BiggaKultcha
The view from the cheap seats
Alison: You know, Phil, when I look back at last week’s BettaKultcha, I have to get one big gripe out of the way.
Phil: The cup and spoon thing? I know, when will Ivor give it up!
Alison: No, much more important. Alcohol. What the hell was going on with that Pinot Grigio? Town Hall, two bars, you ask for a bottle of Pinot and it’s 250ml! That’s not a bottle, that’s a gulp. Back to front asking for ten bottles and three glasses. And then handed over £33.70. I remember the amount …
Phil: Clearly. the figure is seared on your memory.
Alison: Wouldn’t have minded so much if it was decent…
Phil: Tasted like like the juice from a tin of cling peaches, I know. And warm too. Well at least it was by the time I got round to swigging that last little bottle half way back to Beeston. Suppose it had been in my back pocket for twenty minutes.
Alison: So, that was a positive start Phil… shouldn’t we have begun with something shocking and untrue, to grab attention? That was the advice from one of the presenters.
Phil: What, like “Next year there will be no beer at Bettakultcha!”
Alison: Well Phil, that certainly has shock value. It grabbed my attention.
Phil: Or how about, “From now on there shall be no more swearing at Bettakultcha!” …did you notice how moderate the language was last Wednesday, Ali. Absolutely no bleedin’ swearing.
Alison: Hmm I may have counted a couple of f words that slipped out but no other dodgy letters at all. Is that what people mean when they mutter about the ‘mainstream’? I know Darren Scotland has a good post on all that mainstream nonsense.
Phil: Don’t swear in front of the VIP’s (very important presenters), you mean?
Alison: Maybe!
Phil: I quite liked Tom Riordan’s presentation, by the way. Good way to kick things off … pretty sure he nicked a joke or two from me though. I think I just outed the Chief Exec of Leeds City Council as a Tweet Thief, Alison … I’m fearless.
Alison: Positively heroic, Phil, no wonder all those cowardly journalist types fear your name … ahem … so, which other talks did you enjoy most? I like the funny and quirky ones so loved Kate’s of course … pet psychics – who knew? And the cheese bloke, Nick. I mean … cheese, what’s not to love? But it was a bit low on the laughs quota this time didn’t you think?
Phil: You know I have a gift too, Alison, though I rarely mention it. I can read the mind of Bonsai plants … it’s all small talk really.
Alison: Yes, I can quite understand why Bonsai chose you as their psychic spokesman
Phil: You know something else I noticed … not only light on the funnies, it was a bit deficient in the adult department.
Alison: Ha, I think the venue seemed to mean ‘no smut, this is the Town Hall’… 16 presenters stood in front of the biggest organ most of us have ever seen, and said not, err, a dicky bird. That phrase ‘organ recital’ could signify all kinds of events.
Phil: Well, it might to you!
Alison: We can all dream, Phil …
Phil: Funny thing was Ivor gave us a trigger warning (like Channel 4 used to have a warning triangle – Ed’s note) about a presenter having knob pictures. Mind you, I was too far away to be offended by much on the screen … I thought it was a naked man holding a goldfish bowl on his lap. I don’t know why I thought that but let’s leave that aside, we are not here to talk about my idiosyncrasies. Not when there’s Ivor on stage.
Alison: I did like Ivor’s Britney microphone by the way. Although I think Maria could have made even better use of it. Great finish to the formal presentations having a Maria Millionaire work-out to River Deep Mountain High!
Phil: Wasn’t there a fat sweat joke? I’m sure I saw a tweet about that … trust me to miss it.
Alison: You missed it because you were the only person in the room still sat down, Phil … what’s wrong with you?
Phil: I don’t do standing at public events. I’m trying to be kind to the people behind me. Feel terribly self-conscious about my height disadvantage.
Alison: I think you just won’t have fun … go on, tell us what your favourite presentation was.
Phil: I liked Matt Edgar’s on Mount Saint Mary’s …
Alison: See! Serious.
Phil: Well, I liked Mike’s on chocolate too. I had some of the salty caramel stuff he was handing out, bloody brilliant … I can do frivolous.
Alison: The ones that wind me up are the ‘ aren’t kids brilliant?’ ones. My children are fab obviously, but they’d be the first to say that they can’t handle adults claiming to be down with the kids. Get on a school bus at chucking-out time and see how positive you feel then!
Phil: There’s a lot of that worthy stuff, wonder why? Perhaps you should do a presentation standing up for the cynics? Anyway, we’re beginning to sound negative, which is ridiculous given that we both go to pretty much all the Leeds BKs.
