First and foremost, the annual benefit gig I organise for my charity, Great Comedy for a Great Cause, was held on Monday 7 July at the Comedy Store. It was a fantastic night of entertainment and a big thank you to all the acts who volunteered their time to make it a success. We managed to raise £4500 ($9000) and after paying the venue, we should be able to send the balance £3100 ($6200) straight to One Child.

Secondly, as of the night of Thursday 17 July, I got eliminated from Last Comic Standing. Eliza who knocked me out in the showdown had a great set and I think she is a lovely person and I wish her the very best of luck going forward.

More than anything else, LCS has been a learning experience for me and I have taken away a lot of good from it. I have met a fantastic bunch of people and made some good friends. The entire crew that worked on LCS was absolutely lovely and every single comedian I met at the semi-finals in Vegas was just a good human being. I have had the opportunity to perform in Las Vegas, which was the biggest incentive for me to even fly to Miami for the audition in the first place. I have got a glimpse of what stand-up comedy is like in the US and had the opportunity to learn a little bit more about American culture and people. I am grateful for that. I was always in it for the ride and that's what I got. I had and still have no clue how big a deal the show is. In fact when people told me that it was a big deal because '10 million people watch the show', I joked that in India when I open my bathroom window to crack a joke, 10 million people show up in my backyard to hear it live! But I must say I have enjoyed the whole experience and on the back of the 'huge exposure' I hope to perform more in the US from 2009 onwards.

It might surprise you to know that I have never seen the show - not even a single episode. What has been personally interesting for me is how this whole thing panned out for me...given my general thoughts about stand-up comedy. For starters I believe that stand-up comedy is an art form best enjoyed live and not in front of a TV screen. It's a bit like sex - there really isn't any substitute for actually being there. So as far as I'm concerned, watching stand-up on TV is like surfing comedy porn. My focus has always been the live audience and no matter the amount of exposure on LCS, my intention was never to burn material on TV or to perform much content that wasn't already in the public domain. So I threw in some material I had done earlier in the show for the live audiences and some new bits for the TV audiences. I also did this because what I was led to believe beforehand was that NBC would pick snippets of each performance and if any material was repeated then that would not be shown again. Contrary to that it seems that NBC have not edited the clips in that manner, so TV viewers have been shown repeated material. What a pity. No orgasm there for the surfers. Sorry about that.

Actually I've always struggled with mixed feelings about my participation in the show for a couple of reasons. Firstly I'm opposed to stand-up comedy 'competitions'. Besides the fact that comedy is subjective, stand-up isn't about competing. It's about a lot of things, but I don't think competing belongs on that list. Different people enjoy different things and stand-up is such a varied art form. Enjoy different comedians as opposed to trying to make them battle. It's apples and oranges. A stand-up comedy competition is like having a Grammy Award for the best 'singer'. One could argue that Last Comic Standing is not a competition but a casting, which brings me to the second thing I'm opposed to - or to be more specific in this case - not cut out for. And that is reality TV. I'm just a regular guy who does stand-up comedy on stage - like a boxer who does his boxing only in the ring. There was no way I was going to be a monkey every time the camera was thrown in my face. I wasn't going to play up to the camera when it was turned on and be a different person when it was off. I'm just not like that. So I cannot imagine that I would make for interesting reality TV viewing. Mike Tyson does some of his boxing outside the ring and I'm sure he would make for interesting reality TV viewing! So it may have been a bit selfish of me to 'come along for the ride'...but then I'm not the one deciding to move me forward to the next round and I personally have had a great time.

And finally, it seems that people do make a bigger deal of this than I ever thought. So in response to an email I got from a viewer about a statement I made about the fact that 'stand-up comedy doesn't really exist in India', it seems I need to qualify that statement. What I meant was live alternative stand-up comedy in English, the way it is practiced in places like the UK and the US. So today as someone in London wanting to get into stand up comedy, you can get over 300 gigs a year to learn your craft. However if you were in Delhi or Bombay, not including a bunch of friends at home, I doubt you could manage more than 12.

With regard to what is left of Last Comic Standing, I'm voting for Louis Ramey. He is a very funny man and a gem of a human being. If you ever considered voting for me, please give him my vote.

Namaste

Papa CJ

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