GSOH: Joy sticks

One of my favourite past-times is to play computer games. Not so much the modern stuff, but things from the 1980s and 1990s. It's nice that the X Box and PlayStation can throw us into near-photo-realistic 3D worlds, but when much of that is concentrated on endless rehashes of the same old FIFA and Call Of Duty, I prefer to regress back to a time when electronic gaming was genuinely inventive and packed full of interesting quirks.

Making a 200-mile round trip to a comedy night isn't unusual for me, I've performed up in Edinburgh, Liverpool and Portsmouth over the past twelve months. What is unusual is going a long distance just to watch a stand-up show as a punter. Why would I pop over to Gloucestershire to do that? Well, the absence of a decent segue from the previous paragraph should give you a clue.

The arcade at Smokey Joe's in Cheltenham

Lemon Rocket Comedy takes place on a Friday each month at an American-diner-themed restaurant in Cheltenham. Along with the neon signs, chequered floor and vintage Coca Cola ephemera to make you feel like you're in an episode of Happy Days, there's an aspect which appeals to me. Nearly a dozen arcade game machines, mostly from the 1980s, are sitting around the place.

Like the proverbial moth to a flame, arcades were a magnet for my attention back in the days before I owned a computer. A rainy fortnight in the Welsh village of Clarach Bay had me venturing frequently to the holiday camp arcade to hurl 20p coins into Pac Land and Kung Fu Master. I have more memories about the third round of Wonder Boy than I do of anything releated to Aberystwyth.

These days, seasides still have arcades but they're woefully geared towards to extracting as much money from tourists as possible. Hence 90% of their space is given over to dismal and joy-free mechanism aimed at the gullible, such as fruit machines, prize grabbers and automated bingo. If you're lucky, you may find a few games such as the fantastic Mario GP. It's sadly more likely you'll come across tedium-inducing light-gun shooters like the Time Crisis franchise or reworked efforts of Flappy Bird.

The decline of arcade gaming is probably down to home computers and consoles catching up in technology terms around the 1990s. Around mid-to-late Eighties, the arcade was arguably at its peak, with screens hurling multicoloured pixels into your eyeballs at an astonishing rate, with games such as Out Run, Space Harrier and R Type showing off a technical prowess that your Atari 2600 or Commodore 64 could only make a 'will this do?' attempt at trying to deliver the same experience.

Laura Monmoth deals with a bunch of pricks

The advent of the PlayStation not only matched and excelled the quality you'd expect in the arcades, it also threw itself towards an adult audience. The prolific Disneyified offerings from Nintendo had given the impression that gaming was a kids' interest, but we entered a new era, of Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto. The arcade games couldn't compete with that and had entered that downward spiral of repetition, spewing out ten billion versions of Street Fighter 2 in lieu of taking a punt on anything creative. Suddenly, your home console was the lead machine, with a few titles making their way to the arcade a long while later, rather than the other way round.

I was sitting in Smokey Joe's this January purely to watch a themed night of retrogaming comedy. Cheltenham-based booker Sal Drummond had made a Facebook appeal for comics who did material on vintage games. Naturally, many of us in the midlands put forward Laura Monmoth's name, on the basis of her LGBTQZX+ show which deals with growing up in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. I had compered a showing in Birmingham, which was simply astonishing.

Flatteringly, my name was put forward too, but I had to decline, having only two minutes worth of retrogaming material that I've only ever used in MC mode. Still, being alerted to the existence of this night had me among the first to buy a ticket. Comedy routines about vintage gaming? I'm there.

Tony Chiotti kicks off the show

It was a good idea to have turned up early. I got to play on a lot of the games for absolutely nowt, and there are more choices than the rather limited offerings at Southend's Happidrome. Laura and I had a bash at Gauntlet. I'm sad to say I'm still crap at it.

The night was completely sold out, and kicked off with American host Tony Chiotti doing an in-depth take on old games, followed by Berkshire comedian Sam Michael doing a brilliant opener, which centred on a physical reenactment of when you play Grand Theft Auto for the first time.

All of which probably wouldn't have landed as well at a generic comedy night, but this was certainly not full of inaccessible subjects. The comedy works as well to the layman as well as the hardcore geek clutching onto his rare Japanese Sega Saturn discs.

Oh, and in a way, I was part of the night. A few days before, I was asked to provide interval music, which I compiled from various home computer, console and arcade games. My bias is towards the ZX Spectrum and Amiga, the gaming platforms I grew up with, but I have enough knowledge to throw in a few familiar sounds from the SNES, Commodore 64 and Sega Mega Drive.

While I wouldn't be on that stage (until two months later, which is another story in itself) it was nice to overhear folk in the audience trying to guess the games. Exclamations of "that's Golden Axe!" and "sure this is Double Dragon" made me really chuffed. The compere touched upon it too, and this opened up a conversation on British games, a subject not too familiar as the host grew up in the USA.

I'm pretty fond of one woman in the audience educating the crowd on the finer points of 'Dizzy Egg' (the Dizzy range of Codemasters games that were a huge hit on the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 platforms). To hear this being explained to someone who had no idea about the adventure-loving ovoid character, just provided more laughs.

Game for a laugh

The night concluded with yet another reason for going along. The full performance of LGBTQZX+. At this point I had only witnessed it at general comedy nights, now we'd be seeing the full 12" version. Laura was nervous about whether this would work, but quickly realised how the audience were very retrogaming-savvy, so we got all the bells and whistles this time.

