110% LAGOM

I seem to spend an unhealthy amount of time in the small Östgöta town of Kisa. It’s a lovely place, it really is, and for its size it has a lot going on. It is most famous, perhaps, as being the town where Magnus Samuelsson, The World’s Strongest Man and winner of Let’s Dance, comes from. Coincidentally, it is also the home town of Inger Nilsson who was the iconic 70’s TV Pippi, The World’s Strongest Girl. I have spent hours imagining Magnus and Pippi in a fight and I still can’t work out who would win.

The reason I spend so much time in Kisa is that my comedian friend and some time collaborator Kjell Nyholm comes from there. He is what is described as a ‘bonde komiker’ which is a rough equivalent of the British ‘Gump’ character  - regional accent, wide eyed wonder at the big city etc (e.g. George Formby). 

For the National Day, Kjell had arranged a night at Restaurang Doce, the biggest, best….. and only restaurant in Kisa which is run by the local Chilean clan – Si señor, Kisa has a Chilean clan. They had invited down a whole load of comedians from Stockholm and us local chaps. It was supposed to be an outdoor celebration of comedy. However, there were two things that they hadn’t taken into account. First, Sweden were playing Denmark, meaning we delayed the start of the show until the match was finished, and second it was bloody freezing outside. 

The audience were drunk. I can’t blame them – There was football, it was a good way to forget about the cold temperature and drinking heavily is a Saturday night tradition in Kisa. The show went OK, some acts did better then others – Kjell always goes down well to his home crowd through his ability to speak Kisamål (the local dialect) and I was also really impressed (as always) by Isak Jansson who freewheeled his way through ten minutes of heckling and came out on top. 

By the time I went on it was already quarter to midnight, the audience were cold, tired and drunk. I was cold, tired and wished I was drunk. I walked onstage and in the front row was a man wearing a blue helmet as part of a stag do that had turned up late. I managed to riff on the subject of how dangerous he thought the stand up comedy was and that his bald friend who was even drunker could use the helmet more…. and then I tried to do some of my material… and immediately realised that not only had I prepared totally the wrong type of jokes for this crowd  - I was looking at cutting edge political satire, they were looking at the beer bottle and seeing double – So I had one of those moments where I just thought, I haven’t got the energy to keep going with jokes about a man in a blue helmet who can’t remember his own name… so I cut the act short.

Good experience – and my fault really as I should have been prepared for a Saturday night Kisa crowd – but you live and learn. I don’t feel pissed off about the gig, but am certainly looking forward to getting back in the saddle later this week at a gig in Motala to cyclists who have just finished the Vätternrund!

Report abuse »

Tags: Comedy, Gigs, Kisa, Stand Up

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 11:14 am and is filed under Comedy, Stand Up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.