Comedy tourism at The King's Head

On Sunday 9 Oct 2005, I had one of my strangest gigs ever at Downstairs at The King's Head in London. It would have been just another gig, hadn't it been for a German tourist in the audience.

The compere of the evening was David Ward. He welcomed everyone and chatted a bit to some people in the front row, one of which was this German. Everything went smoothly.

The first act was Pete Jonas. He did a good job and everything was cool, including our German friend. When Pete was finished he left, not realising what he was just about to miss.

David introduced the second act, who was Amadeus. Everything was normal.

When Amadeus had done about ten minutes the German suddenly interrupted him, asking with a strong German accent:
"Excuse me... Is it allowed to take pictures of the artists?"

Amadeus said that it was ok to take pictures. Or at least he said something like that. I didn't hear exactly what he said cause I was too surprised by the German's question.

Then the German turned to someone sitting beside him and said: "Could you take a picture of me and him?"
And then he jumped up and stood beside Amadeus to be photographed. Everyone laughed their heads off cause it was so surreal.

German tourist with Amadeus

When David Ward got back onstage to announce the interval, the German didn't even ask. He just jumped up and stood beside David and smiled to the camera.

That was when I and Alan Francis, who was headlining, realised that this German would interrupt us too when we got onstage. We looked at each other, nodded and went onstage to get in the same picture as David. To save the effort for the German. And to save us from being interrupted later on. (Or so we thought)

German tourist, Alan Francis, me and David Ward. David's comment at this point was:
"Surely this is what you paid money for, ladies and gentlemen."

When I was on, I told a story especially for the German about how I as a teenager had lived in a family in Germany for a summer and how I after a while had realised why they (especially the daughter's friends) found my pocket dictionary so amusing. Cause on my pocket dictionary it said in large capital letters "FICKLEXIKON", which is Swedish for "POCKET DICTIONARY".

But in German it means "FUCK DICTIONARY" (so what on earth were they thinking when they wrote that on the cover of a German-Swedish dictionary???????)

The German found this so funny that he had to interrupt the show again. But now he seemed to have realised that maybe it wasn't a good idea to interrupt the comedian. So instead he turned to the compere, who was standing over by the door, and shouted to him:
"David, is it allowed to ask the artist for an autograph?"

I told him it was ok. He immediately jumped up to have me write an autograph (on an electronic device) but I stopped him and said: "Not now, I'll give you an autograph later." And then I just sponaneously added: "By the way, autograph in Swedish means slap in the face".

Which it doesn't, of course. And I didn't mean it in a bad way, cause all of this was really funny and made this a comedy night to remember. I just said that to get a laugh.

After the gig, I also gave my email address to the German cause I wanted to have these pictures. And he sent them to me. Thanks for that, Detlef, and thanks for coming to the King's Head that night to support live comedy in more than one way.