Rich Hall Ate My Personality

On Sunday night I went with a group of friends to Rich Hall's stand-up comedy show at the Waterfront.  We were a fairly disparate group: an old friend from London who's come to stay, my partner's mate who took my partner's ticket at the last minute because he was gigging, another friend who had organised our attendance in the first place, and who nestled himself in between us women, although he wasn't dating either of us.  Fairly relaxed.  Fairly loose-limbed, but unfortunately we flopped into the last few seats available....in the front row.  In fact we even moved NEARER to the microphone because my old friend, who hasn't been to live comedy since the Norman Invasion "wanted to see his face when he was singing at the piano".  In fact most of us hadn't been to comedy as punters in years, and our most intimate experience of comic interaction, aside from booking the stuff, was talking back to Eddie Izzard on the DVD over the curry on a Friday night.

 Well well.  Of course we should have EXPECTED to be singled out.  And yes, it was fine.  Hall is a sweetie in fact, and it doesn't feel painful to give him the facts of one's little life to waive about for the entertainment of strangers on a Sunday night in Belfast, the surprise was the ease with which I gave myself up to his interpretation of my life.

Rich: How did you end up in Belfast?

Me: I answered an add in the Guardian.

Rich: You came to NORTHERN IRELAND because of a gardening magazine??

Me: Yes, to run a theatre.

Rich: You ran a theatre because you read about it in a gardening magazine?

Me: Yes, yes, but now I've left!

Rich: What did they expect!  You read gardening magazines!! I bet you ran it into the ground!!

Me: Yes, yes, yes. (pointing to my friend) We did it together - I put on her play.

Rich: You can sit here, happily enjoying my show, knowing that your play closed down a theatre in Northern Ireland?

Us: (smiling up at him) Yes, yes, yes, yes.  We're happy.

And there we sat, grinning beatifically, bathed in the brainwashing glow of comic participation, immune to the evidence of the Riverside's continuing health.  Worryingly various people recognised me from this keenly accurate description of my professional life and came up to greet me after the show, saying: "I knew it could only be you!".