Louis CK bombs in Dublin

The comic, who supported Ricky Gervais in New York, said his first show at the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival in Dublin was ‘the worst set I've had in years’.

The gig came before a three-week run at London’s Soho Theatre, starting tonight, and a brief appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe intended to help him crack the British scene.

But even though he is a respected name in the States – with a short-lived, but cult favourite HBO sitcom to his name and a role in Gervais’ next movie This Side Of The Truth – the people of Dublin proved a tougher audience.

Towards the end of his set on Thursday night, a heckler yelled out: ‘You’re a loser!’ and CK replied simply: ‘Yes, sir. I am.

The comic detailed his humiliation in a brutally honest post on his website.

He wrote: ‘Holy nigger tits did they hate me. I did half an hour. Fifteen minutes in people were just chatting like I wasn't there.

‘I felt awful. That’s part of bombing. I walked away with my head spinning, “This is a nightmare. They’re going to hate me in London too. I’m over here for a fucking month!”

‘For bombing, I bombed well. For the first ten minutes or so, I lost my composure, I gave them my timing and had salt in my eyes and throat. But then I slowly pulled back on the stick and righted things… But the show didn’t get better. It was a very strange sensation that I have NEVER experienced.

‘Usually, bombing is… a spiral. They don’t like you, so you lose confidence so you start sputtering and doing badly so they don’t like you so you lose confidence and down and down and down.

‘But this was different. Because I recovered, I pulled out of the spiral, which is something that I can do just from sheer experience. I’ve been there a million times. But every time I’ve pulled out of the spiral, I’ve been able to take the audience with me. In this case, I came out of it, felt great, and yet they still hated me. It was strange.’

After the show, CK called Gervais to tell him how awful the gig was, ‘and he cackled and screamed in delight’.

However, the next day, CK said he felt better about the experience, writing: ‘Bombing is a pure positive. Because it’s a rare experience and it’s a great education. Every great show, when you kill, is pretty much like any other great show. But every time you bomb, it is completely unique. They stay with you, the bad sets, like Lyme disease or herpes. So I thank the people of Dublin for that.’

He said he may have been getting lazy as he had grown used to touring his own shows to people who had come to specifically see him, so got a rude awakening when confronted with a crowd who had mainly come to see the headliner, heart-throb Dublin-based comic Des Bishop,

‘Maybe [the audiences] been carrying me a bit. I can’t let that happen,’ he said.

Luckily CK said his second show in Dublin – was ‘unbelievably great’, writing: ‘Well, thank fucking dirty Christ on the cross. I’m still funny.’

‘I never use the audience as an excuse but tonight’s audience was decidedly different. And better. For me anyway. They were grown-ups.’

Read his full post on his official website.

Published: 29 Jul 2008