I would sometimes go to ground in my flat. My mum was always relieved when I made the effort to emerge. On one occasion, I was being dragged to the theatre. Cheerily, she asked which play we were going to see. When I announced it was Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, she replied, “Well, it gets you out”.

Likewise, when I had to pull myself together for a business trip and added it was to interview Cameron Diaz in LA for the cover of ELLE, in all seriousness she repeated, “Well, it gets you out”. I’m guessing that last week, had I told her I was going to the O2 on my Jack Jones, she’d have said the same. Except in this case, it was getting me out-out.