Tom Davis: About The Warm Up Guy
Published: Thursday 3rd November 2011
Tom Davis plays a struggling studio audience warm up man in E4 Comedy Lab pilot The Warm Up Guy. Here he explains a bit more about the show and the art of keeping a studio audience happy...
I first have to make the admission that I haven't done lots and lots of "warm up" gigs. Iain Bodkin, the character I play, wasn't formed from years of toiling away doing the hard yet massively fun task that is studio warm up.
Some of the country's finest comedians have earned their right of passage whilst working as a 'warm up guy', honing their skills in front of a live studio audience. It's a skill completely different from comedy circuit style stand-up; a live studio crowd is not at all the same as the type of audience at a comedy club.
Any time I was called to do warm up, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was always something nice about taking people through the workings of a TV show, almost acting like a Willy Wonka type character, showing them how the magic was made. Each show would be a different group of people grabbing a little look inside the goggle box.
The thing I always found difficult was handing over the spotlight and falling back into the shadows, as the show that the audience had actually come to see came to life. I always felt slightly cheated. Even though that was the job, it felt like taking a woman out for a date, wine and dining her and then letting her go home with someone far more capable in the bedroom than yourself (a Mark Wright from ITV2's TOWIE type character maybe). I was envious of the main acts. I remember one time leaving a studio after a show and a few fans had stayed to get some autographs... as I left, a girl said to her friend "Is that someone?" (referring to me) and her friend replied, "No, he's no one."
The character Iain Bodkin was born before the idea of where to house him. Both myself and James (Director James De Frond) had wanted to do a show structured around a wannabe celebrity. The character was largely based on the new breed of internet star that seems to be a lost soul in their quest for fame; peddling cards at showbiz events explaining they're a "comedian, actor, writer, model, DJ, singer, historian, stunt man" and they're "pretty sure they can hypnotize people too"; a jack of all trades yet a master of none. I was fascinated by the people who claimed to be able to do all these things. As solely a comedian, and knowing how hard that is, I could never work out how you'd get a chance to fit in all the above (I have on occasions been tempted by the world of modelling, however, check out the headshot).
In late 2009 I went to watch a panel show. I sat watching the warm up guy before the show - I was transfixed by him taking a studio runner through the audience, making a note of who was going to be his victims: who would he pick for Agadoo? Was there a pair of women with similar tops sitting close to each other he could make of a joke of? This guy was so much better than I ever was - he had the audience in the palm of his hand, I could have happily watched him all night... but, just as he was about to deliver his killer punch line to a well set-out joke, his microphone was cut, the lights dimmed and the headline act was announced and he made his way to the shadows; for, as well as he had done, this was someone else's dance.
After the show in the bar he stayed away from the rest of the production crew, there was a dignity to his silence - he'd done his job and done it well, the audience had been warmed up, he could go home satisfied in that. I didn't think it was enough - I wanted him to pop over and say "how was that audience for everyone? They seemed pretty warm when I handed over the baton, I'd say they were almost boiling!" I wanted him to seek out his pat on the back, the ruffle of the hair from the cast that signified the show wouldn't have been the same without the audience being as warm, I wanted him to hand out his cards explaining all the other things he could do... and that's how Iain Bodkin found his place in the world as a warm up guy.