Learning from Failure: Key Takeaways from My Worst Public Speaking and Comedy Performances
I was recently asked to hold a lunch and learn session for a client; they asked me if I could condense some of the stuff I usually cover over the course of a day’s session in an hour or so, delivered virtually. My instinctive response was “I can’t do that - it’s never going to work”.
And luckily I remembered some of my own training - particularly the stuff I cover about MC’ing and dealing with heckles and difficult audiences, which is “always go with your first response” - so I didn’t try. What I did do was recap some of my most cringingly-remembered public speaking moments (both mine ands other people’s) and try and unearth any lessons buried deep underneath the wince-inducing recollections.
Here are 4 of them.
I never wore trousers this smart
Edinburgh
Me and two other comedians were performing a daily show at Edinburgh festival. It was a very early slot in the back room of a pub. And when I say early, I mean midday. So even at Edinburgh festival, slightly too early for people to be drunk. The room held 70 people, and we had to put a lot of work into getting those 70 people loosened up enough to be a receptive comedy audience.
The method we settled on was to get three or four people up on stage, make then dance and play pass the parcel. Fine. Classic children’s party stuff.
One morning I noticed a happy guy sat in the front row - happy but pale, sweaty and slightly shaky. “Ah, a hungover guy”, I thought, “this will be fun.” So I beckon him up. He’s reticent.
I reach for his hand and slowly pull him out of his chair towards me, which is when he whispered “I have cerebral palsy”. And I’ll admit, I felt I was in somewhat of a dilemma. Should I let him plonk back into his chair, or continue to try and make him be my dancing monkey?
I thought the only thing to do was power through, so I pulled him close to me and danced with him - and he seemed to enjoy it. But for a long moment I thought I had ruined his day and mine.
Is there a lesson to be learned there?
Well, there’s a saying from the comedy circuit that I love: play the gig in front of you, not the gig in your head. And that essentially means that when you get up to perform, you have to lose any preconceived notions of how you thought things will go, and you have to do what’s right in the moment.
And that essentially means really listening to and responding to your audience, not assuming anything about them. Because I had assumed a lot about that audience and that individual, and what I had assumed was totally wrong. But I was able to go with the room, not my plan, and felt my way through to a place that was OK.
A Striking First Impression
I was MC’ing a gig in Swindon at a rock bar. The first act, a brilliant comedian, was running late, so she missed the welcome from the venue owner, who informed us that, hidden in the red folds of a velvet stage curtain that framed the entrance to the stage, was a metal pole, and we should duck slightly when going underneath it. And I might have forgotten to pass that info on.
So I go on, do my opening ten minutes or so, get the crowd all fired up and introduce the first act. I turn to walk off the stage and I see her striding boldly up to the red curtain and before I can do anything, she cracks her head into the hidden pole with a thud that reverberated well over the cheering.
It was brutal. The crowd went silent. She finishes her approach to the mic stand and looks at them glassy-eyed for a couple of seconds. And then she said “So a comedian walks into a bar”… and they went wild.
Truthfully, I think she was mildly concussed for the whole 20 minute set.
So, what’s the takeaway there? Well there’s two. Maybe three if you’re counting “check doorways for iron bars” as one.
The first real one is how important first impressions are. Comedians structure their sets in a specific way - they tend to open with their second best joke, close with their best joke and keep their weaker or new stuff in the middle.
That’s because they know proving their authority straight away is vital. “I’m here, I’m funny and I’m worth paying attention to for the next 20 minutes”.
Whenever you’re presenting or speaking, give some thought to what the first thing that comes out of your mouth will be - will it be enough to hook your audience in immediately?
It could be a controversial statement, a huge hope, a surprising stat or a question - anything that is going to make them pay attention to what comes next.
And there’s something else at play here - the Pratfall effect. This is a social psychology phenomenon whereby someone becomes more appealing when they’ve shown vulnerability or imperfection. One of the classic experiments for this involved two candidates taking a combined job interview and test with exactly the same answers and script.
