AS an aspiring comedian, you must have a thick skin and be geared up for anything from heckling to dodging improvised projectiles in grubby basement bars.

Most importantly you must be resilient – it is part of the ‘maturing process’.

Hal Cruttenden has done his fair share of maturing over the years. There were the successful gigs and the shows he wishes he could erase from his memory. But throughout, he plodded along in the hope of one day forging a name on the stand-up circuit.

Over the past three years his name and face have been everywhere, from BBC’s Would I Lie to You, Have I Got News for You and Live at the Apollo to the The Royal Variety Performance.

“I was 27 when I did my first gig,” said Hal, whose two daughters were his most fervent audience from a very young age.

“I started gigging in a basement in Notting Hill to about 30 people sitting on benches.

“You have to be tough and brave to face it. My first really bad gig was the 10th. You suddenly play a bigger club and some people stare at you with contempt and think how dare you be funny. You’ve got to go away and get back the next day and do it again.

“People who succeed in comedy are the people who just go at it.

“I used to be out six or seven nights a week doing lots of gigs. That’s the way I improved. Even at my level now you can still have a bad gig.”

After training as an actor, Hal ended up writing traffic reports for radio.

It was only when one his colleagues suggested he join a comedy workshop that his career as a stand-up artist truly began.

Curious, but far from convinced that his ‘camp and middle class’ image would tick the right boxes, he signed up anyway.

“I really didn’t think it was for me. I used to go watch comedy but I thought it was too laddy. And I didn’t know if I could take abuse from the crowd.

“But I was watching an Eddie Izzard video and I thought ‘You’re worried about being camp and middle class but this man doesn’t care’. Comedy just clicked for me. “The worst part of the job is being humiliated but there has to be a part of you that doesn’t care.”

The days of ridicule are long gone and in fact every night of his tour, Tough Luvvie, which has been extended for a fourth time, has been just what the funny man had been hoping for all these years.

In the show, he unleashes his ‘darker’ side carefully hidden underneath his soft, camp and unapologetically middle class teddy bear exterior.

“My humour is like being hugged by a teddy and then being stabbed. That’s why it’s called Tough Luvvie. And I play on being middle class. No one likes to be middle class; it’s a rubbish identity. Comedy is turning something you’re embarrassed about into a weapon. And I do talk about myself a lot because I’m appallingly self-obsessed.”

– MARION SAUVEBOIS

 

 Tough Luvvie will open at the Wyvern Theatre on Monday, November 17 at 8pm. Tickets cost £18.50. To book call 01793 524481 or visit swindontheatres.co.uk.