Ed Night is taking his latest stand-up show The Plunge on tour from next month, having attracted a slew of great reviews at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Here he shares some of his most memorable gigs… 

First gig

A music open mic in North London on a Sunday night. Everyone else on the bill apart from me and my pal (who was also doing stand-up for the first time) was doing music. I was on after a seven or eight minute original guitar ballad that was all about the heart being like a vending machine because it will give emotions to anyone but it gets stuck sometimes or something like that. 

I found out afterwards that there actually was a comedy open mic in that room but on Monday nights. So I went there and it was somehow even worse and harder to play. I ended up making the three-hour return trip there to eat shit on a great many Mondays.

Worst gig

Let me take you back. It’s December 2023 and I’m booked to perform at a work Christmas do. Everyone involved in planning seems nice. Details for the night come through and it’s at a bar in Clapham. Turn up, it’s a pretty lively place - normal party in a bar stuff, loud music, drink flowing, lights low (some flashing or spinning).

 I’m thinking: ‘Right, there must be a separate quiet room for anyone who wants to leave the party and watch a bit of comedy for half an hour.’ I walk in, they hand me a wireless mic immediately, stop the music, direct all the partygoers’ attention to me stood in the doorway, and say, ‘Start whenever you like.’

I do my opener to complete silence - which is mad because normally when you do a joke and it gets nothing, the baseline for the crowd is quiet and you’ve simply failed to move them enough to change their audio output level. But to reduce a jumping Christmas party to silence is a crazy bit of business - and then my mic runs out of battery and everyone sort of slowly turns back to their conversations. 

I have a quick chat with the organisers and we decide that it’s only fair that I try and carry on my set without the mic. I spend the next 30 minutes walking up to individual groups and interrupting their conversations to do one-on-one bits or crowdwork like a close up magician.

 Tapping the chief financial officer on the shoulder and asking him what he does for a living. Explaining why I’m there. 

I wrote one joke specific to Christmas and their company:

‘Christ was sort of like a recruiter…’

‘We’re not a recruitment company.’

‘Oh. I was told you were.’

‘Well we’re not.’

I could fill this Q&A dozens of times over with my worst gigs but I’ve chosen this one because normally when it all goes wrong I think: ‘There was a world where I could’ve stormed that.’ Didn’t beat myself up too much for this one.

Gig that taught me the biggest lesson

Watch stopped on stage while I was bombing (HARD). Looked at it and didn’t realise, I thought time just felt slow because of how excruciating it was. Like when it feels like you’ve been on a treadmill for ages but only a few seconds have passed.

So I stayed on and guessed how long was left. Overran by about 10 minutes while stinking up the place the whole time. 

Always ask for a light.

Strangest audience member

For my debut hour at the Fringe I did the last Monday - the Monday after the last weekend of the festival where it’s all over really but some shows are still on. There was barely anything on in my venue and in fact the staff were sort of dismantling it around me, and I had to leave an end of Fringe dinner with loads of friends to do the show so I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. 

There weren’t many in the audience but there was a young lad in the front row who was gurning like crazy and soon admitted to us that he’d taken a massive pill shortly before he came in. I ended up talking to him a lot. Very pleasant, very excited to be there. 

Every ten minutes or so, he reached into his pocket, fished out a handful of change and tried to tip me while I was on stage. He wasn’t disruptive or malicious, just trying to do what he felt was right. I thought ‘fuck it, if the party’s not over for him then it’s not over for me’, and we had one of the best shows of the run.

Worst heckler

Can’t really remember many. Favourite is probably the guy on a stag do at the Cardiff Glee who threw the head of his chicken outfit at me (high-end outfit, so the head was heavy) and then immediately shouted: ‘Give me my fucking head back’ as if I’d wrenched it off him.

• Ed Night: The Purge kicks off its UK tour at the Lowry in Salford on May 7. Tour dates