Any pre-show nerves were absolutely evaporated as Laura captured the awe of the audience. She had toured this thing through the Edinburgh Fringe yet tonight had more people to play to than the attendance of her entire combined festival run. She deservedly stormed it.

This also put a lot of confidence in me as I'd be back to this venue in March, performing as my Wetherspoons-employed alter-ego Trisha Timpson. That's sod all to do with old computer games, but it was a theme-less night. I can't imagine Trisha wanting to go near an arcade machine, unless it was a certain 1983 effort from Bally Midway.

GSOH: Coronation Treat

My hobby of yelling rubbish at strangers in the hope of invoking laughter, has stepped up a few levels over the past few years. It's even had quite the gear change in the first few months of 2018. A few points on where I'm currently at...

• Running five regular comedy nights in the midlands
• Have done paid weekend work for Mirth Control
• Helped a club break a Guinness World Record

I'm not getting massively rich off this but then again, it's more than just 'beer money' that's coming in each month. While I like having comedy nights to run, I really do enjoy playing Trisha Timpson, my idiotic barmaid character which has expanded from a ten spot into a nice fifteen.

Last month, for the Mirth Control gig, I had to drive the headliner to/from his London base - a pro comic whose stand-up has been on BBC One. Our styles are certainly not similar, what with him being a straight act with aggressive rants and me being a dippy character in bright red lipstick. To say he was a bit dubious of me as I was putting on my wig, would be an understatement.

Yet I did really well and the drive back gave me nearly two hours worth of complements.

Trisha Timpson at The Queen's Head in Peterborough

I'm back blogging because I'm pretty stunned at the events of last night. I did a Peterborough gig which I only learnt was a competition a few days before. The free pint and pizza for each act was a nice touch, then I discovered the top prize was £150 cash.

A bunch of noisy Prosecco-supping women in the front row may well be a factor as to why my wallet has a wad of notes in it this morning. I'm the winner of this inaugural competition, which is astounding considering the tough competition.

I didn't know who else was on the bill. I'd dragged up early and waited for other acts to arrive. I was sitting with the Corby-based Alyn Ashby when David Luck walked into the room.

"Oh, we best pack up and go now" I remarked. You see, David is an immense talent, only a year into stand-up and his dry pun-packed routine is smashing it all over the place. I first saw him when he was a last-minute replacement for my Long Buckby semi-pro comedy night and I was a bit nervous as to whether this newcomer would satisfy the folk who paid £20 to be there.

With a clipboard in his hands and a persona that is almost 'rabbit in the headlights', you'd probably think he was a nervous first-timer. Yet he's got charm and self-depreciation in the right amounts. I've never seen him do a bad gig. He lives three miles away from me and I'm really pleased that my county's produced such an excellent comedian.

The wine-soaked hecklers

David kicked off the first section to a very strong start. The last comedian in that bit was also bringing the house down. After the break, the audience were joined by a group of six Prosecco-wielding women who were clearly out for partying mode. If it weren't for their casual wear, I'd have assumed they were a hen party. They did have some inflatable crowns (fitting for a pub called The Queen's Head) and were very chatty, trying to make the night about themselves. A comedian's nightmare, essentially.

Now, in these situations you can ignore punters like that and appeal to those who are there for the comedy, "Never talk to the disruptors" seems to be sound advice, but there are times when they need to be dealt with and so a few other acts did acknowledge their existence in the front row and hurled a few put-downs their way. I could tell the rest of the audience enjoyed these.

I was up after the next break and thought up a few lines aimed at getting them to quieten down while not being especially cruel. I wasn't going to launch into these, probably wasn't going to use them as the MC was doing okay at tempering their rowdy nature.

However, they were still delivering 'director's commentary' when I was on, so I launched into the strongest of the bespoke put-downs I'd come up with in the interval, as you can see in this video...

The women did leave in disgust, but not due to me/Trisha. Another act had been quite brutal, saying what we and most of the audience were thinking. This unfiltered diatribe gained cheers and caused the walk-out.

When it came to the audience clap-off at the very end of the night, it was really tense. I'd concluded David Luck would be topping it, although it was very close with another act. The sound of the audience confirmed what I thought. I'd had a good time and hey, I didn't win a competition the previous night, so it's just another gig struck off.

However, I gained a pretty strong response when Trisha's name was read out. Astonishingly, David and a few other brilliant acts were out of the running as the MC decided to make myself and another act go to a tie-break.

Queen Bitch

After about three attempts to get the audience to choose a definitive winner, it was still too close to call. (Although I'd personally concede the other act really had the edge.) The two of us were declared joint winners, so we got £75 each.

This was like deja vu to me, as a similar situation occurred when Trisha was outstanding in the Comedy In The Crown competition in St Albans last year, jointly gaining top status with the intensely funny Maggie Kowalski.

Some of you are probably wondering why I'm not naming last night's co-winner. There are - ahem - vocational reasons for this and so my lips are sealed. Honestly, it's not to big myself up. I'd like to say I was the outright winner, but I can't lie.

Still, £75 is fantastic. I did mention on Facebook before the gig that the free pint and pizza was reward enough.

I was already chuffed from the previous weekend's shenanigans that took place at the World's Longest Running Comedy Night in the Atic at Banbury, as my 17 minutes of Trisha was part of those 96 hours. (On an mathematical basis, I am currently 0.3% of a world record breaker.)

To go from what was a daft joke at a comedian's birthday party two years ago, to this, is pretty astonishing. I didn't think I'd find my comic speciality in a wig and miniskirt, but that's the way it goes.