Spending much of one’s time bigging up your own work, and by that yourself, comes at a price. You must have to lay down the burden of self-promotion sometimes. For at times it makes you into a weirdness.
Performing one’s act, of comedy and purpose, does not look good the morning after. It feels like you’ve fooled around too much, exaggerated too much, boasted and boosted too much: and claimed too much.
I mean, after all, my large and loud mouth and stupendous claims are based on inheritances from former large mouths I must come from. My mother being the greatest example in my life of a woman who “could talk the hind legs off of a donkey”. Hence at her knee I must have picked up the fine art of blarney.
My inheritance was humour mixed with story-telling and it comes so natural to me that it’s like breathing. At the “drop of a hat” I’m off telling a tale and trying to tie up an audience. And causing laughter and mayhem in thinking.
But it has not always been “all cakes and ale”, as Shakespeare would put it. Rejection and distain have been mixed in there. One time at a party aged 15, having charmed the host’s girlfriend to sit on my knee as I bombarded her with comedy I was set upon by the family, beaten senseless and thrown out into the street. My clothes all torn and my face all cut.
Thank God my mother had donated me her Irish mouth and wild exaggerated love of chatting
Or other times when punches rained down on me as I competed for the most adorable party guest and I had to fight my way out. Or went into work and my fellow factory workers had been worn out by my constant showing off. Hotel kitchens whose staff did their best to get me sacked because I wouldn’t stop chattering and promoting my humour. And girlfriends who suddenly lost the will to live.