28/08/07 Ho Hum

I was watching a great play on BBC2 last night ; Gregory Burke's "Black Watch".
It was very cleverly directed and Burke's written dialogue was fantastic.
He has accurately captured the language of "Fife working class male" in all it's foul mouthed glory.
It'd be fair to say he makes Irvine Welsh sound like PG Wodehouse.
The play certainly contained the greatest intensity of "cunts" on television in the history of broadcasting...
Or, at least since the last Conservative Party Conference (aye thang u!)
The play didn't say anything particularly groundbreaking ; just pointing out that Scottish working class people have been the mainstay of the British Empire for the last 300 years, and that little has changed...and that basically, war is shit, and the campaign in Iraq is a questionable venture.
But it was still great to watch, and will certainly shake anyone up who was under the impression that military life is accurately reflected by the Soldier Boys featured in "Trumpton".
I rounded off my Fringe stand-up with a real belter of a gig at The Stand in Glasgow.
Nice to finish on a high.
In terms of being part of the "Free" Fringe, I'm not sure if I'd do it again.
As of last year I didn't get a review, which is a pain as one of the main reasons behind doing the Fringe is trying to get a bit of recognition and get a little further up the ladder.
But in spite of this disappointment, the Fringe gives you the opportunity to do loads of gigs in a concentrated period of time, and by doing so get better at the stand-up game.
There have been a lot of great acts on at the Free Fringe/Festival, but I get the impression that the media remain unconvinced.
Loads of shows haven't been reviewed at all, and I know a lot of people in out-of-the- way venues who have had pitiful audiences and have found the whole experience very dispiriting.
We were lucky because our venue was so central and we had big crowds every day.
In the olden days The Scotsman used to attempt to review every show on the Fringe ; but this is no longer viable...
There were 600 comedy shows alone on at the Fringe...
I wonder what percentage of them got a review?
Reviewers no doubt enjoy the privileges of getting freebie tickets for expensive shows and probably won't be as enthusiastic to trawl around all the Free shows...
But don't get me started on reviewers....!
The Fringe thrives on reviews and will always need them, but there have been so many complete plonkers who have wrongly been given the license to determine whether someone has a good or a bad festival...
I think it's fair to say that if you're wanting to use the opportunity of doing the Fringe for career advancement you're going to have to splash the cash and book a spot at one of the bigger established venues.
So anyway, I symbolically crushed a packet of fags and chucked them into the bin, and I am now "on the wagon" for a while as well, perpetuating the classic yo-yo lifestyle regime (debauched then pure then debauched etc)

17/08/07 More Fringe

I am definitely enjoying this Fringe miles more than the other two which I've been involved in performing.
The "Free Mouseketeers" show went really well after a shaky start, and on a personal level I feel I've improved a lot over the run. At last (I think) the delivery is doing the material justice.
Afternoon comedy audiences can be very tough to get going, and we've certainly had to work hard all week...
Top Aussie comic Greg Fleet came to see the show on Monday and then gave us a nice recommendation on Radio 4.
I also had a great gig at a "Pick Of The Fringe" evening at The Stand in Glasgow last Thursday...
The Comedy Mojo is high at the moment, but as I am all too painfully aware, this status can adjust dramatically at any moment.
I did do an ill-advised late night 5 minute spot after downing a couple of jugs of Margharita cocktails, but we won't say any more about that...
Some comedians thrive on alcohol.
I don't...I turn into a giggling version of Dads Army's Private Godfrey.
A few random Fringe thoughts?
I was strangely impressed to see Celtic manager Gordon Strachan at a Daniel Kitson gig.
I felt like going up to him and shaking his hand and saying "Well done!"
I had a good gig at Canon's Gait last night.
It doesn't seem as busy a venue as in previous years though. I guess the expansion of the "Free" concept has had something of a dilution effect on individual venues.
There was the statutory drunken yappy old lady in attendance.
I came out with what I thought was a quite funny off-the-cuff quip ;
"People at the Fringe generally have a drink between shows, but I get the impression you're seeing a show between drinks"
(ok, not brilliant, but it got a big laugh)
Before I went on I chatted to a comedian who was doing a show at the same venue as me.
He mentioned that his show was getting filmed on Monday.
"Good luck with that!" I said
"Fuck off! It's nothing to do with luck mate!" he said
"Well, when I say "Good Luck", I'm just hoping the show goes well and you get a good audience" I said
"Fuck off mate! There's no such fucking thing as a "bad audience". It's up to you as a performer to energise the room whoever is in there..." he said
"Some audiences are basically "Cunts Conventions" I opined.
"That's rubbish mate" he said
etc etc etc
Now, there is definitely an element of truth in what he is saying about never blaming the audience and always look at yourself first for criticism.
However, there is luck involved in the Fringe...
A great audience, a great performance (coinciding with the presence of a reviewer)..
You need a little good fortune to have all these things happen simultaneously doncha?
Anyway, I thanked him for the 15 minute lecture, made my excuses and left...

13/08/07 And They're Off....

