So, being the original sorts that we are, for the third year in a row Sal and I went up to Edinburgh again for the bank holiday weekend.
For some reason, this year we seemed to do a lot of rushing about. There barely seemed to be a moment when we weren’t supposed to be somewhere else. On Saturday evening, for example, we decided to grab something to eat before seeing Richard Herring. Knowing how much comedians love it when you are late to their gigs, I did wonder if the hour that we had allowed ourselves would be enough time for what Sal described as a “quick curry”, and my worries were not abated when, 15 or so minutes after we’d first sat down in the restaurant, a third different waiter came over to try to take the order we believed we’d already made. But it turned out that my fretting was unnecessary–our food arrived eventually, and although we had to walk rather briskly to the venue, when we arrived at the Underbelly there was still a queue snaking around the bar waiting to go in. At that point, somebody shouted “Matt!” across the room–which was interesting, because I hadn’t been aware that anyone knew I was there. It turned out to be my old work colleage Angel: of course, I suppose it was inevitable that if we went to see Richard Herring enough times we’d bump into Angel at one of his gigs eventually…
Probably the high point of the weekend for me was Mark Watson at the Pleasance: his faux-Welsh shtick might err on the side of conventional, but it’s very funny nonetheless, and appeals to my silly sense of humour. Unfortunately, the low point of the weekend came just a few hours later on the same evening… We’d been drinking in the bar at the Pleasance after Mark Watson when we were accosted by a Canadian “comic” who was touting for the stand-up show (“Underground Comedy Invasion”) that he was compèring later that night. He told us how they’d already been thrown out of one Fringe venue for being too offensive. He offered us a free “sample joke”. It wasn’t funny, but for some reason we agreed to go to his show anyway. Maybe this was because we were drunk and he offered us the tickets for £2.50 each…
As the time of the show ticked closer, we left ourselves with not quite enough time to get there and ended up rushing to the venue, not quite knowing where it was. We needn’t have worried, though, because as we climbed the stairs of The Green Room, there was our Canadian eating a takeaway pizza out of its box, telling us to keep going all the way up to the top. We also needn’t have worried because it turned out to be just as awful as you would expect a show to be if the compère is forced to tout his own tickets at half price to drunk people in the bars of other venues a few hours before the show.
It started ok, but it got substantially less funny as it went on, and by the time the stage was graced by a Dutch bloke who didn’t appear to have an act, we were ready to leave. [He opened with “Hello. I am a Dutchman and I do not use drugs. [PAUSE] OK. Any Questions?” Which is hilarious, obviously. It wasn’t until the next day that I realised that a good question might have been “Is that it?” or perhaps “Is this the first time you’ve done this?”] And so, with the quality going rapidly downhill, and with tiredness taking over, we were ready to do something we’ve never done before: leave a comedy gig before the end. Unfortunately, at this point the compère took the stage again and said something to the effect of “Right. Normally we’d finish there, but we’re going to carry on. It’s going to get more offensive, though, so if anyone’s easily offended they should leave now.” Damn. Well clearly we couldn’t leave now–it would look like we were just being prudish–so we waited for a bit like cowards. When it didn’t get any better we knew we had to make a break for the exit. There was clearly no way for us to leave the small room unnoticed, and I didn’t know quite how to leave in a way that conveyed the fact that we weren’t leaving because we were offended but mostly because we were tired (and also because it wasn’t really that funny). I made a break for the door and didn’t look back…
We also found ourselves rushing to our final show of the weekend: Andy Zaltzman’s afternoon dose of utopia at The Stand. This was unfortunate, given that, although we didn’t miss the start of the gig, we were too late to get anything other than the seats at the very front of the tiny venue, directly underneath Andy’s nose and close enough to see the sweat on his brow. At any other event I’d be happy to be so close to the front, but of course the reverse rules apply for comedy–luckily Andy isn’t really that sort of comedian, but he does ask the audience for input to help him create his afternoon utopia, and so it was that he asked me a direct question that I struggled to answer in a sufficiently funny way (this was the best I could do: he asked me if I was happy with my life, and what was so great about it, and after a pause all I could come up with was “er… I don’t have to starve to death…?” “Of course”, he responded, “if only they’d tried that in Africa in the 1980s, things would have worked out so much better…”)
Oh and the weekend also included a couple of celeb spots…
Who’s walking away?
Looking short and old and grey?
That was Frank Skinner
[I’m not sure if this one counts, because I realised afterwards that the reason he was leaving the Pleasance Courtyard at that time on the Sunday afternoon was because he’d just done a show there, but I’m claiming it anyway because we hadn’t paid to attend the show and happened to be just sitting on the benches having a beer as he walked past us.]
In the Pleasance bar,
Harassed by Doctor Who fans,
It’s Maureen Lipman
[Poor Maureen Lipman: if there’s a sentence to strike fear in the heart of an actor, then it must surely be the one uttered by the earnest young man who approached her as she stood alone waiting for her friend: “excuse me: I just wanted to say I thought you were wonderful in Doctor Who“.]
