What Would Beyoncé Do?! Read online

  Juice called to me on the street and I told him about my review; he said, ‘Bennett is an idiot, fuck him, keep going, you are brilliant, don’t worry.’ I could have kissed him. I moved back home to my mum’s that afternoon.

  Back in Farnborough, I wept in my pants for a week, then got a job at the local radio station in Guildford, Eagle Radio. I figured at least it related to the performing arts. I enrolled to be part of the promotions team and then got promoted to receptionist. I would see all the celebrities coming in for interviews and it was so much fun. I would always feel like I was one of them, even though technically I was making the tea, but that’s cool, I’ll do that even when I am famous.

  The station took part in a nationwide scheme where ten employees would be picked as interns and be taught about all aspects of the medium. My station nominated me and I got into the programme called ‘Route into Radio’. Three months hard-core training with the best people in the business. I went to stations around the country and learnt about every aspect of the artform.

  Klaus and I were no longer together but he started calling me again. He said he was proud of what I was doing; he was also impressed as he was interested in radio advertising and how it worked for small businesses. So I would use my training days with the radio sales team as an excuse to ring him up and spout statistics at him: ‘Did you know radio advertising is 50 per cent more effective for small businesses than TV adverts alone? PS I love you.’

  I liked working again; I liked having my own money and not feeling guilty about signing on. It wasn’t the most glamorous job and I wanted to be behind the mic as opposed to on reception, but I was much happier here than I had been in years. At least I wasn’t lying to myself with undergraduate recruitment programmes. Even if I couldn’t be an artist, at least I could immerse myself in that world. Plus all the team were super supportive and proud of my aspirations to be a comedian. The office would always ask how my gigs in ‘the big London’ went. It was long getting home late after gigs and being in for 8 a.m. to answer the phones but I loved it. I was making friends in the office and picking up pals on the circuit.

  I met a girl called Katerina Vrana who was Greek but has the best British accent, and Suzi Ruffell who was from Portsmouth, They quickly became my comedy besties.

  At one of my gigs Doc Brown, another comedian, saw me and he said he wanted to recommend me to an events company who were looking for a host. They were offering £80 a night and were looking for someone flexible who could step in at the last minute. I called them up, they were in a panic. Meet Musical Bingo. It’s pretty much regular bingo but ten times more fun and with music instead of numbers. They had a game format that involved a host presenter, a DJ and music. They had a corporate gig the following night for the BBC in Brighton and their host had done a runner.

  Jonny, the man who’d created the format of the show, was gutted. He didn’t want to pull out, as it had taken him ages to get in with the BBC. They had everything for the event apart from a host; they even had a script and Jonny asked if I could learn it in time, he was aware he was throwing me in at the deep end. I said fuck the script, let’s have fun with it. It was hard as the crowd were all strait-laced business types who liked the game but weren’t so into the drinking aspect. But Jonny was pleased enough and so in 2011 I became the face of Musical Bingo.

  It was a rough time for Jonny as the previous host had gone off with a similar format and started running nights. I never understand people like that, who take someone else’s idea and sell it as their own. But we quickly made Musical Bingo our own and turned it into one of the best nights out in the capital.

  Jonny ran events every month, with a residency at Concrete in Shoreditch. A hundred and fifty drunk Londoners would come in and want to have a party. My job was basically to manage that party. For a small-town girl from Farnborough this was intimidating as fuck, but also fucking awesome. We would play music, give out fun naff prizes, like a slow cooker or novelty glasses, and people would just get absolutely shit-faced. What amazed me was how pumped up and excited people would feel about getting shitty novelty glasses. Grown adults would lose their tiny little minds over a song and be so excited to win a box of After Eights.

  I started having real fun developing the show; we threw away the script and I just did my own thing. I would have Jonny there, and Abel and Olly DJ’ing – those boys became like my Musical Bingo London family. We would have so much fun doing the nights. The events just got bigger and bigger. As I became more confident, I started throwing in rap battles and dance-offs and competitions for prizes. The audiences loved it. I even picked up some jokes from it.