Well the show kicked off on Saturday...
The place was absolutely jammed, but it was ultimately a disappointing show.
The audience were very flat and we didn't really get them going.
I suppose ideally it would have been better not to start the run on a Saturday and have a quieter gig just to run through the show and get up to speed.
I'd only met the other comics in the show on the previous night,so it was largely an experimental format.
Anyway,we decided to change a few things around for Sunday's gig.
I was to do a short opening slot to gee the audience up and get the energy in the room going a bit more.
I loved doing that...probably because it's such a departure from my usual stage persona.
It was 5 minutes of shouty nonsense,culminating in ripping off Rick Molland's trademark Jekyll & Hyde "Mexican wave". (I'm sure he won't mind)
It definitely made a significant difference to the show,and we all had a miles better reaction than the Saturday.
Woo hoo!
I've been to see a few shows...
Richard Herring - excellent as usual
Daniel Kitson - excellent as usual (although I slightly regretted going to see him the day before my show started, as I felt incredibly inferior in comparison)
Rich Hall - hilarious,but heinously expensive
Phil Nicol - jawdroppingly fantastic
I've also seen possibly the worst sketch show I've ever seen,and I saw a comic Andrew Watts in a show called "Late Starters" reduce me to tears of laughter...
I've been going to see a few shows with Cheesy McLoughlin who is up visiting for a couple of days.
In terms of type of laughter,Cheesy is a "snorter".
He has the most infectious laugh of anyone I've ever known,and when he goes off on a snorting fit,he takes me with him and I'm often in great physical pain through laughing.
Any comic would kill to have someone like that in the audience.
He also sets off chains of other people laughing.
He's not indiscriminate though...;it has to be really funny to get him going...but once he's off...pow!!!
Anyway, so far it's been 2 full houses and I've only done about 10 minutes flyering
in total...
This is good.

09/09/07 Fringe

Well, it's the Fringe again and I'm currently limbering up for the show I'm involved in which kicks off on Saturday 11th August at 5.15pm at the Jekyll & Hyde bar in Edinburgh which goes under the monicker of "The Free Mousketeers".

My whole attitude to doing a show at the Fringe has drastically altered from my wide eyed enthusiasm of my debut at this event in 2005.
I am a tired old cynic this time round...
Thankfully the venue is so central and well located that a minimum level of flyering is required...
Audience numbers have been very strong for this week's Mouseketeer show in the same slot (with 3 different comics).
Hopefully they will get a great review at the end of their run and we will get the benefit of it in audience numbers next week...!
Hey,one thing I've learnt is that nothing in comedy is fair...If you get a break,just take it...
Mind you,if they get a stinker of a review....??? (but I'm sure they won't...it's a good show and is working really well)
Interesting Fringe moments?
A comedian I know chatted to me in a bar for a few minutes then left me with a flyer for their show...
The comedian then returned 15 minutes later to find I'd made a rather cute paper aeroplane out of the aforementioned flyer...
That was a bit embarassing...
I was stopped on the street twice yesterday by people asking me for money.
They both asked me for a pound.
I am shocked at this example of begging hyper-inflation.
It seems absolutely everybody increases their rates exponentially at Festivaltime in Edinburgh.
I was chatting with a fairly famous comedian who'd had a four star, a five star and a one star review in the same day.
It became clear that the annoyance of the one star review very much outweighed the satisfaction of the other two great reviews.
I was surprised.
I thought the reaction would be "Fuck it...who cares?"
The chances are that the review was written by some spotty journalism undergraduate who has probably never been to a comedy club in their life and who is desperately trying to stand out from the pack by slaughtering an established comedian with a shitty little petulant review.
The review system is all bollocks and it's crazy that people should become so obsessed with this stupid "star" system, but that's the way it is...
I also had a bit of a chuckle at a few shows' reviews on www.edfringe.com
The site allows audience members to submit reviews...
Of course,this means that people actually involved in shows (or family and friends) can also submit ludicrously fawning, OTT reviews.
However,the right technique is not to go mental and say things like "the funniest show I've ever seen in my life" or "Jim Park is a comedy genious without peer"...
Just be positive overall,but maybe make a couple of minor criticisms to disguise the fraudulent nature of your contribution...
(I did this 2 years ago but now view the devious act as fundamentally pointless)
Some shows have got loads and loads of transparently "friendly reviews"...I feel embarassed for them...
This is pointless...the great British public aren't going to fall for this...in fact I'd say it would make me less likely to go and see a show...
Oh,and I said hello to Nina Conti...she is stunningly attractive,not that there's anything wrong with that.
It's good to meet a lot of fringeys,but it's not so good to speak to people who just drone on and on about their show and their experiences bla bla bla and fail to realise that the best conversations usually include contributions from more than one participant...
Call me old fashioned...
Yes I'm a fan...but Richard Herring's show was awesome and I heartily recommend it...the boy is a genius...
I turned out for the Chortle Comic's football match today...great stuff...I met the legendary Chortler Tony Cowards...
He asked me if I was Jim Hobbit...
I told him I wasn't...

06/08/07 Back

I've been away in sunny Spain on holiday...
I had a lovely time even though it was murderously hot...(knocking on the door marked
"40 degrees"...Scottish people can only survive for a limited time in that climate)
But hey,you don't want want to hear about "lovely times"...you want to hear about disasters, quirky Spanish happenings and that sort of malarkey...
One of the enduring memories of the holiday stems from a visit we took to a festival going off in a small town near where we were based...
As we walked along checking the " fairground attractions",there was nothing initially unusual...
There was candy floss, kiddies roundabouts, a bouncy castle....
But then we came across a roundabout which was unusual in the sense that it had real ponies attached to the mechanisms.
The operator would switch on the machine which would guide the attached ponies round in circles for the prescribed period...
"That's something you don't see every day!" I thought to myself...
Would they allow this in the UK? Hmmmm.....probably not!
I was also interested to see the old "throw a ping pong ball in a goldfish bowl and win a goldfish" stall...
I think offering creatures as prizes was outlawed in Britain about 25 years ago...
(I'm not sure about the exact date...but it is a while for sure)
The piece of resistance though was the fact that the goldfish were actually currently living in the bowls which you had to try and throw the ping pong balls in...
Hopefully, their limited short term memory will ease the trauma of having your house constantly bombarded by big white balls...
At least we used to have the sensitivity to have empty goldfish bowls to aim at,and
kept the fish in smart little plastic bags...
We are a nation of animal lovers...
More adventures tomorrow!