The boy with the tape on his face…

So, it’s Internet Week Europe and London has been overtaken with a plethora of talks, events and parties all washed down with a free drink or two. One event in particular intrigued the tweets out of me…The boy with the tape on his face. All I knew of the event was that ‘It’s a show with a twitter twist!’ and unlike a normal comedy show we would be encouraged to keep our phones on and be ready to interact with ‘Tape Face’ and his live large-scale twitter wall.

Myself and a few friends tumbled off the tube at Notting Hill Gate and ran to ‘The Tabernacle’, yes we were excited, but more so as one of my friends has the bladder a size of a pea.

I entered the theatre room to a sea of social media savvy bods, all mingling, status updating, checking in, but mainly sat around tables. The room was buzzing with excitement. I found a table, ate some bloody mary crisps, sipped some wine and took it all in. The giant Twitter wall, crafted by Smesh, took pride of place at the front of the room. A quick join to the TapeFace wifi, a note taken of the #tapeface hash tag, our table became a multi-screen minority report. We were all set to interact.

We were informed that we were guinea pigs for a development for a TV pilot for the BBC, it could work and be brilliant or flop and be a crock. Luckily it was the former. Phil Ellis, our leader for the night took to the stage. In his own Twitter words ‘I am a comedian. Some say, THE comedian. Some say nothing & others just stare. I once ate an entire box of Wheetos even though they didn’t belong to me’, he explained we would be partaking in a quiz of sorts, fastest fingers and quickest minds made the ‘tweet wall’, fastest wit was made into a ‘hero tweet’ displayed largely to the whole room. A show reliant vastly on audience participation and interaction led me to believe who ever came up with the concept must be a sadist and/or have a mental health problem, whichever, it was brave.

‘The boy with the tape on his face’ took to the stage, no words, just brilliant timing, emotion, creativity, and the ability to reduce the room to fits of laughter with an oven glove (See him live BBC Comedy ). So good, I blew a snot bubble.

#tapeface @tapefaceboy oven glove love

Phil began to ask weird and wonderful questions from ‘when did the first mental asylum open in the UK?’ to ‘how big is the sky?’ (answer: very). It was up to us as an audience to provide the material, in a way; even the most socially inept had the ability to be a stand up comedian for a night, without talking, just like ‘The boy’.

I make no understatement, what I am about to tell you was one of the best moments of my life. I scored a ‘hero tweet’. The boy led the crowd in a hauntingly beautiful rendiotion of ‘Sweet Caroline’, replacing Caroline with the word Syphils. I then declared my aunty was called syphilis. For this admission, I won a tea bag strainer, hand delivered by ‘The boy’. You read correctly,  a tea bag strainer. I am still excited.

Tea bag strainer winner

In fact, our table as a whole had quite a high ranking in terms of ‘hero tweets’, from @hollyunlikely ‘s grandmaster-ash to @LilliBiffyBee ‘s claim she would like to meet ‘waggas mama’. We were a table of tweeting heroines.

@hollyunlikely @LilliBiffyBee @ilikegrey multi-screening

I must admit, it was a thrill, tweeting a thought, sending it to the Twitterverse and seeing it appear on screen moments later. The same thrill I get from taking a minute to look at a light switch and think, wow, how does that work?. Using twitter in this way, bridged the gap between the audience and the comedians; it was inviting, inclusive and made me feel I was a part of something big. I got a warm fuzzy feeling every time one of my tweets made a room of people laugh. Just like the taped up boy, I didn’t even have to speak and I was funny. Me…funnny. Who knew? Certainly not my friends. Phil’s quick wit and ability to take a tweet from the screen and seamlessly continue the narrative of the night, was awe inspiring, a new breath in to the way we look at comedy. He even took ‘faux heckling tweets’ in his stride when one audience member suggests he should be set on fire.

The boy and Phil aside, there were more comedians in the room, the moderators. As a whole their comic timing was spot on, there were no bad taste tweets to lower the tone. They, as well as Smesh can relax and know that 3 weeks without sleep in preparation for the event was worth it.

This feels like the first small step in to giving yet more power to the audience, we now have the choice in whether we sit back and enjoy or we get stuck in and have a voice in the way we are entertained. The event took away barriers and what could of been an epic disaster ended up being a clever and above all absurdly funny, enriched experience. I should also mention that our relatively small collection of Tabernacle tweeters got #tapeface trending in London in under an hour. The power of tweeting should never be underestimated. I personally can’t wait to see what is next.

To summarise, never in my life have I seen so many competitive quick fingers, desperate to win a soap dish or a bag of nuts, I have never seen a pair of shoes sing the Jackson 5, an oven glove serenade, a stare off resulting in crotch grabbing, a stripping builder, a man be so incredibly funny with a piece of gaffa tape on his face, but thanks to Twitter, Phil, The boy, the BBC and Smesh I have now won a soap dish for knowing the answer was Richard Blackwood.

L

@tapefaceboy @thephilellis @hollyunlikely @LilliBiffyBee @ilikegrey @loooooren

#tapeface