After last week, it has become increasingly clear that Twitter/X is a binfire that no longer offers the least benefit whatsoever. It’s awash with hate speech and is now playing an active role in the rise of totalitarianism across the world, and my old arguments of “Oh, but I built up a decent-sized audience there and it might be advantageous to my career to stay” sound increasingly thin. I rarely see anything tangible coming my way out of it – people actually booking tickets when I post a link to shows, for instance, which I do see when I post on Instagram – as it’s become infested with bots, and a lot of my target audience are also leaving. So in the near future I’ll be deactivating my account and settling on Instagram, Substack and Bluesky as the places where I put stuff online. As such, I thought I might revisit some of the better stories I used Twitter to tell and retell them here, so they can exist in a place where I’m actually enjoying building an audience.

This week it’s the story of the Zoom corporate gig I was booked to do in lockdown in which the client ended up interrupting what I was doing and asking me to do something else, to which I responded by playing “Happy Birthday” on the clarinet and hanging up. This gig came to embody my own personal nadir of everything lockdown represented. Apologies to anyone who’s already read this story, although I have rewritten it for this medium.

I was booked to do half an hour of comedy over Zoom for the furloughed employees of a financial tech company. My agent told me she knew I wasn’t a big fan of corporate gigs (who is?), but she wanted to do what she could to help me get through lockdown, and she thought this would be a simple, easy job I wouldn’t need to stress about. The boss of this company just wanted to put together an hour of online entertainment for his staff on a Friday afternoon to help keep their spirits up through such a weird time. All I needed to do was provide them with a good time. Surely I could do that? I was sent some instructions from the client for things he thought would get big laughs from his staff – “Make fun of Harry for his haircut,” the instructions read, “and for Phil Booth [NB I have changed the names] for his lack of one!” I took this to mean that Phil Booth was bald, and that I was being asked to make fun of his inability to have a haircut.

The client also specifically asked me to “do my Star Wars routine.” This was a routine I had written for a specialist geek culture comedy night called Dear Harry/Spock, in which comedians wrote fan-fiction-themed routines about specific fandoms. The routine I had written was very specifically about Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker, and required in-depth knowledge of that film in order for people to understand it. Nevertheless, the reason the client knew about it was because I had filmed the routine and put it online and it had done decent numbers, so I assumed he had watched it and gauged that it met his requirements. “Quite a few of my staff will really love it!” he said. It sounded like a nice office of nerdy film types who perhaps enjoyed in-depth chats about the latest movies.

I was also told that all the employees were being sent a hamper containing Champagne and chocolate biscuits to enjoy during the performance. I decided to incorporate this into my act so that I had one as well, so I went out and bought a bottle of Champagne, a hamper and some chocolate biscuits.

Although these instructions painted a picture of a friendly, relaxed group and an enjoyable gig, I was still very wary of this booking. My approach to comedy has always revolved around getting things wrong, being stupid, messing up, making mistakes, being silly. That intention often gets lost in corporate contexts anyway, where people are expecting something more slick and professional, and I feared that would be doubly the case over Zoom, where it’s so hard to gauge intention and timing and the like. How could I channel the essence of my comedy in this context without it just looking like everything I had planned to do was genuinely going wrong?

My housemate Katy came up with a brilliant idea – that I pretend to be a children’s entertainer who had been booked in error, thereby setting up a silly, ridiculous, goofy tone right from the start so that everything that followed would look deliberate rather than like I was just getting things wrong.

I thought this was a great, simple, clear premise, so I set about writing a bespoke half-hour routine in which I played a character called Mr Boingo, who was dressed in a hot dog costume and top hat. I set about incorporating all the client’s instructions too, to make them feel like they were getting something truly unique. There was going to be a great bit where I would ask where Phil Booth’s hair was, and make everyone search their homes for Phil Booth’s hair, like those Zoom scavenger hunts we all did in the early days of lockdown, where everyone had to find a specific item in the confines of their home.

Eventually I would find Phil Booth’s hair (a wig) under my desk, and become upset and start crying because I didn’t understand how it had got there. Then I would stick my head into my hamper and come out transformed into a Wacky Baby in a basket, like so:

I had so many crazy ideas which I knew people would really enjoy – this half hour would fly by!

I joined the Zoom link I’d been sent 20 minutes before the gig so I could run the premise past the client and ask for his co-operation with it – I thought it would be great if he played along with the conceit in order to make it feel more playful. Perhaps he could introduce me by saying “And here’s our comedian!” so that I could do a spit-take and go “COMEDIAN???? Buh-buh-but I thought this was a birthday party! Boi-oi-oi-oi-oiiinnnggggg!”, which I thought would get a huge laugh. I sat in the Zoom waiting room for 19 minutes in my hot dog costume and top hat, wondering what was going on. At one minute before the gig start time, the client called me to ask where the hell I was. He had sent me the wrong Zoom link. He said “Right, get on this other link immediately, it’s about to start!”

