American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson

Author:Craig Ferguson
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

Given its proximity to the BBC, the Chip was a favorite haunt of actors and creative types who worked there. These people in turn brought in other actors and creative types from the theater and film world. It was a very showbizzy crowd, and that’s the reason Michael Boyd, the new artistic director at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, happened to be there one night. Michael was already making a name for himself as something of a maverick—he’s now the director of the Royal Shakespeare Company—with his unconventional and daring approach. He eschewed the lumpy, formal style of elitist theater and encouraged the energy and vitality of performance that he felt existed in the spirit of Scottish variety performers. Basically he was a closet vaudevillian with a sparkling, innovative mind and was transforming the Tron into a very popular location, a hot spot for what passed as the glitterati in Glasgow, even though it was in the decidedly untrendy and downright dangerous East End.

Michael watched me work the bar for a while and eventually asked me if I had ever been a performer. I told him about Telemachus Clay, which made him giggle, and I also confessed that in New York I had attempted an open-mike spot at the Comic Strip comedy club but had met with limited, or indeed disastrous, results. The audience of drunken mafiosi didn’t understand my accent but hated me anyway.

Michael was interested in my story and told me about an idea he had. There was a large public bar at the Tron Theatre with a raised platform at one end that Michael wanted to turn into a stage every Friday night where amateurs could try their luck in a “gong show.” After observing my antics behind the bar and learning of my interest in the performing arts, he thought I should do it.

I said I’d think about it.

I snuck in to the first gong show and stood at the back. The room was smoky and packed with a large, hostile, drunken crowd who delighted in yelling instructions to the gong master, Harry Lennon, who was also the good-natured stage manager of the theater. Harry seemed very reluctant at first in his role as allegorical executioner but soon grew power-crazed with the beater in his hand as act after act came onstage. Housewives with pithy wee morality tales—these days they’d be blogging—were gonged immediately. Singing children fared a little better, until they got too sweet, then the mob would bray “GONG!” until Harry had no choice. One juggler lasted all of six seconds, while a mime who came on fully made up with a stripy shirt and beret was gonged before he even got a chance to move, never mind walk into the wind or pull an invisible rope. He didn’t take it well and, breaking the sacred code of his order, yelled, “You’re all a bunch o’ fucking shites!” at the crowd, which laughed uproariously.

It was an absolute bear pit, where success for a performer was all but impossible.

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