A New York Comedy of Errors

It should be common sense - don't buy tickets off random blokes in the street.

Passing through Times Square a random bloke approaches us and starts talking about comedy and comedians. We should ignore him and walk on. Instead we chat a little. He tells us how he's learnt the word "bladdered" recently as a euphemism for being drunk. I point out to where it says the same word on my rucksack. It's a nice coincidence.

He tells us his name is Jason and he's promoting the New York Comedy Club. We can go if we want. He has some VIP tickets that will get us in for $20 between us, $14 off the normal price. It'll be a 2 drink minimum but they'll only be $5 each. And 2 for 1 after the gig.

Now this is the strange part.

It's our first night in New York, we have no plans. Rather than saying no thanks, we give the chap $20 in exchange for a VIP ticket. We move on.

Back at the hotel I pretty much manage to convince myself the whole thing is a scam. I've seen this sort of thing on The Real Hustle. I then do the second stupid thing. There's instructions on the "ticket" which say that rather than just turning up you should phone ahead to make a reservation. Jason had never mentioned this.

So I phone the number from my mobile. It seems to be the right place but I have to go through one of those automated menu systems before I get an option to go through to make a reservation. But I just get a recorded message. I try again a few more times with no luck. Later I find that this has cost me a further £10 due to the high cost of making mobile calls from the USA. Grrrr.

We decide to go to the club regardless. In for a penny, in for a pound. We get there it looks very closed and shut. We figure we're too early (it's about nine o'clock) and so we find a nearby bar. An Irish bar, with authentic sawdust on the floor. Later we go back to the club and then bizarrely, it's open! And even more bizarrely we get let in with our "ticket" (though the door price does seem to be $10 per head rather than the $17 we'd been led to expect).

We go in, and are led to a table. An act is on. She's not great, but it's early in the night and so who cares. The waitress comes to take our drink orders (making us order our second drink at the same time). Drinks arrive.

The act is rubbish. So is the next one. And the next one. Etc. There are probably about 15 on through the evening and none are great. Three made us laugh quite a lot but the rest were awful. Several died on stage. One of them was a random girl singing songs (not even ones that were supposed to be funny). I can honestly say it's the worst night of comedy I've ever seen. Bobby Davro is preferable.

On the way out we pay for our drinks. These came to $40 - twice what we were expecting. Maybe we ordered the wrong kind of beer.

The plus side is that we have a fantastic laugh for days afterwards about how unbelievably crap and a rip-off the whole thing was.

So maybe it worked out fine in the end.