Very quickly, I said “By the way, I’m going to pretend to be a children’s entertainer called Mr Boingo who’s been booked in error – would you be able to go along with it and pretend to be annoyed at the mix-up?”

“What?” he said, clearly irritated.

“I just think it’ll help sell it as a really fun interactive, bespoke setpiece if you act like it’s all genuinely part of the plan. So if you go along with it and pretend to be annoyed,” I said.

“Why would I be annoyed with what you had prepared for us?” Said the client. “Why would you prepare something that would annoy me?”

“It’s going to be funny,” I said.

“But I don’t understand why it would be funny for you to do something that would make me annoyed,” said the client.

“Look, don’t worry about it. It was just an idea,” I said, and joined the correct Zoom link. This was the first point at which the client could see that I was dressed as a hot dog. In the corner of the Zoom gallery, I saw his expression harden.

“Hello everyone, it’s me, Mr Boingo! Where’s the birthday boy?” I shouted. Confusion reigned. There was utter silence. “Oh no, I’ve been booked in error!” I ploughed on. “I thought this was a birthday party! Can you all say Hello, Mr Boingo?” After a pause that felt like it lasted nearly a minute, about two people said “Hello, Mr Boingo.”

“I could barely hear that, let’s try it again!” I said. About three people did it this time. “Have you all got your hampers?” I said. My plan was to get someone to pass me a hamper “through” their webcam so that I could then reveal mine, and then pretend I had stolen their Champagne and biscuits, in a setpiece that would really cement Mr Boingo’s character as a cheeky agent of mischief.

“What hampers?” said one of them.

“I thought you had hampers with Champagne and biscuits in them,” I said. Silence. I caught the client’s eye in his Zoom window, and he urgently gave me a “Kill” gesture. Ah, I thought. He decided not to buy everyone Champagne and biscuits after all.

“I’m drinking some vodka if that helps,” said one of the other people on the call – I found this depressing as it was 4pm. I held up my hamper. “Well I’ve got a hamper of Champagne,” I said. Silence. I could now see that, separated from the idea of my cheekily stealing the Champagne from one of them, there was nothing particularly funny about this. If anything, it possibly made me look quite unprofessional, as though I had just decided to get loads of booze in to keep me going through my performance. I decided to move on to my Phil Booth’s hair routine, which was a surefire slam dunk.

“Nice haircut, Harry!” I said. This got a laugh, thank God. “Now where’s Phil Booth?”

“Here I am!” said a man with long hair.

“Oh, you’ve got long hair,” I said, my heart plummeting into my stomach.

“Yeah, everyone keeps saying I need a haircut,” said Phil Booth.

“Ah.” I said. “Right, I see what’s happened here.” There was another agonising pause as I tried to think. I had intended the Phil Booth’s hair routine to fill a good few minutes.

Despite it no longer making sense, I asked everyone to search their homes for Phil Booth’s hair. Nobody did. I eventually held up a wig and pretended to cry. “How did this get here?” I sobbed.

“Do your Star Wars routine,” said the client, clearly pissed off at this point. I ignored him, and decided to press onto my Wacky Baby bit.

I stuck my head into the hamper and transformed into the Wacky Baby. A couple of people on the call went “Urgh.” I tried to play peek-a-boo with one of them, so he went and got his eight-year-old daughter and brought her onto the call to play peek-a-boo with me. It went on for a while, during which time I was painfully aware of the fact that I was being paid several hundred pounds to entertain the adults on this call, yet had somehow ended up playing a game for babies with an eight-year-old girl. I tried to work out whether what I was doing was ironic, but it didn’t feel ironic. If anything, it felt like the eight-year-old girl felt sorry for me and was trying not to hurt my feelings.

The middle of this gig is a blur. I think I fell back on some old stand-up routines, but I don’t think they went very well. About twenty-five minutes in, I noticed that one guy had a cartoon picture of a school classroom as his Zoom background. I was desperate for anything I could latch onto at this point, and it struck me as a funny thing to have as a background, so I jumped on it. “Why’ve you got that Zoom background?” I asked.

“Well, I quite like classrooms,” he replied.

“Why, do you hang out in a lot of classrooms?” I asked, not really thinking about how that sounds.

