Tonight's Gig at The Goat Tavern was made odd by the fact that all the seats were reserved for a party of people who had pre-booked but then never arrived. We pondered this as the walk-up attendees all sat at the back of the room, some on the bar, waiting for the show to start.

It soon became apparent, the company that had pre-booked their office party to come to this comedy night must have gone out of business. In fact, the promoter of the gig checked online and found that to be the case. The credit crunch hits another victim.

We rearranged the room and the gig went ahead. Unfortunately, the sound was hampered by broken leads and suchlike. As a result, I went on to do my set totally acoustically. This involved rather a lot of shouting and using up of oxygen. I was up to the challenge.

Without the microphone it can feel a bit like a man shouting in a pub. Also, without the mic, the audience can't laugh over the joke as they'll feel like they might miss the next bit... alternatively, if they decide to laugh when they want, they actually WILL miss the next bit. I ended up choosing slightly different material so that there were obvious laughter breaks in the songs. It seems a bit formulaic, but a lot of comedy is.