Tarot present: The beginner's guide to doing sketch in your 30s
Published: Saturday 16th November 2024
Monty Python. The Two Ronnies. French & Saunders. Little Britain. Littler Britain (the same but without the problematic sketches). The Fast Show. Big Train. Just some of the shows in this country's rich tradition of sketch comedy on TV, which continues to this day and definitely didn't end in 2008.
But despite the almost certain guarantee of celebrity and riches, very few sketch groups continue into their 30s. Apart from Tarot. While other sketch groups come and go, endlessly regenerating but never getting older, we've aged like fine milk. We are the portrait of the other, younger sketch groups that gets kept in the attic, gathering dust and beginning to haunt the nighties we once wore as a joke.
And here's how we've managed to do it in 5 easy tips!!!
Don't have a baby
Sketch and babies are sworn enemies. Unless that baby's dad works at the BBC, in which case he'll probably have a show in a few years and that's fair enough.
A baby is an absolute Yoko in any sketch group - with just as much abstract screaming - so must be avoided. But luckily with sketch, sketch is your baby: it's expensive, demanding, keeps you up late at night and no-one ever wants to look at your videos of it or even if they do they just smile politely. All the fun stuff, basically!
Don't get distracted
So you've had a good Fringe or two. It can be easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of TV and showbiz interest that inevitably follows a sketch show: a pointless general meeting here, a pointless coffee with a production assistant there, an audition to look confused in a Hovis advert. The opportunities are endless. Stay strong and just say no. The future of sketch is on the line.
We saw off Quibi. Terrestrial TV is dying. When the shipping forecast finally stops broadcasting, sketch will be king.
Learn to love the great British service station
Doing gigs all round the country, especially on tour, you spend a lot of time in the disturbingly liminal and eerie purgatories that are our service stations. You need to stop thinking of them as a stop-off point: think of them as destinations.
And why not? After all, you can get any of the main food groups from a service station: grease, cold, dry, reduced - they've got it all. And the best news about the service station diet is: when your normal poos start looking like your nervous poos, you won't even know when you're nervous! Get that on-stage confidence one Pepperami at a time.
Bear Grylls claims he could live unaided for three weeks in a desert environment. That's nothing. Any sketch comedian could live (happily) for six months in any UK service station. And not just Tebay or the ones with Leon. We're talking Knutsford, Fleet, Newport Pagnell.
Look after your mental health
You might think that performing night after night for small fees split five ways might start getting you down. But no! Touring a sketch show offers plenty of quiet hours (e.g. a work-in-progress in Darlington) to stand in a dark room and really really reflect on your life choices.
Besides, if your mental health does deteriorate, there's always clowning.
Go to Cambridge
This one helps. Or go to Emotional Trauma In Childhood. Basically all sketch comedians come from one or the other.
Hope that helps - and please come see Tarot on tour!
Tarot are moving between service stations until 29th November. Show dates coming up include Exeter, Bangor, Salford, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Birmingham. Tickets
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