I’ve only gone and done it again. After feeling shit yesterday and having a stupidly long day of shows, I seemed to decide the best way to rest and get me through the day would be to do it all over again. They say you should learn from your mistakes and I feel that the bit of my brain that is used to decide things like that is clearly broken. I’m worried I broke it two nights ago and now will continue to make mistakes throughout the month. This would also mean though that I will be so brain damaged by the end of August I probably won’t be capable of making any mistakes again. Or eating or walking by myself.
In the words of Ice Cube though, yesterday well ‘I have to say it was a good day.’ I started off rather grumpy, being all hungover and reading this review of my show:
http://ed.thestage.co.uk/reviews/518
At first read I thought it was terrible. But its not, its just a bit indecisive and (my Dad said) condescending. I wasn’t too fussed but a) its my first review of the show ever and b) the reviewer left the show with a big smile and came over to have a chat afterwards, which I thought was a good sign. Still hopefully more will appear soon and either be better or make me wish I’d never moaned about this one, or infact gone to the festival.
I was cheered up by the rest of the days events. My short interview for the Radio 4 show was fun. I had to be serious, not funny, and say all clever things about why everything is very expensive at the festival while still saying how great it is. The lady that interviewed me did it from London while I sat in a tiny booth in Edinburgh and listened to her via headphones. It was all a bit odd, but after the CBBC stuff earlier in the year I’m better at speaking to people who aren’t really there. Saying that, having used a phone for many years, I should be used to it in the first place. She was lovely though and told me about the term ‘Staycation’ which I’d never heard before. She also said what the term for two words combined was and where it came from but I’ve forgotten as it must’ve been stored in my broken bit of brain.
From the beeb I went and sat in the Cow Cafe with Keith Farnan and Annabelle, Jen and various other members of the flyering team and spent time defacing people’s flyers and watching a man try and use a paper guillotene but constantly screw up. We found this hilarious and endlessly kept taunting him, which after a while we realised was not the best thing to do to a man who was handling a large sharp blade. Then my show was much fun. A smaller crowd than the weekend but far more participatory than Sunday’s slightly dead group. It helped that the CBBC lot were in and Dave Coulson contributed by saying he really wanted a pet monkey which was ace. Paul’s plastic Uzi also worked a treat. Its a real shame I couldn’t have got him a shotgun but it gets the message across about what’ll happen to the undead if they try and mess us up. After the show the CBBC lot made me drink a beer before I did Comedy Club 4 Kids. I can’t help but feel they are giving the wrong message.
The kids comedy show was awesome. Completely sold out and the crowd were brilliant. Noteworthy audience included various people who would shout something then disappear, someone called Bob who though their name was unusual, and a little 5 year old boy called Vitali who sat on the front row with a balloon bee on his wrist. He had drawn a pair of fangs on it and told us all it was a vampire bee. As well as this superb moment of genius, he insisted he could speak Russian and told me his bee would kill me because I kept getting his age wrong on purpose. The show was headlined by the amazing Adam Hils who did his entire routine about Vitali and his bee being an evil Russian genius and how a little girl’s panda called ‘Shiny’ would form a team of soft toys to defeat the bee. All the children were completely enthralled and it ended with a movie trailer for the battle where the audience would shout ‘dun-dun-dunnnnnn’ when Adam mentioned the bee. Its nights like that that Comedy 4 Kids truly comes into its own. While I’ve been really loving my shows, nothing gets more fun than that kind of madness.
The evening was spent with non-comedy people ie Layla’s friend’s husband Kevin. Despite the tenuous link, I know Kevin fairly well and he has to be up in Edinburgh on business. What this means is that he gets an allowance for food everyday and used it to take us for dinner, which was ace. Instead of comedy we talked about his job which is exactly like Glengarry Glen Ross or Boiler Room only not quite. Its occasionally so nice to not talk about comedy as everyday is spent within the Edinburgh bubble. I felt a bit like The Prisoner where the bubble chases him but he just gets away. Only after the dinner I had to go find the bubble and ask if it’d mind taking me back again for my late show. Just The Tonic at the Caves is now my favourite Edinburgh late show and had such a superb line-up last night with a great crowd. The acts were Andrew Lawrence, Pete Firman and the awesome David O’Doherty who got a well deserved encore. I had a lot of fun MCing due to the nice people who had such interesting jobs as ‘Naval Designer’ to which I got excited that anyone designed belly buttons; and there was a lady who got a fold up ruler for her birthday present. Sadly the gig was so much fun that I had a second adrenaline buzz and HAD to stay out drinking with my friends Rosie, Niki and the DOD until the wee hours. Those are the hours for weeing.
Consequently today there is some tiredness and pain. Its meant to be quiet everywhere today though as its the first Tuesday. I’ve got not many in for my show and then I’m not doing Comedy 4 Kids tonight because of leaving it in the capable hands of the brilliant Susan Calman, who is great with kids and also the size of a child which helps. Then I’ve got a gig on a Pink Bus which I’m hoping isn’t a euphemism, followed by the late night madness of Spank! which will probably lead to more mischief. Layla arrives tomorrow which I think will be a welcome aid package of sanity.
