Forget the Apollo, Mark Watson racks up a very unusual gig

He has a reputation for performing comedy in some unusual places, but Mark Watson last night found himself doing a gig in one of the strangest situations yet: queuing for his Covid jab.

The stand-up unexpectedly found himself performing via Zoom from outside a vaccination centre in Walthamstow, north-east London, after spending longer than he expected in line.

He was closing the bill of the virtual gig run by Always Be Comedy, but when he received notice that his local site was offering inoculations to all-comers he decided to chance it.

However, as his stage time approached and he realised he wouldn’t be done in time, the 41-year-old stand-up piggybacked on to the wifi from a nearby branch of NatWest and performed his set.

‘If there’s one thing I’m noted for it’s doing gigs in weird situations,’ he told the virtual audience. ‘But this is top five.’

He later described the performance as ‘an almost embarrassingly on-brand moment of "backs to the wall" comedy – except there wasn’t a wall’.

He explained: ‘I hadn’t expected to be in a queue  and there was no way of predicting how long it would be. But as 9pm drew closer it became grimly obvious in a sort of sitcom way that I’d be ushered in for the jab at the exact moment I was meant to take the Always Be Comedy "stage".

‘And that’s how I came to be where no comic wants to be: on a bench, circled by possible ill-wishers, draining NatWest’s free wifi to deliver a set (in a show where reputation-wise I shouldn’t have technically been headlining).

‘The bank and I have had our differences but they have my gratitude. As do James and Always Be Comedy for being part of the devil-may-care approach to online comedy which has been a memorable motif of these times.’

James is the gig’s promoter, James Gill, who said: ‘When Mark said he was heading off for his jab, I just figured everything would be absolutely fine. As our What’s App exchanges continued deep into the gig, I realised this may not be the case.

‘Kudos to Mark – to take your laptop to the vaccination centre on the off-chance the queue takes too long is next-level improv. And, as he said, that’s surely a new record for from-jab-to-gig.’

Father Ted star Ardal O’Hanlon was on before Watson, and extended his set to cover the gap. ‘Asking one of the greatest comedians of his generation if he wouldn’t mind padding a bit because the next act is still getting his jab was an odd one,’ Gill said.

He added that the unusual experience is ‘why live comedy is the greatest thing on the planet – and I maintain that applies to online shows. You can’t beat the sheer chaos and unpredictability of it all.

‘We’ve had some wonderfully chaotic nights across 10 years of Always Be Comedy, and we always look to embrace the madness. That said, what happened with Ardal and Mark has to be our new No1.’

Published: 1 Apr 2021