Bob Slayer in one of his less strange moments as a performer
I was happily dozing off last night when I got woken up at 1.30am by a series of text messages from comedian Bob Slayer.
Cobbled together, this is what he told me:
“I did two gigs with The Greatest Show on Legs / Martin Soan at Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival tonight: an early show and a late show in Dave’s Curry House.
“It is always weird when you meet people involved with a gig and get on with them, have a laugh, then the gig goes wrong and they don’t want to look you in the eye. And other comics avoid you in case your dose of the unfunnies is catching. If you are sharing a car it can be a painful journey.
“The first gig was really struggling. But then it got to a bit which always goes down well: Martin’s Thriller sketch where we put elastic bands round our heads to distort our faces into zombie masks while we dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
The original routine: Malcolm Hardee (left) & Martin Soan (photograph by Steve Taylor)
“Except that, when Martin cued the music (at which point we are already committed to the Michael Jackson zombie dance) instead of Thriller, the music that came on was Black or White. It was the wrong track on the CD.
“The audience just looked at us, confused, while we did our dance, putting rubber bands on our heads to distort our faces and dancing like zombies to Black or White. They didn’t know it is the wrong track. It just seems very strange to them.
“Afterwards, one of the acts told me he was watching and thinking: Are they making a statement about being black? With elastic bands????
“Fortunately, at the second gig, we got the right track and the gig went beautifully.
“The drive home was lovely.”
