20/11/05 Slightly Frazzled

(Dave and I relax with a drink before "The Stand" show begins)

I spent Thursday and Friday night at The Stand in Edinburgh. Richard Herring was headlining both nights, but Tony and Patrick, my "Park's Circus" co-accused were the support acts on Thursday and Friday respectively.
Tony had a bit of a tough one as he was constantly interrupted by a twat of a heckler who kept shouting "tits!".
Richard Herring came on. He was storming it, but at some point the same heckler piped up. This time it was "magpie tits", (RH was doing an extended monologue on "the magpie reward scheme" based on the song "M-a-a-a-g-p-i-e-e".
What followed was a glorious 20 minute sustained demolition job on the aforementioned heckler...
It was an absolutely beautiful and joyous thing and a true privilege to witness. The heckler didn't know what had hit him.
Later, I made a rather poor attempt at conversation by mentioning that I liked his Blog, to which he replied "thanks", then continued another conversation.
I felt slightly starstruck and also a bit of an arse. I just couldn't think of anything "worthy" enough to say, so made my excuses and left. (I was a bit drunk anyway, so wasn't really capable of producing any stimulating witticisms).
The next night, I attended with David and Anne Reilly. Patrick had a stormer. Andy Askins, a musical act from Middlesborough, also blew the roof off.
Unfortunately RH had a bad night. It just wasn't his kind of audience. They were going for quickfire gags and one-liners rather than extended surreal monologue stuff. It's a sobering thought that such a top comedian and one of my all-time comedy heroes can still have such a tough night at a comedy club.
I was slightly disappointed that there wasn't a heckler, as I would have loved to see a repeat performance of his spontaneous heckler destruction routine.
Another interesting observation of the evening was that I was in the company of Dave Reilly for approximately four and a half hours, and at no point in this time did he buy a CD. I phoned the "News of the World" straight after the show. They were reluctant to believe me and said they'd send a reporter round to check out my story.
(read his blog at http://www.crispycat.co.uk/ to study his CD addiction!)
After the show Patrick, myself, Richard and Chris (The Stand soundman) went to the next door casino and drank till 4.30am. I didn't gamble at all, although it might have been a good idea if I had, as it might have reduced my drinking rate.
I didn't feel very clever the next day, that's for sure.
It was a very enjoyable evening though, with high quality banter in evidence. I did feel a bit of a shameless ligger though...but hey...I got a hangover as a fitting punishment.