  For example, one of the questions to win a grand prize was ‘Cows have different accents depending on where they are from . . . true or false?’ It’s actually true, so in my sets I started doing cow impressions: cows with a British accent, Scottish accent, Australian accent, etc. It’s really funny but you have to be there.

  The Musical Bingo business grew and Jonny booked more and more shows and brought in more hosts. I loved being part of this team. I was doing it whilst still heartbroken over Klaus and wished he could see me rock a room; maybe then he would see that I was good enough to be with. It gave me so much confidence to perform in front of a large group, improvising and bantering with the audience. Here I am in a room full of drunk people and I can get them to go crazy over novelty glasses; surely there has to be a way I can get people to go as crazy over my jokes.

  It’s strange, isn’t it, I can be the biggest office clown and make people around me howl, say the right thing at a funeral, a wedding, a bingo gig and people will laugh and be putty in my hands. But getting up on stage at a comedy club and trying to be funny is a different ball game. How do I merge the two? How do I make one transfer into the other? At comedy clubs audiences don’t give you their love or laughter so freely, it’s not enough to offer After Eights, you have to prove yourself. But in bingo they go bat-shit from the off.

  That’s what got me thinking. How can I make my stand-up gigs like a party? How can I get people pumped?

  11.

  MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO CHICAGO

  Klaus and I had finished months ago but we were still talking regularly and so that made me feel not too hurt about it but instead just more of a constant dull ache. We kinda went back to being friends again and just sleeping together holding each other, I mean literally just sleeping together; he wouldn’t let me have sex with him as he said it would confuse things. I was confused anyway.

  After months of being in this weird limbo of hanging out but not having sex but then having sex but not being together, he finally put a full stop to it in July. It was now officially officially over. All my friends were tired of me talking about my breakup; they’d seen it coming for a long time, they knew it had been over for ages, whereas I was always hopeful. In my head, the harder I have to work for something, the more real it is, so I believed that all the effort I made and the hurt I felt was validation that it was true love. We had gone from being best mates to lovers to weird best mates again, and it was a complete head fuck.

  I couldn’t stop crying. My mates were tired of hearing about him, they thought we had split up months ago and I didn’t tell them that I had been seeing him again and staying with him in London after Musical Bingo or gigs instead of catching the last train home. I didn’t tell my friends because I didn’t want to hear it, I didn’t want them to tell me off and talk sense into me. My mum couldn’t understand why I was so upset over him. She thought it was over a long time ago and as I had stayed friends with him, I was happy enough. But now my safety blanket had been cut off and I hated it. I missed him hugely, he was my best friend and everywhere I looked just reminded me of him.

  I remember being at Piccadilly Circus, and thinking, oh this is where he dumped me the first time. I cried remembering how sad I was when he dumped me. I was melancholic over all the reasons that clearly showed why we couldn’t be together. I would see couples in Five Guys and just be sa
d because Klaus loved Five Guys. One time, when we were together, I took a bus and walked what felt like a mile to his house to deliver his favourite Five Guys. It was cold by the time I got there but I figured he would appreciate the sentiment, but he wasn’t in and so I just left it on the doorstep like a weirdo and ran off.

  Or there was the time we tried to be all sexy and he poured champagne down my vagina but it started to burn and sting and I had to hot-skip to the bath and sit in it for ten minutes until my vagina calmed down. Or the time we had an argument at Leicester Square tube station because he didn’t like me singing Celine Dion at him in front of people (I know right, WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM??? Maybe ’cos it was Celine . . . If it had been Cher maybe he’d be less embarrassed), or the time at Finsbury Park tube station when I was embarrassed that he was singing Frank Sinatra at me in front of people (oh how the tables had turned. I wouldn’t have gone as red if he had sung Celine). Everything reminded me of him. Oh what fond memories. And here they are, all around London.

