Dave Cohen - Songs In A Flat - interview

Written by: Dave Cohen
Published: Thursday 1st March 2012

Songs In A Flat is Dave Cohen's first new stand-up show in 20 years. Here Dave gives an exclusive interview to the doubting voices in his own head...

Doubting Voices: So Dave, last time you did a full-length stand-up show ('Cohen The Barbarian' Edinburgh 1992) most of today's stars weren't born. Why the hell are you coming back now?

I'd half-returned to the London circuit a couple of years ago. It was okay but I wondered if they needed another white, male, middle-class comic - even if he was older, balder, Jewisher and deafer than the rest. I wanted to try something different. So I wrote and performed a one-man poem.

Why not go scuba diving? That's different from stand-up. A poem!

Well it was supposed to be a comedy show, albeit with a narrative.

'Albeit' and 'narrative'. Not two words we normally associate with stand-up. A one-man poem eh? Where did you perform it? Jongleurs?

No it didn't have any juggling. It was mainly at the Etc in Camden and Hen & Chickens at Highbury Corner.

Mainly?

I also did two nights at the Poetry Café.

So it was a poem. That's not stand-up. At three different venues across London. You don't make things easy for yourself do you Dave?

Is that a rhetorical question? Don't answer that.

Just the one venue this time then?

Yes, the lovely Etc Theatre again, in Camden. Three weeks.

Three weeks! Who do you think you are, Michael McIntyre? Your friends will only come once, you know that?

Well I thought it would be like doing Edinburgh, you know, try and build an audience. Only without paying for the travel and accommodation, and getting to sleep in my own bed every night.

Edinburgh, yes. Tell us about your performing career.

I thought you'd bring that up. I was a stand-up for ten years: Jongleurs, The Comedy Store, 11 Edinburgh festivals in a row, colleges, the odd radio and telly gig. About eight years in I started to grow weary. Over-analytical, stopped enjoying it so much...

Yes we spent a lot of time together round then...

I remember. You wouldn't bloody shut up...

...that long, painful, protracted period when you'd go on stage and never know whether you'd storm it or walk off after five minutes...

Okay, okay.

The excruciating humiliations, the extended, sad decline, the looks of pity on the faces of your fellow comics, that very look you had doled out yourself in better times, the one that said, 'sorry mate, thank God that wasn't me out there, that was toe-curling'...

Are you enjoying this?...

...and now you're planning to go through with it all over again. Expecting to pick up where you left off?

I hope not. In my 20s and 30s I was a mess. Lacked confidence. Was desperate. Desperate for a girlfriend, desperate for stand-up success. Potential girlfriends and comedy audiences pick up on those things. They don't look good.

I lacked the mental capacity to deal with failure dispassionately. Took it too personally. Which is understandable. "Get off stage, we hate you... nothing personal."

I'm 53 now and have a sense of perspective. And a good show I think. I did good one-man shows back then but didn't always believe in my ability to perform them. Mind, I was always popular with the other comics.

Of course. You were never successful enough for them to hate you.

When I stopped doing stand-up I went through what we psychologists call the Seven Stages Of Performance Withdrawal. Denial that it was definitely over, then Bitterness. Followed by Anger, Jealousy and Humiliation. Then Grudging Acceptance, and finally, more Bitterness. Only took me about 13 years. I'm okay now.

You know it's different now. It's not just three reviewers who are your mates. Comedy is huge. Remember how you used to react to bad reviews...

I learned to avoid the nasty ones.

Not so easy now. There's the internet. It's like a universe of punters in the back row: too scared to heckle at the gig, but the minute you deliver a duff line they'll gleefully tweet how shit they think you are. Then wait 'til they get home. Laptops out, they'll be spewing bile like you're a cross between George Osborne and a paedo...

And of course there's this other thing they didn't have in your stand-up day, grandad: Mobile Phones. They'll film your worst moments, post them on YouTube along with your phone and bank details so complete strangers can call you at 3am to scream abuse, or point at you in the street and shout 'Look, it's the slaphead Jew with the NatWest online saver account 64730198 who actually charged people to come and see what he called a comedy show, the nerve, oi mate you're about as funny as a starving earthquake victim, you're worse than Rupert Murdoch at least he never claimed to be funny...'

Guess I'll have to rise above that. Anyway I know the internet. I've got a website!

Ooh get you, very 2002...

So bring it on cyberbullies.

Come on, tell me, why are you doing it? Be honest.

Okay, it's my mid-life crisis. I'm not interested in buying a Porsche, having an affair, or growing my hair down one side to comb across the top of my shiny bald pate. I'm doing this instead. I've missed not having performing in my life. And I'm a better writer now. Also I've been writing loads more songs, and thanks to the massive success of Horrible Histories the songs have reached a much wider audience. I always enjoyed writing and playing new songs.

So you promise there'll be no more performances like The Joker in Southend, early 92...

...aarrrggghh, not The Joker in Southend, early 92, did you have to bring that up?

Of course. We're the doubting voices in your head. Then of course there was Willesden, 93, that time at Jongleurs where you walked off after five minutes, oh and remember those two Manchester gigs with Johnny Immaterial-

You're not helping here, I'm trying to shamelessly plug my show.

And we're trying to find out if you've learned from your mistakes. We're here for a reason. D'you think you're the only performer to hear these voices? Everyone has them. We're not here to undermine you, we're here to be proved wrong, so every time you walk off stage in triumph you can tell us where to go. At least until the next gig.

When the process starts all over again.

Exactly.

"You're only as good as your last gig."

Thanks cliché man. But yes, that's it. So, just before we return to gnawing away at your psyche, can we ask, in 29 years of writing and performing comedy, what's the most important lesson you've learned?

If you're booked to play a Wednesday night show, don't turn up on the Thursday.

Wise words indeed. Enough talk. Now go out there and knock 'em dead. (Fat chance)

Oi!

Sorry.

You can see Dave Cohen - without the doubting voices - perform 'Songs In A Flat' at Etc Theatre (265 Camden High St, London, NW1) between 6th - 25th March. For more details visit www.etceteratheatre.com