By Richard Heap

I had my first nightmare about it last Tuesday.

In two weeks I’m taking to the stage in a bid to entertain the property industry at the first night of The Property Comic, the comedy event by the Property Merchant Group and Property Week for Land Aid (http://www.pmguk.com/comic/).

I’m due to perform on both nights. I can’t promise that I’ll drag property out of its gloom. If I wanted to do that I’d need more than jokes: I’d need to be onstage giving away large amounts of money and, as I’m a journalist who moonlights as a comic, I’m not exactly being lined up for The Secret Millionaire. But I’ll do my best.

It’s a long time since the idea surfaced on 3 March in The Goring Hotel. I was having breakfast with the Property Merchant Group chief executive James Bowdidge, sustainability director Richard Burge, and their PR man Nigel Henson. I mentioned my strange hobby, telling jokes to people in small rooms above pubs in London and Brighton (www.myspace.com/richheap).

I’ve been doing it as a hobby for about ten months. James liked the idea of running a comedy night for property, where laughs have dried up along with bank finance. I headed back to the office and didn’t think much more about it.

I found out more on 6.22pm on Thursday 23 April. I was struggling with a news story that was more than two hours overdue when an email popped up in my inbox: The Property Comic was happening and, even better, I’d been booked. At that point it was only for one night. At Tuesday’s BPF conference James said I should do both. Cheers.

Anyway, back to my nightmare. I’d just been onstage at a comedy event for the property industry. I knew something wasn’t right: it was being held in a sports hall, not 295 Regent Street, and I didn’t have my glasses.

I have an idea about why I’m anxious. It isn’t the bright lights, forgetting the punch lines, or getting hit with a killer line by an erudite heckler. I’m anxious because this isn’t a room of faceless strangers. It’s friends, colleagues and people they like, all who’ve paid £25. If it goes badly, they’ll all know about it. At least if a normal gig goes badly, I can come into work the next day and lie about it.

It was only a dream though, and really I’m a lot more optimistic. I’ve done it before and it usually goes well. Hopefully, you’ll be able to judge for yourself. We’re planning to put a film of my set up on propertyweek.com afterwards. If it goes well, that is. If it goes badly then the camera of web editor Iain O’Neil may have an ‘accident’ with the four-year-old bottle of champagne on assistant editor Mark Shepherd’s desk.

So if you’re there and there are only two people laughing, you know who has a vested interest in it going well.

For more info on Land Aid go to: http://www.landaid.org/