  And now I had nothing to take the edge off, no meeting up, no phone calls, no Skype. He stopped calling me completely and he didn’t reply to my messages. I was broken. I could handle being split up as long as I still got to speak to him every day, but this, this was rubbish.

  So I thought, what would Beyoncé do in this situation? And I did it; I decided to leave the country.

  Chicago has famous improvisation schools – Second City, IO, ComedySportz Theatre – and it’s where all the comedy greats go. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Mike Myers, John Candy, you name it; they’ve all been through improv school.

  All my comedy heroes are American. In the UK, people never really got me when I said I wanted to be massive in comedy like Whoopi G, my idol. They didn’t seem to get how much of a reality that dream is for me. So I figured I am living at my mum’s and heartbroken; if now’s not the time to fight for a big ridiculous dream, when is? I couldn’t make it into the finals of competitions or get an agent, and the only review of me online said I should be a runner-up on a talent show. When you’re at the bottom, fuck it, you may as well shoot high.

  So I thought, I know what I’ll do, I’ll move to Chicago and do comedy classes, and whilst developing my skillset, what a beautiful side effect that Klaus will be jealous and impressed. Because he’s a German fighting for an international career and here I am being, you know, international. People were like ‘Wow Luisa, you are so ambitious and determined to drive your own career.’ Little did they know it was just because I couldn’t handle walking through Finsbury Park tube station and remembering cold Five Guys. Break up, leave the country. Genius plan.

  I signed up at Second City, IO and ComedySportz Theatre. Chicago cost me £4k. You gotta speculate to accumulate. I figured I had nothing to lose. I’d sold my MGF for £500, got £1k deposit back from my London flat and saved some money from the bingo and the radio work. Plus I had a £2k overdraft, so I figured I would use half of that and just live off the rest for three months.

  I went on Craigslist. Everybody warned me about Craigslist and how serial killers post on there and I would end up dead. This was really comforting for a white girl from Farnborough. I found a young mum who had a spare room; I told her my plan of coming out to study at Second City and gig. I explained I would be getting home late at night after gigging and she assured me that would be OK. I called her several times and even Skyped her. Her kid went to a local school, I googled it, it seemed legit enough, so I sent her my deposit. She was really cool and even picked me up from the airport when I arrived.

  My classes were as follows:

  Second City (grandad of improv school!):

  Improv for Actors: using improv to develop naturalistic scenes

  Comedy Writing: sketch writing

  Clown and Physical Comedy: learning about elements of clowning to provide the funny!

  ComedySportz Theatre (Whose Line Is It Anyway?):

  Musical Improv: improvising songs and musicals of different genres including hip-hopera, er hello?!!!

  ComedySportz Games: short form improv games with a competitive element

  IO:

  Talk Show Portfolio: writing course, one-liners based on topical news

  Cook County Social Club: improv course using traditional and experimental techniques designed to challenge!

  At these schools, the terms last eight weeks, so I could just come in for the term and stay out my visa and then come home again, and that’s exactly what I did. I flew out by myself, signed up for the courses and went to meet my new landlady.

  When she said I had my own room, what she meant was that in her bedroom there were some steps up to a mezzanine floor where there was a bed, so if I looked over the edge of my bed I could see her there sleeping. My first thought was, how am I going to masturbate when she can clearly look up and see me? (DRAW DIAGRAM – OF BEDS, NOT ME MASTURBATING.)

  I stayed there for about a week before finding a room at a businessman’s place. His best mate was a comic and that was how I heard about it. My new landlord had a gorgeous two-bed en suite round the corner from the IO. He worked away Sunday to Friday and so essentially I had my own place for the rest of my stay. My comedy angels were looking out for me!

  When I started going to classes, people thought it was kinda strange that I’d just come out there by myself. True comics (I think they are true because they get it) thought I was a legend and really liked my spirit of pursuing comedy. I could tell quite quickly who I wanted to become friends with. It felt really nice to start creating my own world without Klaus in it. Here I was being successful in my own little way and I wasn’t beholden to anyone else.

