29/08/05 Below Par

From being fairly competent at golf earlier on this year, my game has completely collapsed. Thankfully I am not in danger of winning the sheepskin jacket awarded to the player with the worst score. I had moments where I was seriously concerned though.

28/08/05 Lost Weekend

I have headed off to Auchterarder for our annual golfing weekend jaunt with the Stirling University old boys. The usual mix of talking bollocks, drinking and bad golf.

27/08/05 Ashes To Ashes

Funk to Funky
We think you're a
Cheeky Monkey

Looks like my Ashes bet is a goner. My winning streak comes to an end. £100 goes down the ole swannee. Still, never mind, my Graeme Souness “getting sacked before the end of the season” bet is looking fairly assured.
I’m still having my Russian Doll/Printing Initiatives nightmares. Every time I escape from one Russian doll, I find myself trapped in a slightly bigger one.
“Russian Dolls” could actually be the name of a Internet Marriage Agency based in Glasgow specialising in Eastern European females looking to marry west of Scotland males, (the men are probably very attractive based on the notion that they won’t live very long, and the bride-to-be will inherit their estate at a relatively early age)

26/08/05 No Escape

I’ve been having a terrible recurring nightmare in which I’m trapped sleeping inside a set of Russian dolls having a nightmare about being asleep having a nightmare in which I’m tied to a chair in a meeting room and am being forced to watch the powerpoint presentation on “Printing Initiatives” over and over again, with my eyelids pinned back like what was done to Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange”.

25/08/05 Dream On

I’ve been having a terrible recurring nightmare in which I’m asleep having a nightmare in which I’m tied to a chair in a meeting room and am being forced to watch the powerpoint presentation on “Printing Initiatives” over and over again, with my eyelids pinned back like what was done to Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange”.

24/08/05 It's A Nightmare

I’ve been having a terrible recurring nightmare in which I’ve been tied to a chair in a meeting room and been forced to watch the powerpoint presentation on “Printing Initiatives” over and over again, with my eyelids pinned back like what was done to Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange”.

23/08/05 Park's Circus Last Rites

Today we had a Powerpoint Presentation at work entitled "Printing Initiatives".
This presentation took the concept of dullness into undreamt of realms.
In a way, I was impressed, and thought that it could make an interesting Fringe play for next years' festival.
At night the "Park's Circus" crew assembled at David Bann's restaurant for a celebratory nosh up. Myself, Patrick, Tony and Jools being in attendance on this auspicious occasion,
(Matthew the techy couldn't make it)
The food was well received and the wine flowed freely.
We then went to see Jason Byrne at the Assembly Rooms. We all found him to be a big disappointment. I sat stony faced for the duration of the show. I assume he just had an off night and couldn't really get any good riffs going off the audience. It was a pity, because I was really in the mood for a right old laugh.
Unfortunately, it was all very pedestrian. I think we were all anticipating being blown away by him, but it just didn't happen.
Had a late pint at Holyrood Tavern.

22/08/05 Flatlining

No electrical activity of any kind was reported in Jim Park's brain on this day, so there can be no meaningful Blog entry.
He was back at work though , and apparently was described as giving an amazingly convincing impression of someone in a persistent vegetative state.
("nothing new there then..!" Ed "Ho Ho")

21/08/05 The Final Curtain

And so "Park's Circus" is no more. The last night was a bit subdued. A reasonable crowd in, but a Sunday night, hangover feel to the evening.
I was anticipating a bigger crowd as there were a lot of people who I'd thought would make it to the show at some stage, but hadn't shown up yet. But they didn't appear. Never mind. I'd rather people just came because they really wanted to, rather than out of any feeling of obligation towards me.
We had a brilliant front row last night of young orchestra musicians who were convulsed with laughter for the whole show. I'd pay good money for people like that to come to every show!
The past 17 shows have certainly been a learning experience.
The delivery has got better. I realise that it would have been a good idea to have at least one day off during the run. We're unlikely to use Roman Eagle Lodge again.
It was too murderously hot, and the venue staff have been fairly rubbish to put it charitably.
We were unlucky with the timing of reviews as the show in the latter stages of the run was immeasurably superior to the first few performances.
But it's been a great experience and I've had a hoot and a half. I'm definitely up for doing another show next year.
Back at work now. Knackered.

