How much is cool worth?

In the past fortnight I've performed in four improv shows; three in California and last Saturday an eight-hour shift in London's 50-Hour Improvathon. The most commercially successful of these was also unabashedly the least cool.

Tradition dictated that after that show came down we sprinted to the foyer to line up and high-five every audience member as they left the theatre. This was done smilingly without a hint of condescension. As my castmates happily chatted about the show, the cast and life in general it was clear that many, if not most of the punters were returnees. We'd played to a full house so this process took a good fifteen minutes before we could head back upstairs to pack up and change.

This is how you get your 1,000 Fans. By converting monologues into dialogue. By smiling and letting people touch you. By answering questions and asking a couple of your own. By not worrying about being cool.

Cool is the opposite of friendly. Cool is aloof. It's black-windowed limousines, velvet ropes, private rooms and everything else that limits interaction. At a commercial level cool operates on the old one-way producer-to-consumer relationship.

But cool only pays if you've got 100,000 fans each paying $1 for the monologue. This puts you at the traditional end of the Long Tail and good luck to you if you get there. In the book of the same name, Chris Anderson warns that when shooting for 100,000 it's all or nothing. A fanless rock star is just a guy in dark glasses with a day job.

I kick myself for keeping the Scenes from Communal Living cast back for production notes instead of sending them out to chat with strangers who'd come to see the show. By the time we got downstairs only our friends were still hanging around and they were fans already.

Cool doesn't pay as many bills as you'd think.