festbuzz

Burns Night

2006-08-29T12:14:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-28T10:39:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-26T15:48:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-25T10:45:00.000+01:00

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

2006-08-24T11:00:00.000+01:00

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.

So Bad It's, Erm, Bad

2006-08-22T15:25:00.000+01:00

I have a terrible confession to make. I am not an Edinburgh Fringe Festival addict. I thought I was because I stay for the entire three-week duration and see shows back-to-back every single day. But I often don't go out until the afternoon and sometimes return to work at home for part of the early evening. Which makes me a proverbial lightweight compared to two people I heard about yesterday.

Charlie and Victoria – not necessarily their real names, but they might be – make it their mission to see as many shows as possible. And the worse the better. They can see good shows the rest of the year but the democratic nature of the Fringe means that if you can rustle up a show and a couple of thousand pounds you can probably find a venue to put you on for three weeks. However nailchewingly awful it is.

So a typical day for them might be having a early breakfast in Chocolate Soup, a cafe in Hunter Square where you can have anything you like as long as it contains chocolate, while they peruse the daily listings in the Guardian guide. They could go for the military precision option and research one star reviews, but I think they like to leave things to fate and just work their way through the daily schedule judging by titles of shows. So, be warned, some of the following suggestions might actually turn out to be quite good.

If they play their cards right they can get to Shakespeare For Breakfast at the C Theatre at 10am, followed by the Alternative Lifestyle Show in the Radisson Hotel at 11am. According to the guide this last 8 hours, but I presume you are allowed to leave before the end. They could then come out and see Virgins, a drama about teenage sex, at the Assembly Rooms at 12.10pm, but I've heard that that is a good show so it might not be up their street.

Maybe they could spoil themselves and have a spot of lunch instead. Maybe hurtle off to see Gloucester's Bridget Christie at the Holyrood Tavern and combine food and comedy. But they should be warned. The comedy will be too good for them in a twisted, West Country way. But they will find something to complain about. The flyer says show includes a cheese bap – I went the other day and on that day at least, baps there were none. Still, it must still be preferable to Silly Billy Bum Breath, one of the many kids shows that seems to have the word Bum in them somewhere.

So that's just their morning. Any sensible person might want to quit now, but not Charlie and Victoria, who could stay in the Holyrood Tavern, buy their own cheese rolls and watch another West country hero, Care Bear caressing Wil Hodgson. Except that they want horrible shows and this sounds be better than a show called Men With Bananas Bigger Than Jesus, which is at the Jekyll and Hyde pub. The only thing surely going for that is it is free.

If they really want to see what happens when comedy goes bad they should see writer AL Kennedy attempting and gloriously failing at live comedy at the Stand at 3pm. But afterwards Charlie and Victoria might have problems if they only want to see rubbish. By late afternoon things look up. There are quite a lot of decent sketch shows this year – Cowards, The Receptionists, Fat Tongue – that they might want to avoid. Better to catch the surely bonkers comic Peter Buckley Hill in How Much Longer Can He Get Away With This? at Laughing Horse @ Canon’s Gait at 6.15pm. This should take them through to 6.45pm if they can put up with his musical nonsense for 30 minutes. The trouble is that Buckley Hill might just be so bad he is good and they wouldn’t want that. My advice to them then? There is still just time to get the last train back to London. They should get on it pronto or they will develop a glazed stare, bad posture and the inability to laugh when something is genuinely funny.

Laughter Is The Best Medicine, Although Antibiotics Can Help Too

2006-08-21T12:46:00.000+01:00

I don't know why, but I've been particularly accident prone this Edinburgh. Not as seriously as comedian Nick Wilty, who pierced his scrotum with a tent pole soon after arriving at Glastonbury a couple of years ago, but not very nice, nonetheless.

First there was the Great Kettle Lead Incident, when I was pouring a kettle of boiling water over some rice and I snagged the lead on the cooker and spilt scalding water over my wrist. I held the injured hand under the cold tap and Googled for First Aid with the other one. It advised me to hold my injured hand under the cold tap, so apart from a horrific blister that looks like I've been hit by radioactive fall-out i think I'll be fine.

Then on Friday on the way to a gig I was locking my bike up and caught my thumb on some rusty wires. Not much blood but a lot of pain and later in the bar some friends advised me to get a tetanus injection. So off I trotted to the Western General Hospital this morning, where I very impressed by the service.

Coming from south London I'm used to the A&E Department being more full of men with knives stuck in their sides than children with saucepans stuck to their heads. In fact there was no-one there at all – either Scots ar a brave bunch who think going to hospital is for wimps or the service is super efficient. As I was gently whisked in and out it felt distinctly like the latter.