Alison: Yeah I know. It’s like a marriage … I still love BettaKultcha, but the sex is just getting a bit samey. How do we inject the fun and romance back in? I know I’ve never been much use at sticking at relationships but lots of people have said the same. You love it when you first go to BettaKultcha then after a while you start to see the same people, the same themes. And the other thing is, it seems to be drifting from its amateur roots and becoming a bit too swish and sophisticated. Like the sex is technically accomplished but are we losing the sweaty, dirty passion of it?
Phil: Hmm, technically accomplished sex is better than no sex … speaking for myself, naturally. I think I know what you mean though. Bettakultcha used to be a passionate, drunken fumble with a total stranger down a dark and dangerous alley, but now you’ve booked into a posh hotel for your anniversary, had a delightful meal, shared an evening of intelligent conversation and are retiring to clean sheets and a nice cuddle.
Alison: Something like that, Phil … something.
Phil: Speaking of which, I’m not so hot on motivational speakers. All that Californian bollocks about focusing on your strengths and grabbing life by the proverbials. Who wants someone whooping at you when you’re struggling to perform?
Alison: Ha! Got an image of someone with a megaphone standing at the end of the bed. That’s going to be off-putting at best.
Phil: I’d just like to point out to readers neither of us are actually in bed! That was just a metaphorical image.
Alison: To be fair though, I usually find the motivational speakers give me chance to catch up on Twitter comments. If you liked all the presentations, you wouldn’t get to see the comments til later.
Phil: They usually inspire me to go and relieve my bladder. As far as I can tell motivational speakers simply motivate other motivational speakers to go away and speak more motivationally … it’s like one massive circle jerk but where there’s constant arousal but no chance of release …
Alison: Charming image Phil. Wouldn’t have got away with that in the Town Hall.
Phil: One cannot like everything, Alison.
Alison: True. I listened to Rich and Ivor’s audio they recorded before the start and I think Ivor is right to stress the ‘no pitches’ bit. What I can’t quite get my head round is that quite a few presenters are members of the Professional Speakers Association or are self-employed in a related role. So for some people being up there is actually pitching themselves. How should BettaKultcha handle that?
Phil: Is that a problem? Maybe it’s about getting a balance and ensuring that there are always enough new people on the bill. Though size and prominence of the venue does exert a selection pressure. The bigger the venue the bigger the confidence needed to cope?
Alison: Yeah, there is a risk that people don’t volunteer because they don’t feel competent to stand up in that company. Much though I loved all the random slide challenges this time, one of the reasons I didn’t volunteer myself was because Silky and Patrick were, and amateur ‘just trying to be’ comics like me are never going to be as good.
Phil: Is there an argument for doing an annual Town Hall event as a kind of showpiece but the business as usual is the Brudenell and other much smaller venues where preference is always given to newcomers?
Alison: I think there probably is. But anyway, that’s not our problem, that’s up to Ivor and Richard … our problem is getting tickets for the next Bettakultcha at the Brudenell … do you reckon they’ll let us in after this?
Tags: Bettakultcha, leeds, leeds town hall
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I can hear you at the back – Kirby and Pilling! There’ll be double detention for not paying the correct reverence to Bettakultcha!
I take on your points about the almost self selection of the presenters, the stage at Leeds Town Hall will always attract a certain type of speaker and I’m not sure how to combat that other than force people to talk promoted by a big stick because we need to fill a quota. Seems a little unfair.
We really do want to keep to our roots which is why Bettakultcha is going back to the Brudenell where the audience is more intimate, which can be just as scary (you can see the white’s of their eyes!).
Pitching is a tricky thing too, I never know what the presenters are going to say, sometimes that a good job too. We make it clear that there’s a no pitching rule, but just by being on the stage and having loads of people tweet about your talk there’s a pitching element. Alison as a very accomplished Bettakultcha presenter, you know all about that. It’s a very very fine line but I think we just about have it nailed.
The great thing about Bettakultcha for me is that there’s something for everyone, so for every boring one there’s something else to tickle your fancy. I’m sure that some of the ones you weren’t so keen on were favourites of others. You can’t please everyone, but we try to please as many as possible.
That’s very fair, Rich. I’d be the first to say that whilst I’m not going to use BK to make money, the chance to be up on stage is not entirely altruistic. I get a lot out of it personally and as an opportunity to put some amateur skills into practice.
And yes I’m always fascinated why ones I love, others don’t necessarily and vice versa.
But we thought it might be in the spirit of BK disruptiveness to chuck the odd grenade into the debate!
Looking forward to the next one….!
Haha! These conversational pieces are really clever – superficially witty and informal but carrying valid and honest insights underneath.
