On the road

The life of a heavyweight Fringe comedian, from the auditorium at least, looks enviable indeed: nightly adulation from crowds of hundreds; hobnobbing with the greatest wits in the country; frolicking and drinking your way around the world’s biggest arts festival. But for the rest of the year, the days of even the most successful touring comic are defined by anonymous hotels, service stations, lukewarm pasties and lonely drives between unpredictable gigs.

As someone who has spent five years as a tour manager for one of the UK's biggest comedy promoters, Kat Nugent understands the strains of this nomadic lifestyle. She tells stories of “tantrums over microphones”, of “a certain comic magician” who would “refuse to go on stage because he thought someone had touched his props,” of having to call security on one of her own clients who saw red after weeks on the road, and leapt into the audience to throttle a heckler. “Sometimes the comedians themselves are the most difficult thing to deal with on a tour,” she says.

But Nugent can sympathise: “It can be almost impossible to relax at any point, as you're always moving and often around people you don't know that well. The travelling, the nerves and adrenaline of being on stage everyday and missing home can be really draining.”

Little wonder, then, that even professional entertainers have trouble maintaining a sense of humour. “It’s sort of like being in freezing cold,” says seasoned standup Reginald D Hunter, savouring a pre-show smoke by the fire exit of Dunfermline’s Alhambra Theatre. “You just have to keep the heat on.”

Hunter has little sympathy for peers who can’t handle the challenge of staying upbeat.

“I’m a grown man. Grown men accept the mission and they know roughly what the mission’s gonna be like. I know I’m gonna be in a lot of hoogie-boogie towns. I know that when I come off stage, everything’s gonna be closed. I know a lot of times the women that’s gonna be flirting with me, they gonna be standing next to they husbands – and flirting with me partly because they standing next to they husbands. I get it, I get it.

“So you just take a shitload of DVDs with you, some weed, and—you know—try not to mind. You knew what the motherfucker was,” he shrugs. “It’d be different if it was a completely different motherfucker, but you knew what the motherfucker was when you signed up.”

Still, “the motherfucker” can be an almighty shock to the systems of less stoic comics.

She may be an old hand by now, but Josie Long remembers when touring was a real trial: “By the end of the first year I was really tired out. And really freaked out.” 

Her early career was littered with quiet towns and quieter crowds: “I did one gig in this village in Wales and there was only one pub, so everyone was there afterwards and I had to be like, ‘Yup! That was me. Do you remember? Do you remember that you hated it? Ah, we had a good laugh, didn’t we?’”

But even if the shows go well, the hours and miles between them can prove just as demanding.

Nobody knows this better than Richard Herring, whose most manic run of shows saw him visit “Hull followed by Paris followed by Milan followed by Kendal on consecutive days”.

It’s virtually the only way forward in an industry that hinges on circuit appearances and, as Nugent says, the money can be good. Where successful musicians might take private jets or at least a tour bus for granted, the live comedy business sees its stars making do with a Fiat, a snot-smeared en-suite and a steady supply of lay-by junk food.

On the motorways of Middle England, making your own entertainment is key to staying sane. While on tour with Laura Solon, Nugent built up an expert knowledge of which service stations sold the best ice cream, while Long talks about Toddington Services on the M1 as if it were a favourite holiday destination.

Even when describing the dreariest of journeys, Long is irrepressibly chirpy: “I try and do a lot of days out,” she explains, enthusing about a recent trip to the birthplace of Edward Elgar, “And I take a lot of card games. Getting excited about having your tea – that can take up about two hours… Oh! And you go bowling!” She makes overcoming boredom sound almost fun.

Solitude is different. “Being away from friends, family, partners and kids is the big one,” says Nugent, and it seems neither Hunter, nor Herring nor Long would disagree. “I find life lonely,” says Hunter, perhaps only half-joking. “I could be lonely in a room full of people.”

Such is life when, for much of the year, your circle of friends is limited to how many people will fit into a hatchback. It’s become a depressingly familiar state of affairs for Herring: “I have done the last four or five tours on my own, without support or a tour manager or a driver. I have got used to my own company, but sometimes in the bar of a horrible hotel with no one else around, you begin to understand why some comedians end up killing themselves.

“When I was single there were times when I hoped for company of any kind, but it rarely materialised, and one of the last times I socialised with my audience I ended up in a fight.” A supportive girlfriend means the 43-year-old’s more desperate days may be in the past, but from now on, he says, he’ll be taking a tour manager along for the ride.

The last word on touring has to go to Reginald D Hunter as he finishes yet another pre-gig smoke.

“I’d love to pick a small place, sort of like Dunfermline, and just live there for a month, just to see what the living’s like. But, you know, them niggas in London be calling all the time, they need you to get back and do shit.”

So, when August rolls around, it can be a huge relief to screech to a halt in Edinburgh for a few weeks of stability and friendship. “Mmm, nesting,” Hunter muses, looking forward to a more sedate home life – “Once I’m done with my gigs in the evening, it’s pastries and films.” But even without the constant to-and-fro of the road, the pressure is far from off.

“No guarantees, baby,” Hunter concludes. “But you’ve just got to learn to roll with the stuff. Just got to roll with it…”