1. Woman stands up in pub in Cambridge Circus and starts shouting at me asking why do I have to be so aggressive and disgusting?
2. Woman jumps on stage, attacks me and tries to rip out my dog collar in the Worlds End pub, Finsbury, after I sing ‘Censor This’. The compere and bar staff jump onto the stage while I try to fight her off.
3. Woman in the Windmill pub comes and stares into my face for 10 minutes as I pack up my gear after a performance and then tries to tell me how offended she is.
4. Woman owner of the Whole World Cafe in Folkestone bursts into complete rage as the whole audience sing along to ‘The C Word’ in her venue.
5. The Frenchman pub in Folkestone pulls the gig a week before after seeing an online video of a comedy performance and claim they have ‘standards’ and don’t want any swearing or blasphemy in their establishment.
6. Performing with the Deep South Band before we go onstage at the Legion in Hythe, one of the promoters decides to tell us five minutes before we go on that all swearing is banned in the venue, knowing full well what we are like. He stands at the door with his brother ready to monitor us. The first song we do is a track called ‘Censor This’. Immediately he phones the head of the committee, his mother, who is having dinner in a restaurant in Hythe High Street with friends. She comes over, stands in front of us and won’t move. They try to get us off, but we won’t leave. We ignore them and carry on. The crowd enjoy the night apart from the three killjoys. We were never asked back after that.
7. I drive all the way to Tisbury to perform at a lovely acoustic festival and find when I get there the promoters had to change the venue at the last minute after the former venue saw my act online.
8. Performance at the Good Intent receives eight complaints, two people walk out and the bar woman refuses to have me back in the pub.
10. After a performance in Googies I get phone calls at midnight calling me ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’.
11. Canterbury promoter pulls gig after another comic tells him that his friends would walk out of any gig I was on the bill.
12. Halfway through an abortion joke in a gig in Canterbury a girl walks out crying.
13. After a gig in London I receive a string of emails attacking me and the show from an anonymous hater.
14. Last show at Googies, Folkestone: nine people walk out.
15. Edinburgh: Promoter in the street asks me to fill a ten-minute spot as a comic has just dropped out. I say, “OK, what’s the vibe? Can I be raw?” He says, “Do anything you like, as long as you’re funny.” Three minutes into my set he runs up to the stage and says, “Give it up for the High Priest!” Off stage he says, “I didn’t realise you were going to be that raw…”
16. Edinburgh: Five people walk out of the show in disgust.
17. Edinburgh: Disgruntled guy in the street tries to pick a fight with me because I’m impersonating a priest.
18. Tom Thumb gig in Margate – completely divided the crowd. One half shouting ‘off, off, off’, the other shouting ‘more’. Then they ask for a vote: one guy saying stop saying ‘cunt’, another shouting you’re not funny, someone shouting yes you are, to which I end with an abortion joke and split the crowd like Moses.
19. At Hecklers Delight in Brighton. Two minutes into the abortion joke a woman in the crowd says out loud that I’m not funny, although contrary to her statement everybody else in the crowd is laughing. She turns her back on me and repeatedly makes sounds and gestures that I’m not funny. The crowd gets involved. I ask them to let her speak, being a believer in free speech. She still mumbles it’s not funny. So I ask her if she’s had an abortion. Her response: ‘Maybe’… We get to the crux of the matter, that basically she’s a murderer… Joke.
20. Return to the Tom Thumb Theatre with my own solo show ‘The Porn and Politics Show: All Offence Intended’. Halfway through a joke about Jesus being beaten to a pulp, five septuagenarians get up to leave telling me, ‘Son, we don’t like your comedy, we’re Christians’.
21. So I’m in a working man’s pub in Gravesend and I soundcheck ‘The Blue Blues’, a pornographic blues song I’d written. As I finish, a big Asian guy comes up to me and asks me to change the lyrics because a 16-year-old girl in the venue is disturbed by my lyrical content. I try to explain I’ve been booked as an adult comic and I’m in an environment where minors shouldn’t be.
Later that night, 22 minutes into my hour show, I decide to start a routine about Jesus. ‘Jesus died for your sins, so do you know what that tells me? You should be sinning every fucking minute of the day!’
Next I’m confronted by a 6 ft 2 drunk ex-convict who had found Jesus whilst inside. He comes straight up to me in front of the mic and won’t move and says angrily, ‘Jesus died for our sins, that’s right, and what have you got to say about it?’
I try to pacify him as I see the faint scar of a Chelsea smile until Mat Wills, the landlord, and five other guys come over to calm the situation. A small fight breaks out but is quickly stopped. The Asian guy from earlier is shouting in the room about how I crossed too many lines. ‘He’s sexist! And you don’t talk about religion like that. Too much swearing.’ And my good Christian friend decides to leave. The Asian guy follows. And then Mat Wills and I get the fuck outta dodge.
22. Decide to drop in to Tony King’s open mic in Folkestone and get back on the horse after a year’s break. Two devout, church-going Catholics walk out halfway through, proving some people really lack a sense of humour. I guess I’m galloping already!
23. After a year’s break I call up a promoter to see if he’s still doing his uni comedy gigs and he tells me he can’t book me, or anyone else for that matter, because after I headlined his last show “the university pulled the gigs even though the crowd loved it”.
24. While in Edinburgh at the Festival, spreading the love and touching people deep inside, one night I decide to tell a young lady in the crowd that she was stunning, amazing, beauty personified. ‘When I look at you I can’t help but think maybe, just maybe there is a God… but then I see this cunt here (pointing to her mate) and no, I’m definitely an atheist…’ Turns out she was a born-again Christian and I didn’t touch her inside.
25. At a packed-out service/gig in Folkestone at Chambers Cafe on a Saturday night, two people walk out during the Cunt Cancer routine and then twelve more during the Abortion routine.
26. Turn up to a rugby club in Dudley as one of the acts for the comedy gig. I perform third and within three minutes manage to completely offend 79 of the 80 people in the room with the ‘Cunt Cancer’ routine. All 79 literally shake their heads in disgust and go completely quiet at the same time. I find out afterwards three people in the room had terminal cancer and they had been fundraising for them for the last month.
27. Two UKIP-pers walk out as I attack UKIP and the far right with a competition-winning set.
28. Headlining a show in Dover, I break into an anti-Tory set only to find the whole room is Tory. So what does a High Priest do? Carry on attacking Tories. Six people walk out, as do I eventually.
