When I started “comedy” in 2012, it wasn’t a totally foreign world to me.
I had done live stuff before, musically, and had gone to King Gong a bunch of times just for the brutality-fuck of it. My housemate in ‘06 was an aspiring comic (/is now a pro). I’d made a comedy hip-hop album, god forgive me. I had cried with laughter at specials like Raw, Live & Unleashed and Bring The Pain. It’d always been something I wanted to try but sort of assumed the things I found funny would merely find themselves filed under “things I said in the pub that someone politely sniggered at, momentarily”.
When I did find the courage to try stand-up, there were two nights that helped me. Lions Den and We Are Funny Project.
Lions Den was run by the late, great Tim Rendle. Credit where it’s due, he gave me my first shot at a supportive Open Mic. My hands were shaking I was so nervous. I had to keep them in my back pockets for the entirety of my set. Tim put those nerves to rest and I was able to consider going back again without evacuating my bowels.
Around the same time, I got onstage at a pub called Dirty Dicks, on Bishopsgate, EC1. That night was run by Frank Cassidy and Alfie Noakes under the moniker: Dead Comedian’s Socks. I think the night itself was called “Touching Cloth — New Material”. The idea being: if you say something new, it tanks and stinks-out the room — you touch the cloth/banner behind you and everyone has to shout “New Material!” to get the energy back. A novel antidote to the room-stink of a not-worked-out new idea.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that Touching Cloth was the beginnings of We Are Funny Project. They were two separate beasts, for reasons I’ll go into in a moment. But like Ronan Farrow and Frank Sinatra, it’d be silly to pretend they weren’t very-obviously related, also.
Alfie co-ran Touching Cloth.
He also MC’d.
It was at Dirty Dicks.
It was Open Mic.
You didn’t have to bring-a-friend to bulk up their audience.
They filmed you and edited a nice lil’ video so you could learn from it or show your mates.
In many ways it was very, very similar to the We Are Funny Project. But when Alfie ‘went solo’ and began running the operation himself, under the new moniker, the nights exerted a significantly more-professional lean. A ripple effect from his former life as a TV producer, no doubt.
The floor-stand banners were slick and promo-styled. The quality of the videos improved. There were organised Meet-Up groups coming to sit in the audience. The nights expanded from Dirty Dicks to The Star & Garter in Putney. Then later The Duke’s Head, then later still at Farr’s in Dalston. At its peak, Alfie was running spots every weeknight but Friday — with some other semi-pro stuff occasionally on Saturdays. The type of nights broadened from straight-up Open Mic to the odd themed nights (“Summer Lovin”, “Sports”, “The Films Of Brad Pitt”), to organised debates and discussions, MC-training sessions, sitcom-writing workshops — WAFP became a god damn fuck-mother of all things London comedy.
Now I think about it: it catered for the entire lifecycle of an aspiring comedian: first-timers right through to experienced acts doing 10s, 20s, headliners or burnt-out comics trying to get into writing or MCing.
For me personally, selfishly, We Are Funny Project was invaluable in the run up to recording, Eardiot, and its subsequent run at Edinburgh in 2015. The cliche is to say “new comics need as much stage-time as possible”. The reality (for me) wasn’t too far from that. I had a bunch of weird ideas and half-baked concepts that I heavily suspected would lead to me eating shit onstage multiple times until I could work out what the fuck they were, comedically. Without all that stage-time, I’m not sure I could really, truly develop the ideas I found interesting.
For every ten ideas that tanked, maybe one or half of one would light up the room. That was what Alfie Noakes gave me. The freedom to say dat. weird. shit— a lot of the time badly — a lot of the time in front of a real(ly disappointed) audience — and for me to see where the edges were, what tweaks were needed, and then have an opportunity to test it, again, an hour later in the Putney venue, then again the following night back at Dirty Dicks — in front of different people — that was just invaluable.
I really don’t know how people get material together without that support, unless they’ve *already got to a level* where they can rock-up at Backyard or Vauxhall and demand a 10-spot.
