The last few times the World Parkinson’s Congress has taken place the Cure Parkinson’s Trust and Spotlight YOPD have been tasked with organising a Music and Movement night with performances by people with PD.
Last time, my friend Vicki and I sang (I say sang, there wasn’t a note held between the pair of us) ‘Fix you’ by Coldplay attempting to distract from our tone-deafness with gold sequin outfits.
This year, I was asked to do stand-up comedy. I agreed because I’d packed my gold sequins on the off-chance and I thought it would be fun. I knew there would be a few challenges though:
1) my comedy is pretty rude and I’m not sure whether that fits the crowd / Japanese culture
2) I don’t know my comedy off by heart as i'm quite new to it
I found some old scraps of ideas on my google drive and hastily scribbled them onto a bundle of WPC freebie post-it notes in my scrawliest handwriting. And then before I knew it I was on stage.
It went down pretty well given that there were a whole load of people chatting loudly at the back (cue my friend Heather’s famous death stare) and my shaky hands fumbling all the post-it notes into a giant illegible ball.
And I don’t seem to have offended any of the Japanese audience members. Perhaps the words ‘willy straw’ don’t translate.