20/08/05 Finishing Strongly

Another really good night. A big appreciative crowd and the show has developed a much better momentum. Having Jools as MC has transformed the show completely. She's great at getting the audience relaxed and then geeing them up.
Instead of running on and offstage doing links etc, the 3 of us can just concentrate on our stand-up routines, and it's making for a much better show.
It'd be nice to get a review of the re-vamped show.
Anyway, we are all in a cheery mood after the show going so well, and proceeded to down several pints, as is our wont of an evening.
We ended up down at the "Pear Shaped" comedy club in the Holyrood Tavern again.
We wanted to see fellow comic Richard pulsford do a spot but just missed him.
Late in the evening, I was horrified when the funster MC Brian Damage announced, "And next up is Jim Park!".
I was there strictly to watch comedy and had already imbibed about 7 pints. I proceeded to do a shambling, slurred impersonation of my material in a chaotic 5 minutes that I can vaguely remember.
I still got pretty good laughs...but I suspect they were largely out of sympathy for my plight.
I think Brian did mention at the end that he "didn't realise quite how pissed Jim was " before he invited me on stage.
It was a very nice gesture to be asked spontaneously to do a spot. I just wish I had been a little more sober.
It was a good learning experience though. I generally don't drink at all before I perform, and this fiasco was a reminder of why my policy is correct.
I suppose you could look at it as a kind of Fringe Comedian "rite of passage" to do a spot of pissed stand-up.
I'm going to try and get another spot next week and will definitely be on the soda & limes before I go on.

19/08/05 Back of the net!!

The best night of the run. Good lively, big crowd. Jools' compering works a treat. A couple of top guest acts. Everyone else on form. Get in there!
Hopefully we can keep up this energy and performance level till Sunday night. Yee ha!
Having to go to work the next day I decided to have a quick beer at the "Castle Arms" before heading off to my scratcher.
Inexplicably, I found myself in "The Holyrood Tavern" at 3am nursing a pint of Tennent's Lager.
How did that happen?
Not my most productive day at work today really.
But hey kids! It's the weekend....!

18/08/05 Back To Reality

Another tough night. We had about 20 in and they were hard work. I did my best to raise the energy levels, but it was a bit of a losing battle.
I'm shattered. I need to spend about 3 days in a darkened room listening to ambient music.
We had a good laugh in our post-show HQ "The Castle Arms" though.
Rebecca, our guest act for the night, was there with her friend Jeanette. It turned out that Jeanette's mum, Maureen, had given her a letter to give to Rebecca.
This contained a number of handwritten jokes that Maureen thought Rebecca "might be able to use in her act".
They were mostly inoffensive hoary old clunkers, but one joke did stand out from the rest.
It began something like "Why do women get thrush?"
"Because it gives them experience of dealing with an irritating cunt before they get married"
This brought the roof down in the pub as we speculated on Maureen the respectable 63 year old housewife in Sale, Manchester coming up with material like that!
I think Rebecca should introduce these jokes explaining the circumstances of the source of the material. It would certainly make me howl with laughter.
I am now back at work. No-one has yet commented on my show. I find this quietly hilarious. Come on....do your worst...I can take it!
4 shows left. I can see the finishing line approaching. I hope we get good comedy crowds for the weekend and finish with a flourish.
My Ashes Australia bet was looking a bit ropey this week. However the Aussies got a battling draw and it's 1-1 with 2 matches to go.
It is a lot closer than I anticipated though and could go either way.
I made £95 last night as a result of Scotland not winning in Austria and England not winning in Denmark.
I have to pay tribute to Rab "Butterfingers" Douglas in goal for Scotland. Without his timely intervention in gifting Austra an equaliser, I'd have been £200 down overall.

17/08/05 Good Stuff!

We virtually sold out last night. That's great for a Tuesday night. I knew quite a few folk in the audience, but even allowing for that there must be a fairly good "word of mouth" going round about the show to justify that level of audience.
Our glorious sound technician didn't arrive till 9.55pm (that's showtime), causing a little unnecessary anxiety, but the show went well, and the sound system was working again!
I had another gig at the "Pear Shaped Club" at the Holyrood Tavern later on. This is viewed as potentially a tough gig as the audience (made up of a sizeable contingent of pissed up comics), can get pretty mouthy.
I started off and got a fairly decent reaction.
However, a couple of minutes in, it all went completely off. The audience were in sustained hysterics for the remainder of my set. The air safety/campbells soup stuff went down a storm.
I've honestly never had such a big reaction to my material and I found it as baffling as I did highly enjoyable.
It was just a short 5 minute set I was doing. I loved it though, absolutely loved it. The biggest high of the Fringe so far for me!
I spoke to Jaelith a promoter from Shropshire after the gig. She really liked my stuff and offered to get me work in comedy festivals she organises down south.
All in all, a good night. Sat blethering and supping lager in the Holyrood Tavern till 3.45am.
I also have to give myself a little medal for having managed to not succumb to the perils of nicotine during the Fringe. It's been sorely tempting but I've managed to resist so far!

