Fears of a clown.

The irony of the bussiness  I'm in (comedy) is that a lot of the time the audience goes home happier than the artist.
The adrenaline rush of the gig usually wears off a couple of hours after the show and doubt and self-hate sets in soon after that. Usually the truth is that a show is usually never as good as you think it was and never as bad as you think.
There is something magic about being on stage and hearing people laugh at something you say, whether  for 10 people or a 1000 people the kick is there, and very very addictive, but like every drug it gets harder and harder to reproduce the first 'kick', you get used to it and the search for the 'high' becomes more and more difficult.
I can remember being almost physically sick before a gig in the early years whereas now it takes 'effort' to produce the tension needed to create the 'edginess' on stage.

Performing comedy on stage is an addictive drug, and like all addictions it's a love/hate relationship, my Mother who was a alcoholic grimaced as she drunk her daily portion of sherry as if it was some horrible medicine. So it is with me and comedy, driving to the gig can be a very negative vibe, my head seems to throw up all the alternative things I could be doing. All the doubts about the venue, the audience, my material etc etc come to the surface, but once I'm on stage everything falls into place and I feel the warm glow of the junky flowing through my veins. Then I'm off stage and very scared that someone will come and say how they hated it.

So remember when you go to a comedy gig, that man or woman on stage might look very confident and full of confidence, but a lot of the times the 'ego' is very very fragile.