“What do you mean by that?” he said, defensively. There was suddenly a weird, tense atmosphere (there was a weird, tense atmosphere already, to be fair). I froze. Had it sounded like I had accused him of being a paedophile? If there was the slightest risk of anyone on this call thinking I was accusing him of being a paedophile, I needed to assuage it. Mind you, if actually nobody on this call was thinking that, then maybe saying “I’m not saying you’re a paedophile” would be the worst thing I could possibly do. I realised I hadn’t said anything in about twenty seconds, which was making things much worse. I tried desperately to think of some other reason why someone might be in a classroom a lot. Why had my brain gone straight to him being a paedophile? Stupid OCD. Eventually, I had it – the perfect reason to be in a classroom, the most obvious reason in the world!

“Are you a teacher?” I asked.

“No, I work for a fintech company,” he replied.

“Oh yes, the one I’m doing this corporate gig for,” I said. Everyone was silent again. “I don’t think you’re a paedophile,” I said, eventually. The client interrupted me again.

“Do your Star Wars routine,” he said.

“Ok, who likes Star Wars?” I crowed. Silence.

“It’s ok,” someone said.

“No big Star Wars fans here?”

“It’s alright,” said someone else.

“Well who’s seen Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalkwer?” Silence. “OK, this routine doesn’t really work unless you’ve seen Episode IX,” I said.

“I thought it was just about Star Wars generally,” said the client. “I didn’t watch the video.”

“But your staff are saying they don’t even like Star Wars very much,” I pointed out.

“Greg quite likes it, but he’s ill today,” said someone else on the call, trying to help me out.

It was coming up to half an hour now, so I found the two people who’d been enjoying it the most and asked them to sing Happy Birthday to me in Dutch (I can’t remember why Dutch – maybe they were Dutch?) I played along on the clarinet, which I was keeping just out of shot for emergencies (and this sure was one), and then waved goodbye and hung up.

As soon as I ended the call, I heard Katy burst out laughing immediately outside my bedroom door. She had been listening to the entire thing. As I left my room she started clapping and I burst into tears.

In between bouts of sobbing I said “I spent nearly ten years getting good at a particular way of doing things and a particular way of making stuff, but I can’t do it any more. It’s all gone and now I’m just a stupid person being stupid in their bedroom, and it’s not funny any more.” She disagreed. She said it was the funniest thing she had ever heard. That cheered me up a bit. There had been about thirty people on the call. Maybe for every thirty people who think what you’re doing is awful, there’ll be one person who thinks it’s great. Maybe that’s how you find your audience. By pissing off 30 people at a time.

I swore off Zoom gigs after that. In the testimonial he posted on social media after the gig, the client said “Joz Norris entertained our staff with his hilarious sketches and characters! He gave our team some great things to smile about!” Smile, I noted, not laugh. There was also the unspoken insinuation that the thing I had given them to smile about was my own misery, but I guess I would have to take it. Still got paid, as well. Nice clients, really, would recommend.

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – Renowned Shropshire novelist Christopher Bliss (the creation of character comedian Rob Carter) has released part 1 of his audacious soap opera Bangmouth Village, and it’s immediately become one of my favourite new short comedy things that I’ve seen in ages. Apparently it’s going to be 3 episodes long, but I would genuinely watch hours of this.

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – I had the pleasure of seeing Ada Player and Bron Waugh’s The Origin Of Love for the second time this week, which I think is going to be one of the most exciting debut shows next year, and the “Big House” sketch really makes me laugh.

Book Of The Week – I’m still on Circling The Sun by Paula McLain, which so far has absolutely nothing to do with Amelia Earheart, contrary to my assumptions going in. There’s not even been a single aeroplane yet, but it is a nice story about a woman growing up in Kenya at the start of the 20th century and I’m enjoying it.

Album Of The Week – True by Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks. This latest album by the former Yes frontman really should be terrible. Look at the cover. Look at the name of his backing band. This has “Worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life” all over it. What a surprise, then, that it’s really good and stands up perfectly well alongside classic Yes albums. This is easily the best Yes-adjacent album in over a decade.

Film Of The Week – I watched Juror #2 and Heretic this week, and neither of them were really good enough to whole-heartedly recommend, but both were interesting and not terrible, so I’ll give them both a shout-out. Both have really interesting premises – a quasi-remake of 12 Angry Men where one of the jurors actually did it, and a horror movie that’s mostly just a conversation about faith – but neither of them quite stick the landing, in my opinion. Enjoyed them both though!

That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it!

Also, a reminder that we’re still crowdfunding for my sitcom pilot The Happiness Chain, starring Roisin O’Mahony, Huge Davies, Rosalie Minnitt, Phil Ellis and Donna Preston! We’ve got 2 weeks to go and are very close to our target but could still do with your support, so if you feel like donating, or sending the project to friends who you think might like to support, we’d be ever so grateful!

Thanks so much for reading, and take care until next time,

Joz xx

PS This week’s live music highlight – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the O2:

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