Burns Night

Well, it's Tuesday morning and I think you could say the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is truly over without fear of a libel suit. Yesterday afternoon I went to the Gilded Balloon and people were already ripping down Bill Bailey posters, either for souvenirs or to make a few quid on ebay. Press offices that had massaged tired journalists' egos for the last month were turning back into bits of Edinburgh University. On the street there was a steady stream of people heading for the station and airport weighed down with suitcases and rucksacks. Do you remember that scene in The Killing Fields where everyone was getting out of Saigon. It was a bit like that, but with drama students instead of refugees. The rickshaws that hurtle round every cobbled corner these days just added to the south-east Asian vibe.

Oh, yes, a bit of housekeeping. I said I'd offer my thoughts on Phil Nichol winning the Eddies Award the other day, so here they are. I've got no problem with Nichol as a performer. He's a veritable whirling dervish who captures your attention as soon as he walks onstage and keeps it until the end of the show, entitled The Naked Racist, when he strips off and romps around the audience. I thought it was rather sweet that as a tribute to his full frontal finale the Eddies prize-winning party served the guests chipolata sausages.

My main problem with Nichol winning is that in a year when a new award was replacing the Perrier Award, it might have been nice if the judges had unearthed a new rising talent rather than someone who has been coming to Edinburgh for well over a decade. Still, at least in Best Newcomer Josie Long the Eddies judges were spot on. Long is a brilliant, unique, inspirational, individual. And as predicted of course, Mark Watson deservedly bagged the Spirit of the Fringe Award after doing a gag-busting 36-hour gig. Anyway, if you live in London you can make up your own mind about Nichol and co by checking out the West End Eddies showcases on Oct 8, 15, and 22. Keep your eyes on www.if.comeddies.com for confirmed line-ups.

So there was just one more show to see in the evening and I chose Brendon Burns (I was not tempted by the Cambridge Medical Revue’s The Chronicles of Hernia: The Lion, The Stitch and The Wardround when I arrived and I still wasn’t tempted as I was about to leave). I'd heard it was the third part of his trilogy and it was about Burns getting his life back on track after years of excess, so I thought there might be some symmetry in seeing it immediately before getting my life back on track after a month of Edinburgh excess.

It was a taut, trauma-filled, taboo-bashing emotional rollercoaster of a show, but the funniest thing about the night was not Burns' gags about getting into fights and getting out of rehab or his Flashdance-meets-Rambo headband, but the sight of Neil and Christine Hamilton in the front row. I can't say i'm their biggest fan and I spent the month avoiding their daily live chat show, but fair play to them for turning up, and even fairer player to them for sitting in the front row, which really was asking for trouble.

Naturally Burns walked on, saw them and went straight off-script, making lewd suggestions to Christine while Neil just smiled benignly. It add a fantastic extra frisson to a gig just when energy levels were starting to dip. The show ended with Burns planting a passionate slobbery kiss on Neil's cheeks. I don't know whether Christine was jealous or relieved that it wasn't her.

And with that Edinburgh was over. There have been laughs, almost a few fights and some brilliant surprises, such as Kylie turning up to rumba with a Cuban dance company. I'd hate it if Brendon Burns snogging Neil Hamilton is going to be my lasting image of Edinburgh 2006, but at the moment, to paraphrase the aforementioned Minogue, I just can't get it out of my head.

Fighting For Laughs

Better late than never. If there is one thing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has ben lacking this year it's a bit of unpredictable excitement. Well, it made up for it in spades last night with a show that teetered on the very brink of anarchy for its entire two hours.

The show was The Unbookables, hosted by nihilistic US comic Doug Stanhope at The Tron Theatre. This late night show is billed as the place where edgy comedians can say the unsayable so you'd think that it would be hard for anyone who pays up to be offended. They can hardly say they weren't warned.

Regular host Stanhope started out by saying that he'd had enough of the Festival and Scotland, which immediately didn't endear him to the locals in the audience. A bearded, shaven-headed man behind me continually shouted questions at Stanhope, not quite heckling but hardly helpful either.

Things really start to kick off during the interval though. Formidable critic Kate Copstick asked the noisy fan to shut up and during the altercation about half a dozen men stepped inn a strong-armed him out of the venue, which did feel a little like an over-reaction. Then Stanhope had barely returned to the stage when at the other side of the club a woman ran screaming from the venue. Stanhope had said something pro-drugs and she tearfully said her sister had died from taking ecstasy.

Next act albino-fixated British comic Carey Marx was given a hard time by a heckler with a difference. For some reason this man decided to shout out in German even though he spoke perfect English. When he did finally translate, it turned out he was saying the previous act was funnier. Not the previous act duringe this show but Al Pitcher, who had done his own full-length gig earlier in the evening.

But this was just the overture before the main event. Within minutes of Scott Capurro arriving onstage two very large men in rugby shirts started snaking their way to the front of the crowd. Just as I was thinking that I hadn't previously seen them sitting there they stepped onto the stage and confronted Capurro. They had apparently taken offence at something he had said about AIDS.