  You see, back home I had made everything about Klaus, our relationship, his career, how well he was doing, I got consumed by it all. I remember one morning coming out of his flat and he had a car picking him up to take him to an interview for Radio 1. They were super impressed that this German promoter was managing all these British acts and flying them back and forth. I was so happy for him; I waved him off in his fancy car whilst I walked to the bus stop. I wanted him to do well, though I also was like ‘Wow, I can’t wait until one day I get a car sent for me.’ But I was happy for him that he was doing well. A small part of me was embarrassed that I wasn’t successful, so it was easier just to big him up and make him feel good.

  I think avoidance was a key part of it. Avoiding my own life, my own aspirations. It was easier to think what could I do to impress Klaus: what shall I cook for him, what shall I wear for him? I so quickly became one of those women I mocked and swore I would never be. I just wanted to make my world him. Totally unhealthy.

  Or maybe not that unhealthy, if it was reciprocated. But it wasn’t. I guess that was the problem. I think it is difficult when two egos get together. I would watch him as his acts got standing ovations and I could see the pride in his eyes, but the more I saw him succeed the more embarrassed I would be at the thought of him watching me perform in a room of 12 people. I used to think, wow, he is so special, what is he doing with me?

  I wasn’t independent or fierce, or running things. But I always believed I was the right woman for him because no one could love him more. And that was true in a sense; no one would love themselves less in order to love him more.

  That wasn’t Klaus’s fault, it was mine, hindsight is a beautiful thing, but at the time, I still wasn’t prepared for the snowstorm that was about to hit.

  Klaus had found some Chicago contacts and emailed them across even though we weren’t talking. In fact, he kept emailing me. Why it is guys have this radar? Almost the second you are feeling good and happier without them, they sense it and have to get in contact with you just to fuck it all up again for you.

  I ignored him, I ignored his emails and called my friends. They were delighted; the conversations went like this . . .

  ‘OK, so you need to go to Chicago, which is AMAZING, and totally not talk to him, it will drive him wild! He will go crazy and miss you and realise what a mistake he h
as made.’

  ‘Yeah, totally, if you ignore him, he will be gutted and in your head you can be like, it’s OK, I will talk to him when I’m back at Christmas, but don’t let him know that, let him suffer.’

  ‘Oh my gosh, if you ignore him for three months, he will hate it, nothing a man hates more than being ignored.’

  ‘Oh my God Luisa, you are totally gonna fall in love with an American who will think you are adorable and Klaus will be soooo jealous!’

  ‘Stay strong Luisa, you can do it! You can do it for all of us!!’

  So I ignored most of his emails, especially his last one – I’m so proud of you – and got on with my plans.

  My first night in Chicago I rocked up at this open mic night, maybe 12 people sat on sofas and chairs watching the acts perform, and the MC, a guy called Brian, who was lovely but way geekier in real life than his hot profile picture suggested, was beaming to see me, he was lovely and so welcoming. I met another comic called Atta, who was a huge Doctor Who fan, was a virgin and wore corduroy trousers. These two were not quite the American romance fairy tale that I had in mind, but they were gorgeous human beings who took excellent care of me.

  As I watched from the back, the act on stage got out his toothbrush and started brushing his teeth. I howled, this was weird and awful, and very American. It was not the American dream as I knew it, if anything, watching this man brush his teeth on stage was the opposite of my vision of the American Dream whilst simultaneously being very American: nut bags, just complete nut bags.

  And as I sat in this room of 12 people with the geekiest male comedians who kept saying ‘all right guvnor’ and asking me Doctor Who questions, I thought about leaving Klaus behind. I didn’t need him any more. Here I was watching an old man brush his teeth on stage. I felt excited, I felt happy and excited, that I was somewhere, that I had come on my own and I was part of a comedy scene, in its perfectly backward form.