Firstly, let me say that I concur with pretty much everything you’ve covered in your review (apart from the wine episode of which I have no first hand experience) and I have reflected deeply on some of the issues you mention since the event. I was aware of the potential inhibitions that the Town Hall would bully into our performers long before we did the gig (stories of famous comedians dying on their arse in the venue were hastily told to me by concerned people) and I did attempt to overcome some of them with my introductory speech, hence the “how the hell did this happen?” declamation and punk analogy. I also hoped that my story of Sid Vicious telling me to “Fuck off” would break some of the formality and give licence to the presenters to relax and swear if they wanted to. Remember too my gentle ribbing of Tom Riordan so that he ‘didn’t get ideas above his station’. No really, did you think we just walked into the venue without contemplating any of these issues?
As far as I can discern from the feedback, the Town Hall did its job – it put BettaKultcha on the cultural map of Leeds after we sold it out and made a statement of intent. OK, the statement was just, ‘hey, we may be upstarts and iconoclasts but we’re here in your sacred place!’ At least it’s a start.
And let’s not forget the Town Hall side of the bargain; they invited us in for a reason. They wanted to get a different type of audience to come to the Town Hall and change the perception of it as a venue. In terms of that remit, I think we did exactly that and I’m proud of the collaboration it demonstrated between the disparate organisations, which is kind of the whole point of what BettaKultcha is about.
What struck me about the audience though was that nearly half of them were there for the first time. This tells me that we have barely scratched the surface of our potential audience. BettaKultcha can still grow, the concern is how do we handle that growth? Incidentally, the David Price piano improvisation accompanying the random slide challenges was organised an hour before it actually happened, so the ‘making it up as we go along’ aspect of BettaKultcha is still alive and well.
You’re right though, the Town Hall is a premiere BettaKultcha event to be held once or maybe twice a year with a curated presenter list (if they invite us back, of course). It’s different to all the other events we host. To continue the punk parallel, this will give some kind of structure to the BettaKultcha format – at smaller venues we have the Sex Pistols irreverent, wrecking ball mayhem type gig and at the Town Hall we have the more thoughtful, defiant Clash stadium-event type gig …
Thanks for your honest insights though, it’s just what we need.
Actually I think people will relax into the town hall and maybe get less reverential as they get used to it. And we should use it, that’s what it’s for!
We have to sort that bar out though. Think we should have a word.
Fabulous, I cam imagine you two in bed with your night hats on and your night caps in hand bickering about Bettakultcha!
For the record, I definitely said Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckety fuck. There I did it again. There is no stopping me! Also, “small talk” Phil you comedy genius
Re the talks – Bettakultcha prides itself on the randomness of the event – Ivor and Richard will by now have a general feel for the regular presenters and what they might get up to on stage, but they never know for sure what we’ll talk about. It’s an opportunity for anyone to have a go and talk about anything they like for 5min, with the result that there are some talks you’ll love and some you won’t. I would agree that the funny ones are usally the ones that float my boat but I know plenty of other people who like the more serious or worthy discussions. If there is a big vote in favour of funny then maybe Bettakabaret should make a come back to cater for that?
Re pitching – I once saw Richard give a pitch warning to a presenter in Bradford because he mentioned he was a commercial lawyer. But the same has not been applied to someone who mentions they’re a presenter or a fashion blogger or something else in a creative vein. For the record, I think it’s fine to say what you do (even if you’re a commercial lawyer) as it is not a pitch as such. If you’re talking about something you’re passionate about, it may well overlap into your day job. A tricky one to police.
I never said I was objective. And I also explicitly referred to the fact that nobody was in bed during the writing of that dialogue … it was just a bit of fun (not that much fun!)
Everybody knows I hate motivational stuff – I hardly hide the fact – and we were all having a good old chuckle in the pub beforehand guessing the exact quantity of uplift on offer. That’s part of the fun, and I’m quite happy with not liking everything … that’s why I love it.
It was Kate’s f words I remember but I’d forgotten Pat’s organ remarks – probably had one too many cling peach wines by then!
I think Ivor is right that there are lots of new people to appeal to. However I know quite a few who used to be BettaKultcha devotees and have drifted off. At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, new folk will tweet about what they like but drifter-offers will just drift off. Keeping a show on the road for years needs to keep re-inventing itself (according to Madonna!). I haven’t the first clue what that means in practice and I know there’s been lots of trying new stuff this year – MagicLoungeabout, Huddersfield SME event, Town Hall. Maybe tonight’s BK after party will have lots of the answers!
This was just chat between friends about our initial reactions – who knows whether insightful or drunk won on the night!
Drunk 5 Insightful 2 … away match for insight though.
Who are these previous devotees who have drifted off? Seriously, it would be good to get some feedback.
Be wrong to name names, Ivor, but I will ask around and see what it is that lost us a few folk. Or what it was that drew them in the first place that we could try and hang onto.
PS Patrick Devine did also make reference to the giant organ. And many other smutty things besides.
Ha! It seems all the Bettakultcha ingredients were there but the audience members just took what they wanted from the event. Funny how our perceptions work when they’re heightened.