A Non-Bringer Amongst Bringers
It should be commended that We Are Funny was never a “bringer”. It’s the most boring thing in the world for comedians to moan about bringers. I know because i’ve done it ten thousand times myself and i’m bored of it. But let’s break this down quickly so we can look at WAFP for what it was and where it fit in.
For new, aspiring comedians, when I was gigging heavily, you had the following options as places to try new ideas:
Dirty Dicks — usually busy
Dukes Head — usually busy
Cavendish Arms — bringer
Freedom Fridge — bringer
TNT — bringer
G&B — bringer (or be-your-own-bringer)
Jester Jesters — dead
Pegasus — dead
Lions Den — pay to play / dead’ish.
Dead Comedians Socks (which moved to The Waterpoet, EC1) — dead
Now, that’s not meant as a slight on the other nights. Fatherhood has matured me a little in that respect. If you don’t have the time to promote a night, fine. I don’t either (anymore). Someone should suck your dick just for trying to run an Open Mic spot. Do what you can. You do you, dawwwg.
But just to illustrate how few the options for stage-time were (plug: checkout The Panda Riot for *current* bringer / non-bringer / days of the week vs gigs), if you’d been going for 6m+ and you’d run out of friends — then you can see the problem that 👆🏻We Are Funny solved👆🏻. It gave comics a stage, no bringer shit and a nice social atmosphere afterwards to convince you that running out of friends didn’t mean you had no friends.
When Dirty Dicks refurbished (or as I used to say: The Dirty Dicks Were Cleaned hohohothatdoesntreallyworkpleasekillmekillmenowinthehead), changing their basement into a city cocktail bar, it could’ve been the end of the operation. But Alfie and his number-two (my cohort in producing Eardiot →) Alex Martini, went on a crowdfund mission, it seemed to breathe new life into it. Though they fell short of their intended target — they managed to raise $23k for a full-time comedy venue. It seemed like an exciting time. All of those people donating, investing, ensuring that the project would live-on past its spiritual home to find itself permanently installed in a fitted-out venue, somewhere in London.
It didn’t quite work out like that and, in a way, rather than breathing new life into it, the seeds for the shutdown of Alfie’s live-shows were sewn the second that Dirty Dicks wrapped.
Why? Let’s peel the layers a bit.
I always got on well with Alfie but I’m not deaf and blind. I was aware that he and Frank hadn’t parted on the best of terms. I always looked at it like: whatever was said or happened between them, that’s for them to discuss and work out. It’s none of my business. It was literally their business. But whatever their reasons, they split, that parting caused a division between them obvs, but also socially between me and some other comedians/friends.
We’d have exchanges along the lines of:
“Why do you still perform there?”
“Because it’s a great night to perform at and frankly I don’t know what’s happened between Frank & Alfie.”
“Right, but you could hazard a guess!”
“I don’t want to be a guesser or a gossip or play sides and ‘who’s side are YOU on?’. This is all so fucking playground. I *just* want to do comedy.”
Because I did.
When Alfie took control of the comedy nights at Dirty Dicks, there were five or six people that seemed to take umbrage. When the curtains came down at DDs and the crowdfund finished, that number seemed to go-up, if only on The Comedy Collective posts and comments. It should be said that, weirdly, some were not even comedians, some that *were* comedians hadn’t even donated to the crowdfund and yet here they all were, demanding to know where “their” money was going.
I personally saw Alfie respond to two of the comments (on the The Comedy Collective). Both times it seemed to defuse any argument or suggestion that the money was spaffed irresponsibly. But I live in the real world. And if we’re going to be objective about it, I suppose you could say “Well, he raised the money with the intended goal of a *venue*!” or “What happened to the podcast studio?!”.
So, let’s be adults about this.
You show me a London venue you can buy for $23k and I’ll suck your Dad off in it, twice.