Very cleverly a couple of women from the venue intervened clearly seconds before punches were thrown. If it had been men a bigger brawl might well have ensued, instead the interlopers began to leave. Except it wasn't quite over yet. As they walked out another member in the audience stood up and had a go at them and they started steaming through the crowd to sort him out. Once again they were pulled off and this time shown the door. And just to be on the safe side the police were called so that everyone else could leave without worrying that they were going to have a frank exchange of views with them in the street.

A typical Edinburgh gig? No. An exciting gig? Certainly. I'm certainly not advocating mindless, nasty or tasteless provocation, but it is nice to see that just when you think comedy is becoming complacent, safe and corporate – I’ll be writing about Phil Nichol’s Eddies victory when I’ve got over it – there is a still scope for it to surprise.

Ready Eddies Go

There is a funny atmosphere in Edinburgh as the Fringe Festival draws to a close. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. Acts seem to fit into two camps. The ones who started the Festival with so much optimism and have seen their audiences fall away and their overdrafts mount up and the ones that have done well, picked up awards and are strutting around as if they rule the roost.

Comedians don’t like to admit it but they are some of the most competitive, egocentric people on the planet. As much as they want to support their fellow professionals emotionally and spiritually they always want to do better. In fact they’d rather that their fellow professionals were their support acts.

So when the if.comeddies shortlist was announced on Wednesday there were five very smug, quietly hysterical comedians and about 200 who went back to their rented flats, closed the curtains and started sticking pins in voodoo dolls of their colleagues. It was noticeable how some of the names that had missed out who had previously been strolling around confidently were slightly less high profile after the announcement. I believe it was Morrissey who sang we hate it when our friends become successful.

The trouble is that the smugness of the shortlisted names doesn’t last long. As I write they are probably now sticking pins into voodoo dolls of their fellow shortlisted acts. Except, of course for nominees Russell Howard and David O’Doherty, who are so kind and cuddly they didn’t even pour boiling water on ants as children.

So who is going to be crowned winner at midnight tonight? Well, further to my previous thoughts I've done a bit of a vox pop-slash-straw poll and after extensive research into the early hours (at the bar) it is still hard to reach any conclusions. Someone told me that bets have stopped being taken on We Are Klang, but other people have told me they simply don’t get their manic, demented, post-Vic and Bob sensibility,so they could become the classic panel-divider.

I’ve personally wanted Russell Howard to win since before the Festival started and while most of the judges think he is brilliant I don’t get the feeling that they’ve seen him at his best. As with Ross Noble and other great workers of the crowd, Howard can have great, good and OK nights depending on whether his audience is up for it. He might win as a compromise candidate because no-one actively dislikes him, but I can’t see him romping home.

Veteran Canadian Phil Nichol has got onto to the list by a combination of being a sheer force of nature and taking his clothes off. The night I was in he ended the gig naked while propped on a chair waving his willy in front of his white-haired grandmother (who seemed completely unshocked, I might add). It’s a comic tour de force, but the type that Nichol has been doing for years and i do feel winners have to show some comic development.

Paul Sinha has been a regular on the London circuit for a while but has come good with a show about what it means to be British, what it means to be Asian and what it means to be gay. It’s a fast-paced, pure stand-up show with some standout lines. Recalling the time he was confronted by an old school audience he says “They expected Chubby Brown, not someone chubby and brown. Sinha is not out of the running but getting onto the shortlist might be just about be the prize he deserves.

Which leaves David O’Doherty. I only saw this Irishman’s magnificently lo-fi show on Tuesday night, so to me it feels like he is peaking at just the right time with a strong, late run. O'Doherty has been coming to Edinburgh since 2000 but in the politest most lo-fi way possible he seems to have upped the ante to show he can compete with the big boys – he is in the same room as Russell Brand in a primetime slot rather some sweaty cupboard that he has chosen in previous years.

So who will win? I’d have to go for O'Doherty. But whether I’d actually bet any money on it is another matter entirely...

Short Odds On Long

If you want to know who the stars of tomorrow are then look at the Edinburgh Fringe’s if.comeddies Award. But if you want to know who the stars of five years time are then look at the if.comeddies Best Newcomer Award. This is the prize that was created in the early nineties when it was decided that Harry Hill was not quite ready for the main list but was clearly a major talent-in-waiting.

This year's list has thrown up an intriguing variety of names. And what makes them particularly interesting is how different they are from each other. Andrew Lawrence, who looks like a debauched, ageing Mick Hucknall – even though he is only in his twenties – would certainly win the prize if it was for bad taste. His macabre comic songs include one about locking his mother in the attic and eating her. It’s funnier than it sounds, trust me.

God's Pottery, by contrast, are clean-living, sandal-wearing, shiny-toothed, wholesome Christians. At least that’s their onstage gimmick. Like Lawrence they also sing songs but they are less about cannibalism, more about loving Jesus. Their big number is a happy clappy folky ditty about premarital celibacy entitled The Pants Come Off When The Ring Goes On.

