By Richard Heap

‘How did it go?’

I was asked that a lot on Thursday morning. If you’ve read my past blogs then you’ll know why. If you haven’t, it’s because on Wednesday night I got up to tell jokes at the first night of the Property Comic, run by the Property Merchant Group and Property Week for Land Aid (http://www.landaid.org).

They were both great nights with strong bills. Thanks to production company What! Who? (http://www.whatwho.tv) for pulling them together. Brian Damage and Krystal on Wednesday and Hal Cruttenden on Thursday were both excellent headliners.

The highlight for Property Week last night was compere Rob Broderick’s rap love story about the daughter of one of the partners at law firm Maples Teesdale and our features editor Mark Shepherd: 10% awkward and 90% hilarious. I never knew Mark’s dream was to fly a fighter jet. He later clarified that it’s second only to running our features desk.

And where does he want to fly to? ‘In the sky.’ Obvious, really.

But this is a blog, so back to me. How did it go?

Well, stand-up comedy can be tough at the best of times. It’s made 15% more nerve-wracking seeing editor Giles sitting in the middle of the audience. I know I sit opposite him every day at work, but it’s not quite the same. Still, I knew it was going okay when I saw him laughing. If it had gone badly then my half-yearly performance review yesterday may have been a bit awkward.

Actually, it went better than okay. It went well. I was second on and performed to a room wilting on the hottest day of the year. There was a bit of smoke lingering from the barbecue, and the audience had a higher proportion of suits and lower proportion of women than usual. Still, they laughed in the right places and I didn’t let the side down.

PMG chief executive James Bowdidge’s wife couldn’t tell me apart from the paid comedians. That’s as much as I could have hoped for.

People often ask what I write about. We’re hoping to get a video up next week so you can see for yourselves but, as a taster, some of my favourite topics are tank tops, Harry Potter and tips for getting lucky with the ladies.

In the meantime, you’ll have to watch some comedy that I like by Tim Minchin:

And if you missed me at Property Comic this time, hopefully I’ll be asked back to the next Property Comic events scheduled for 22-23 September.  Now I can look forward to a relaxing weekend.