Their answers were both good - they were both really employable. The only difference between them was that at the end of the interview, one candidate knocked over their coffee.
The coffee-spiller was treated as much more likeable and employable than the “perfect” candidate. However, that no longer applied if the coffee-spilling candidate gave worse answers than the other candidate, leaving the scientists to conclude it only works if you’ve demonstrated competency before vulnerability.
Additionally, people don’t remember many details - it’s first impression, last emotions, and they forget the middle bit. Unless it’s an absolute car crash.
So my take on that is that being perfect is boring. For everyone.
Much better to show you know your stuff and then show you can be flawed, vulnerable and human - it’s so much more compelling. I’ve had times in front of a few hundred people when Karaoke has played over my PA or an important bit of video hasn’t played - and they were fine to laugh it off with me because:
a) I had already proven I was worth listening to and
b) that sort of thing happens to everyone - and everyone understands it.
In fact, going to the other end of the spectrum, there is a school of traditional sales thought that posits you should get really drunk the night before a big pitch as it makes you less needy - and less perfect. Anecdotally, the biggest gigs I got booked for were ones where the promoters had seen me desperately hungover onstage.
Your results may vary.
Well at least they look mildly amused
The Body Language Trap
I was at a gig in Hampstead and it was going pretty well. 100 people in an underground bar. Everyone laughing. Everyone bar one big bloke. Probably 6’5, pretty stacked and had a face like an Easter Island statue. Absolutely huge slab of stony expression. And he just wasn’t enjoying it. Arms folded. Unsmiling.
It was as if the rest of the audience faded away, just leaving this huge dour monolith alone under a spotlight. I couldn’t let it go. I was affronted he was trying to bring me down by refusing to enjoy himself. I took the bait and went in on him, just to get some sort of reaction. Anything. I lightly joked with him. Spoke to his partner. Joked with him a bit more brutally. Nothing - just a couple of grunts, never a change of expression. And gradually the rest of the audience’s faces faded back in - and they looked bored. I had forgotten about them and almost run the gig into the ground just trying to get this giant to uncross his arms.
They went from liking me to wanting me off.
I propped the bar up later and the floor thundered as the giant guy approached me. He finally cracked a smile and he said “thanks mate. I enjoyed your set.” I thought he was winding me up. I said “You should have told your face”. And he said “I’m ex military - we see it all as a bit of a battle, so don’t show much on the surface.”
So I had almost ruined the vibe of this gig focussing so hard on his body language, when his body language wasn’t even really representative of how he was feeling. My wife once pitched to a startup, and the founder spent the entire time bent forward on his deck with his hood over his head. She came away thinking she had bombed, but won the business. Turns out he had a bad back.
You can waste time and energy worrying about how you’re being received - but the only element of that you can affect is you - so just worry about whether you’re doing a good job, not about whether people have their arms crossed.
The Slow Claps of Doom
I was doing a middle 20 minute slot at a venue in Bristol. The Headliner was a very good comedian who had done a few tours for the troops in Iraq and Afganistan. There were about 200 people in the room, and right at the front was a table of 12 who were there just to see him. And they did not want to hear my whimsical musings. At first they muttered a bit, which I tried to ignore. The muttering got louder. I asked them politely to keep it down. It got louder again. I asked them less politely. And then they started clapping. Which should have been great, expect it was slow clapping. And they weren’t looking at me. And I couldn’t do anything, because they had given me nothing to engage with. Heckling, interjecting, anything they did would have given me something to work with. But they gave me nothing, so I ended up getting a drier and drier mouth and the slow clapping got more insistent - but not any faster. And then I crumbled and gave up, walking off 10 minutes into a 20 minute set.
There were three things I took away from this.
Apathy is the real killer. There’s nothing you can work with. Much better to have friction or disagreement than apathy.
Get right back on the horse - I had to go back to the same venue the following night, which I dreaded but it was lovely
Some situations are just unwinnable. Honestly, just give up, it’s fine.