The Return of the Dwarf and a fond farewell to Openmic Matt at The Railway!

So long! The final poster from Openmic Matt's
comedy night at The Railway in Streatham

Diary of a stand-up comedian Entry #34
It was certainly a night of mixed emotions! The last Openmic Matt comedy night down at The Railway in Streatham Common. I owe a lot to this place in my short comedy career as The Railway was the place where I was able to do my comedy apprenticeship in those early days, which basically meant Matt allowed me to go on for as long as I wanted to try stuff out!

In typical Openmic Matt fashion, last night was as shambolic as ever, and that is exactly what has made these nights so bloody brilliant. To start off with, the owner of the pub had gone AWOL so Matt couldn’t get access to any of the electrical equipment to set-up. There was no way this gig was going to start on time at 8pm. Then again, I’m not sure I have ever done a gig at The Railway that started on time!

A pool table had randomly been placed at the back of the room and two guys happily played as Matt tore his hair out at the thought of snooker balls clinking together in the background as the comedians tried to do their jokes.

But none of it mattered. By the time Matt finally kicked the show off at 9pm there was a huge crowd in place, and a real who’s who of top open mic comedians from Gavin Fowler to Ben Adams, Mr Blair and the very funny Tony Milton who I got to see for the very first time.

Matt dived straight into the longest joke known to man and had me in bits as he always does. I was second up on the running order and was hoping for a decent set.

I don’t say it often, but it went brilliantly and at the end of it I decided to re-introduce my dwarf on the train joke. I hadn’t done it for a while because it had been getting mixed responses from audiences, but it had always been Matt’s favourite joke of mine so I decided to throw it out there. And I’m bloody pleased I did as it went down a storm, with Ben Adams commenting that he thought it was “genius!” Maybe I’ll keep that one in for a while…

All in all, it was a great night with all of the comics on top form. Nights like this are the reason why we do open mic comedy. I sincerely hope Openmic Matt starts promoting a new night very soon!