16/08/05 Park's Circus Unplugged

Last night didn't look promising when our illustrious venue staff told us that the sound system was knackered. They thought that another production's radio mics were causing interference, but that as their show finished just before ours, they were 90% certain that the problem would then be resolved, (there was loud humming every time we tried to switch on the mic or play a CD).
Predictably, the problem wasn't resolved, so we were forced to do a performance without mics. The only other option was to cancel.
Ironically, we had probably our best gig of the run.
Everyone just came out all guns blazing, as we felt we had to make our acts bigger to compensate for the lack of amplification.
We had a really nice decent sized audience in and they lapped it all up.
I don't know whether we did or not, but that was a night that you'd really pray there was a reviewer in.
We had the adverse circumstances of the technical problems to deal with, but we overcame them and really stormed it. Spirit of the Fringe and all that kind of stuff.
Of course, knowing our luck with reviewers, it's unlikely there was one in last night.

15/08/05 Ho Hum

Oh well, we get a 2 star review in The Scotsman. It's a fairly lazy piece and doesn't really go into any specifics about the strengths and weaknesses of individual acts.
Whilst all the comedians are viewed as having "something to offer", we are criticised in that "their performances are not confident enough to sustain an enjoyable rapport with the audience".
It's probably fair comment for the Saturday show, as it was a pretty awkward night for all of us. Shame again, that we didn't get the reviewer on a better night, because I genuinely believe that we are worth 3 or 4 stars on the nights when we are truly kicking ass.
It's certainly true though that "inexperience" comes into play when you are dealing with a tricky audience. When everyone is laughing and it's all going well, it's a piece of piss. You're relaxed, the audience is relaxed...it's pure enjoyment.
The benefit of experience allows you to "read" the room, and adjust your act to suit that particular audience.
In the grand scheme of things though, I suppose 2 stars isn't too bad really.
A lot of comics I admire and respect at this year's Fringe have come a cropper with scathing 1 star reviews.
It's all about timing, timing, timing.
I'm not down about it though. I do genuinely believe in the show and think it's a quality piece of entertainment when everything is going well.
Even though Rudyard Kipling is, to quote Richard Herring, "a total fucking idiot", his advice about treating both triumph and disaster as imposters, is totally appropriate in this context.
There are a lot of deluded shit comics in this business who just keep plugging away blissfully unaware of the tumbleweed blowing across the stage during their acts.
I don't want to be like that. I don't think I am though.
Anyway, I'm in this for the long haul. The experience of doing the 10 shows up till now of "Park's Circus" has been a really steep learning curve for me.
I can't wait to try out my new longer set on the comedy circuit when the festival is finished.
On a more positive note I received news this morning that 3 parking tickets which I had appealed against have all been scrapped.
That's one in the eye for the evil army of commission-hungry traffic wardens who spread daily misery to the gentle residents of Coates Gardens!

14/08/05 Sunday Sunday

A small but likeable crowd gathers for our Sunday night show. I really enjoyed it and felt very loose and relaxed.
Our guest act Rebecca almost made me fall off my stool in shock with some edgy London bombing material. It's fair to say she's become a little darker since I last saw her! Still consistently makes me giggle though.
She's in action tonight in the "So You Think You're Funny" semi-final. So, get in there, Rebecca!
We've re-vamped the format and now have the glamorous, burlesque charms of Jules linking the various acts together, rather than us swapping MC duties.
We all agree that it works a lot better....
Jules is a 5th dan Flyerer as well, and effortlessly gets the punters on the Royal Mile interested in the show.
The rest of us flyering now resembles a scene from "Dawn Of The Dead" as we assume zombie characters and lethargically explain to anyone willing to listen why our show is hilarious and unmissable...

