If you’re the kind of person who thinks doing standup comedy is scary, and the idea of trying to make a roomful of strangers laugh makes your guts gurgle with anxiety, you’re going to absolutely shit your pants when I explain the Ding Dong Gong Show.
A standard gong show is like an open mic night where the audience is encouraged to give the acts a hard time. Typically, three random audience members are given red cards which they can hold up if they’re getting bored of an act, and the rest of the audience can boo and heckle to influence the card-holders’ judgement.
When all three cards are held up the MC bangs a gong and the failed comedian has to shuffle off the stage in shame while they roast you. It’s brutal, and if you’re emotionally fragile I highly recommend you never attempt to do a gong show, because it will crush your soul.
On the other hand, if you win the audience over and survive 5 minutes without getting gonged off, the buzz is immense. Consistently winning at gong shows like the Comedy Store’s King Gong, Up the Creek’s Beat the Blackout, or the Frog and Bucket’s Beat the Frog, is a good way to get noticed by clubs and could lead to progression onto open spots at their pro nights. I’ve done the King Gong once and lasted less than 45 seconds, but I’ve done Beat the Blackout twice and beaten it once.
The Ding Dong Gong Show is run on Saturday afternoons at Big Belly Comedy’s new Southbank venue – and it’s a gong show with a difference. Firstly, instead of red cards, the audience judges are given dildos to wave in the air, and whether you get donged off or not, you have to hang around on stage after your set for a few minutes while three professional judges critique your act and give you a light roasting.
Like Beat the Blackout, you get a minute’s grace to ease into your set before the crowd can start on you, so you’ve some time to find your feet and win them over. The King Gong doesn’t offer that luxury, so almost as soon as you walk on stage they start giving you shit and you’re immediately on the back foot if they decide they don’t like the look of you.
I’ve never done the Dong Show before, because being in the afternoon on a weekend is kind of awkward since I’m usually doing dad stuff. But as it happened I’d got a day off with a couple of old mates to do some day-drinking before going to watch Smashing Pumpkins at the O2 later in the evening, so I got a spot on the show since we were going to be hanging around Southbank anyway.
I didn’t know any of the other acts except Eddy Dibs, who I know from various gigs over the past couple of years, and because I was there with friends I didn’t really get a chance to chat to any of them like I usually would.
The running order is random, so you don’t know when you’re going up until the MC calls your name. This kind of thing used to make me nervy, but I don’t care any more – I knew I was going to do my standard tight(ish) five and didn’t need to focus as much as I would if I were trying something new.
I think there were about 10-12 acts in total, and I was called up second to last, so I used the time to check out what was going on in the audience, and listening to the other acts, looking for things I could reference in my set. As it happened, one of the best acts did a solid bit about scary dads which I was able to call-back in a bit about my own dad. That kind of thing is low-hanging fruit, if you reference something that happened earlier in the show, even if it’s fairly weak, you get bonus points from the audience for paying attention.
I ran through my set, it went pretty well – which I was expecting since it’s all tried and tested material – although towards the end a couple of dildos went up at a point that made no sense to me. I’d had a few big laughs and was in the middle of the setup for a usually very reliable bit, but two judges both waved their rubber cocks before I even got to the punchline.
Nevertheless, the other dildo remained un-hoisted, so I managed to beat the Dong and complete my five minutes. The judges gave me some nice feedback – although the only thing I can remember is one telling me that he kept thinking my material was going to be really weak, but the punchlines were really unexpected, so he liked my use of misdirection. I didn’t even know that’s what I’ve been doing, but I’ll take it.
The other interesting thing is that all three judges made jokes about me looking scary, which is something I never really thought about myself, but I guess it kind of makes sense – so maybe that’s something I could try leaning into for my act.
Anyway, a fun gig all round, I’ll definitely be applying for more spots there in future and I recommend going along to watch if you’re free on a Saturday afternoon.