I saw Russell Kane on his opening Edinburgh night when he was jet-lagged after flying in from - ooh, get him – TV meetings in LA and he was still great. As the lanky, hairy Kane says himself, he resembles Vernon Kaye with a wasting disease, but don’t hold that against him. His show, The Theory Of Pretension, fizzes with manic, interesting ideas and without jet lag he'll be unstoppable.

When I heard that Fat Tongue was a sketch show my heart sank, but after 50 minutes in their company my heart was singing. It's an inconsistent show and while the worst bits are terribly unoriginal – a TV soccer-style post-match interview with Roman gladiators, a shopkeeper who keeps giving pop stars ideas ("I said to Bob Marley there's no Marmite but we've got jam in") – but the best bits are great – I particularly liked the way they puncture the bubble of celebrity by portraying Anjelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as angry package tour holidaymakers.

But if the judges have a teaspoonful of sense the winner of the Best Newcomer Award really should be Josie Long. Her show, Kindness and Exuberance, is all about the things in life she likes - whether it is seeing abandoned baths in the street or spotting bus drivers stopping to talk to each other about nothing in particular. If you can get on her wavelength it’s the kind of pleasurable hour that will have you floating on air. She also does brilliantly primitive cartoons to illustrate her points and gives away free badges and comics. And I’m a sucker for a free, badly drawn comic.

It's a lo-fi show in the extreme which oozes charm from very sweaty pore – the night I was in she ran offstage mid-set to turn the air conditioning on herself, but it is already attracting big-time attention. Steve Coogan was also there, sitting behind me and laughing regularly. I fully expect Josie Long to win the Best Newcomer this Saturday, then go on to achieve whatever she wants to achieve. Though unlike Harry Hill I don’t think Long is after a TV Burp-style primetime Saturday night ITV show.

Laughing All The Way To The Online Mortage Company

Grovelling apologies to my devoted readership of six for not blogging yesterday, but it was the day that the if.comeddies shortlist was announced and it took a full twenty-four hours to take in the results. In case you've been living at the bottom of a Baghdad well for the last month, the if.comeddies, or Eddies as the sponsors, online mortgage company Intelligent Finance, would like them to be known – or the Iffies as the cynics would like them to be known – are the replacement for the Perrier Awards.

The five nominees are Paul Sinha, We Are Klang, David O'Doherty, Russell Howard and Phil Nichol. I've seen all of the shows and unlike last year when Dutch Elm Conservatoire was nominated – and I'm still getting over that – I can't argue with any of them. Four of the shows are excellent stand-ups, the fifth, We Are Klang, is a brilliantly daft sketch show.

One thing that really makes my heart sing about this list is the further rise of what has been dubbed the Chocolate Milk comic. The qualities that make a chocolate milk comic are intelligence, humanity, romance, geekiness, truckloads of wit and a quietly competitive passive-aggressive alpha male sensibility. They like genuinely indie music, swear when necessary, read proper books and might dress scruffily like autistic academics but they come into their own onstage.

The King of the Chocolate Milk brigade is clearly 2002 Perrier winner Daniel Kitson, followed closely by New Jersey's Demetri Martin (Perrier 2003). Others are Alun Cochrane and Josie Long (a fantastic Best Newcomer nominee who deserves a blog entry, maybe even a whole book, in her own right) and the two who have made it onto this list, Russell Howard and David O'Doherty. Howard is a brilliantly confident comedian who combines the best improvising skills of Ross Noble with the sensitivity of Daniel Kitson. Irishman O'Doherty looks like he has a Platinum card at Oxfam. He dresses like a tramp but talks like a genius. If you have any soul at all you will love O'Doherty.

So who will be the ultimate winner when the results are announced on Saturday? You couldn't get a wafer between all five. If the judges like naked bottoms both veteran Canadian Phil Nichol and We Are Klang feature one each. Klang's even talks. If the judges want a bit of politics and an announcement that rhymes, gay Asian comic Sinha should be the winner.

Being soft-hearted, however, I think it's between O'Doherty and Howard. Irishmen have a track record in Edinburgh second only to their track record in Eurovision and boybands, but I'm afraid I'd go for Howard. As with bands, sometimes you see a comedian in a small venue and you can instantly imagine them playing a big one. Despite a streak of modesty wider than the Grand Canyon, Howard has West End theatre written all over him. The only thing that can stop Howard is the fact that as he freewheels a lot and bounces off his audience and a shy, retiring crowd can mean that some nights are merely great rather than genius. Let's hope he has a good crowd when the judges revisit him. And lets raise a glass of chocolate milk to Howard whether he wins or not.

PS. I'll try and blog again later to discuss the Best Newcomers list, which is...Josie Long, God's Pottery, Fat Tongue, Andrew Lawrence and Russell Kane.