13/08/05 Tired and Emotional

The "Harvey Nichols" TV makeover was very funny. Iona, who works for Scottish Media Group put me forward as a suitably scruffy case in need of "transformation", and I was promised the opportunity to plug the show.
It was all done in a bit of a rush as the deadline was very tight. It was intended as a piece of light relief to counter-balance the coverage of Robin Cook's funeral.
Basically, I was shown before and after using a split-screen, with a normal scruffy Jim alongside a Gucci designer clothes wearing trendy Jim.
I was filmed coming down an escalator and had to run back up it to do a re-take.
I tripped near the top and only just avoided putting a hole in the knee of my £599 trousers. (and no, I DIDN'T get to keep the clothes! shocking!)
I was asked how I felt in my new cobber and replied ; "Well, I feel sophisticated, confident and elegant ; and I think I may wear this for my show "Park's Circus" at Roman Eagle Lodge, Venue 21 at 9.55pm", and then did a big Eric Morecambe style cheesy grin to camera.
I was then filmed leaving the shop with a dolly bird on each arm gazing lovingly into my eyes.
I watched the footage later on "Scotland Today" lying on the floor with my hands over my face. To say it was slightly cheesy is something of a huge understatement but it also was very, very funny. And thoughts raced through my head of all the people I've ever known who might have chanced upon this remarkable news story featuring me, whilst they were having their fish fingers and chips.
The show on Friday night was another fairly rough one.
We had a big stag night in and I took a large amount of pelters from them, but generally managed to give as good as I got.
I felt as though I'd done a few boxing rounds when I came offstage though.
We got a review for our Wednesday show. It was a 2 star review in the "3 Weeks" newspaper. This was unfortunate as this was by a considerable distance our least successful night. The 3 previous nights had been rocking. This night had come as something of a shock as we were confronted with a small, very unresponsive audience for the first time. The positive quote bits were "great ideas", "all were likeable" and "original and funny".
The main thrust of the criticism was that we appeared "daunted" on stage, and our "great ideas" never went anywhere. Fair enough, but a real shame they picked that night.
Saturday night was a fairly decent crowd of about 40. The Scotsman reviewer was in. Yikes. I wasn't too pleased with my performance. I was edgy after my previous night's mauling by the Stag party, and I suspect I looked a little tense on stage.
Got fairly solid laughs throughout though, (I thought).
My step-brother was in with a friend. He watched me then left immediately after my set, as he wanted to get back to the pub. Of course, this action of him leaving after my set could be misinterpreted by the reviewer, couldn't it?
Tony got a great reaction, but strangely Patrick's material didn't get it's usual intensity of laughter. Also, 3 people left just minutes before the end complaining about the heat. It is like a blast furnace in the venue. I don't blame them.
I've got a deep foreboding about what the Scotsman review will say. Again, we have been unlucky in the timing of a press visit, but hey, thems the breaks.
The review tomorrow will determine the overall success of the show.

12/08/05 Scotland Today

This afternoon I have been asked by the STV news programme "Scotland Today" to take part in a makeover at "Harvey Nichols" store in Edinburgh.
I have been suggested by one of the researchers as being "badly in need of one".
I have been promised that I will be allowed an opportunity to plug the Fringe show.
I am acutely aware that I run the risk of making an absolute twat out of myself on national TV. However, the publicity opportunity has to be seen to justifying whatever happens.
It's on tonight... Friday 12/8 6pm....

11/08/05 Death is bad for business

I noticed that the cafe at the top of Lothian Road has closed down. It hadn't really been there that long.
The cafe premises were previously an Undertakers' Parlour. I have to say that this fact always put me off frequenting this establishment. There's not any particularly logical reason for this. The association with death just isn't a great winning formula for an eating establishment.
I can only assume that a significant number of potential customers felt the same way, hence it's collapse as a business concern.
There was a flat for rent behind "David Bann's" restaurant in St Mary St which lay available for rent for years, (btw yes, of course, I have a business involvement in this restaurant. Why not pop in during the festival? bla bla bla www.davidbann.com)
The problem with this flat was that the kitchen window gave a view of the back of another Undertakers Parlour, and a regular daily scene involved witnessing coffins being loaded and unloaded from hearses, with a monotonous regularity.
Obviously living in this flat would give you a rather uncomfortable daily reminder of your own mortality, and this consequently drastically affected its marketability.
However, there is someone living in it now.
I wonder what sort of people they are?
It was another small audience tonight, but they were all up for it, and it was enjoyable again. Looking forward to some big audiences over the weekend.

10/08/05 The Going Gets Tough

A smaller than usual audience tonight, and by far our toughest evening.
They seemed to be enjoying the show ok as they were all sitting with broad grins on their coupons. However, this "smileyness" was rarely promoted into guffaws of laughter.
There is a problem here. The currency of stand-up comedy is laughter. Nothing else suffices. So it was a real slog getting through the show.
The guest act was John Dixon, (he and his famed "imaginary goose" friend, Gerry).
I instinctively realised from the outset that this was not his ideal audience.
I like his stuff and he really cracks me up but it's very leftfield material. Needless to say the audience were completely baffled by his machine gun delivery and obscure references. He had the cast in absolute stitches backstage though...
I was going to have a night off the beer. However, after this show we all felt like we needed a drink and proceeded to have several...
You can only really have an alcohol free post-performance if you have an average, fairly decent show. A stormer requires celebrating and a slog requires a reassuring pint or two. It's a vicious circle.
I had succumbed the previous evening to some kind of bug which left my throat raw and my nose running furiously. Luckily, it has come and gone within 24 hours.