Over the last few months I’ve been doing an improv course with AndAlso (artists formerly known as The Maydays), learning “The Harold”. The Harold format is named after the 1960s Labour Prime Minster Harold Wilson, due to the way scenes and games emerge in the “white heat” of a three beat structure.

A lot of our group struggled with The Harold, finding it over-fiddly and occasionally antithetical to fun.

Our teacher, Heather, swears by its importance, though, and made a point that I think makes sense: once you’ve internalised the Harold skeleton, it’s much easier to find beats and patterns between and amid scenes.

It’s like liberal parliamentary democracy: you’ve got to learn the rules in order to break the rules.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s sometimes useful to have a structure to the chaos.

I missed a lot of the course due to music / comedy promotion and, more recently, the death of my father. This meant I wasn’t sure whether to join my troupe for the showcase: would my rustiness be a hindrance?

In the end Heather and I agreed that I should head along to the first show, as a punter, as a prep for being in the cast the following night.

My team on Tuesday were called Ed and The Editors, and boy were they tight. So much confidence, so much poise, and each of their individual personalities coming out clearly from the choices they made and characters they performed.

Selma the everywoman, never forgetting to say the obvious thing as low hanging fruit for the audience; Ruth just a fabulous oddball, perfectly contained and choosing her moment to speak with rare calm. Ryan – the world’s nicest man – revelled again in playing an asshole character, the world’s worst housemate and briefcase-Labour democracy fascist.

They were good, they were funny, they were professional. The structure was broadly followed and made sense, and the ending was satisfying (always end on a kiss).

And then came Wednesday’s show.

We were doing the second half, with a level one group kicking things off.

During the interval, Heather asked if we could keep things PG, as – due to the n00bs – there would be lots of people in the audience experiencing improv for the first time.

We’ve never been a particularly sweary group, agreed that we’d watch our language, and proceeded to do an entire show about dildos and pegging.

We didn’t do it on purpose. These things just happen.

The structure of our show was a bit of a mess, but I think it was more consistently entertaining than the previous night. I mainly played some kind of advertising Svengali character, constantly wandering on stage to entice Ryan’s hesitant schnitzel-eater into increasingly unlikely foodstuff-consuming jobs.

By the end, he was a sexy lap-dancing clown performing solely for a geezer named Barry. He also found a way to insert toblerones of varying sizes.

As with all improv, I guess you had to be there.

I had a good time. I felt quite lost in the transitions, which seemed to go on too long and at one point seemed to blend from game to game, but I was happy in the scenes.

We did a fun number of callbacks, incorporated and riffed on ideas from the level one games, and nailed the blurring and melding of patterns, characters and themes.

Polly’s AI character was particularly brilliant for this – I love the laugh of recognition when someone brings a clearly defined idea on stage back for the second and third time, the payoff feels like a tiny miracle every time.

My other character, Dave’s (Ed’s) wife, was too sexy. I went a bit too Monty Python footlights while trying to do a traditional female-presenting character, and need to work on that. But it was fun, and I’d have liked her to return for a third beat.

Hers was a bittersweet journey, from flashbacks to her early relationship disappointments to stumbling in on an uncomfortable gathering of men consuming clown-based porn. I hope she finds happiness somewhere, but I don’t think it will be with Dave.

Like a tech bro accidentally re-inventing the train, improv can sometime feel new while simultaneously suspecting it’s all been done before. But it’s enjoyable, freeing, and I really hope our little gang sticks together for future courses, gigs and adventures.