Was the money spent? Was it spent wisely? Is there a precise breakdown of the pounds and pennies? I don’t fucking know. I suspect Alfie would’ve quite happily explained the intricacies of his re-strategised project (having not hit target), if people had asked him in person. I’d imagine it would circle around the new website, whatever equipment they got when they moved to Farr’s, keeping shit churning. I don’t blame him for possibly thinking “fuck off!” to people that had nothing to do with him or the crowdfund or We Are Funny. It’s like getting a personal expenses audit from your ex-girlfriend or some shit.
When I stopped doing stand-up (January’ish 2016) I was almost entirely removed from all the nonsense and sniping. I sort of assumed it had wound-down and people were instead focused on their Brighton Fringe and podcasts and shit YouTube channels (like me). I figured where there was bad blood before, as peoples’ careers had progressed, they’d probably moved-up and away from that tier of gossip and trolling.
Imagine how refreshing, nay nostalgic, it was to return this year and find the same nonsense not only *still* happening, but it had now bled-out into entirely new slews of bellendry, some of whom weren’t comics, some of whom hadn’t donated and some of whom had never met or spoken to Alfie before.
Now, I pride myself on maintaining an objective view where I can. It’s not always possible, I know. But i’ll try to do this fairly here: I’m positive Alfie is not perfect. I’m also positive that We Are Funny Project isn’t/wasn’t perfect either. I don’t know the ins-and-outs of the Crowdfund but i think if i had some sort of axe to grind with the money I donated (and i did donate), then I’d chat with him in person. If it was something that was *so much* of a problem that I had to opine and moralise and talk shit on Facebook threads, but it *wasn’t* enough of a problem that I felt compelled to ask face to face about it? Then *I’d* conclude: I’m being a dickless bell-end (←which is quite an achievement). You draw your own conclusions. You do you, dawwwg.
Alfie and i have had fiery discussions on more than one occasion but being grown-ups we chatted about it and moved on. It strikes me as incredibly sad that comedians of all people, who are the first to pin their flag to the mast in terms of pushing the envelope and “why is everyone so offended!?” are so emotional and ranty and determined to stay anchored to a bunch of shit that happened half a decade ago.
I last saw Alfie about six weeks ago. He seemed fed-up. He’d been running Open Mic nights for ten years. There were new gigs on the block that were trying to cause him problems. There was the relentless trolling. People were joining his WAFP facebook group solely to cause fights. There were others calling him a crackhead. Quite simply, he seemed like a man that was over it. And who could blame him?
I told him his nights were always the best and I hoped to gig more now that my son was a bit older. He said he was thinking of jacking it in unless the shit stopped.
The next day there was a post on his group confirming there’d been more trolls trying to get into the group. The attacks were non-stop and within four weeks the confirmation was out: live shows were pulled.
I have a spot at Farr’s on 24th June. It’s a Dirty Dicks reunion night with Gary Shaw, Graeme Mathews and Harry U Eldrich. It’s going to be my last spot for Alfie and We Are Funny Project, I guess.
I think that’s pretty shit. Alfie’s nights were the only London Open Mic that seemed to put any effort into promotion. They were the only ones that consistently gave me the encouragement and the stage-time I needed. I’d like to see the efforts of the people that were attacking him. If they’re running nights of their own, what kind of audience numbers they get, are they flyering, is it a bringer, is it just acts that turn up and fuck off by nine o’clock.
Forgetting all that WAFP did for a sec, that will likely be their comedic legacy.
They convinced a guy to stop his Open Mic nights in a City where there is (correct me if i’m wrong please) still no alternative for a reliable, packed-out Open Mic where it’s not Pay To Play or a Bringer.
So on that basis — i salute you, Alfie Noakes. You did a great thing, for quite a bloody while. You helped me and a bunch of others. I thoroughly enjoyed your nights and though i can’t blame you for fucking it off — i hope at some point in the future you can find some way of returning. Though hopefully with different shirts. Your shirts are bad. ← thats me being objective again.
Big love,
Aid