Of course I could've got some pretty good medical treatment just by hanging around the stage doors (if the dodgy Portakabin-type huts that double as some of the venues here have such a thing as stage doors). Former full-time GP Paul Sinha has an excellent subtle hard-hitting show at the Pleasance in which he examines the way people don't fit easily into categories. He is gay and Asian but also likes football and is not remotely camp. He knew he'd go into the profession because it ran in the famkily: "My dad is a doctor and my mum is a big fan of Holby City." Sinha has been on the circuit a while now but looks certain to move up a league with this smart, autobiographical hour.

Simon Brodkin, also at The Pleasance, is a doctor who specialises in sharp, well-observed comic characters. There's the right-on gap year traveller, the George Flag waving chav, the West Midlands travel rep and, controversially, Asian Dr Oomprakash, for which Brodkin blacks up. This is not something you see every day in Edinburgh and it has divided the critics – is it postmodern or a throwback to the Black and white Minstrels? I've given Brodkin the benefit of the doubt. From what i've heard about medical humour this is pretty tasteful stuff. Someone once told me that if you see the letters DR on a patient's chart, it doesn't mean the doctor has seen him, it means Don't Resuscitate, which is just a hint of the black - no pun intended – humour that stalks the real-life wards.l Though surely not in the Western General Hospital.

Gag Theft

2006-08-20T12:30:00.000+01:00

Are stand-up comedians magnets for muggers? You might think so if you've been getting your annual comedy fix at the Edinburgh Festival. In the last few days I've come across three shows that have all featured anecdotes about street robberies. At the Pleasance Mark Watson (see also Festbuzz, 17/8) recalls being accosted by a 13-year-old who gave him a dissatisfied look when all Watson could offer was a wrinkled fiver.

Globetrotting Irishman Andrew Maxwell has also had a recent close encounter of the criminal kind, but this time it was in South Africa after a gig when Maxwell was surrounded by a gang of toothless, menacing kids. If you want to find out how he outsmarted them you'll have to see his sublime show at The Pleasance, which is a masterclass in comic storytelling. Every sentence is effortlessly milked for its full-bodied comic potential.

Then last night it was the turn of Gordon Southern, whose show in the Gilded Balloon's Wee Room – a venue, not a Scottish toilet – is an endearingly cheeky little piece about how life would be so much easier if we knew today what we don't usually find out until tomorrow - as is the case with crossword solutions. In between revealing that he's the voice of the parrot in the Admiral insurance adverts and whizzing round the stage in a cape, Southern reveals that he was once mugged in Brixton on the way to by some booze.

Southern's show isn't just funny, it is educational. If you want assistance when being mugged, don't shout "help", shout "fire". No-one is likely to look out of their window if they think a knife-waving thug is on the prowl, but if they think their porch is in danger of being torched they will soon call the police.

It is worth noting that none of these incidents actually happened in Edinburgh. I think maybe it’s a Fringe thing, where an infectious sense of humour puts everyone in too good a mood to go out thieving, but the city feels remarkably safe late at night. I don't have any firm statistics on this, but it feels more likely that at 3am on a quiet Edinburgh street you'll be confronted by a student actor thrusting a flyer into your face rather than a local villain after your funny Monopoly-style Scottish five pound notes.

Popping (Into) The Balloon

2006-08-19T12:20:00.000+01:00

is it me or is it the curse of the Gilded Balloon? A few years ago there was a fire in the old part of Edinburgh which destroyed much of the legendary venue. The club's formidable founder Karen Koren relocated to the nearby grand Teviot Building, which is part of Edinburgh University. Except that two years ago - how's this for comic irony? – they had a problem with a temperamental fire alarm in the Teviot and the building had to be evacuated whenever it went off. It actually showed that comedians often have great spirit in a crisis. I remember Brendon Burns and Stephen K Amos (both doing terrific buzzing shows this year) continuing their gigs in the open air like troupers.

Anyway, all of this is a preamble to say that last night the curse struck again. Except that this time it wasn't fire, it was water. There was a problem with the toilets in the Gilded Balloon so at 1am the venue had to be shut down. All it needs now is a plague of boils or frogs and it must be eligible for some sort of prize and a guest appearance from Moses.

It was particularly frustrating because I'd been leading a bit of a monastic life during this year's Festival, going out to gigs all day, drinking lots of water and being tucked up in bed by midnight. Well, midnightish. OK, 1ish. This was one of those rare occasions when I'd decided to make a night of it and hang out in the fashionable VIP Loft bar – I think VIP stands for Very Inebriated Performers.

I shouldn't complain about being turfed out though. One of the many brilliant things about Edinburgh is it is one of the easiest places to get a drink at one in the morning, so we headed across Bristo Place to E4's Udderbelly bar. You can't miss it, it's a giant, purple upside-down plastic cow – and that's how it looks when sober. Honest.

Even outside the Festival there is a late-night, continental bar culture here, albeit one wrapped in woolly cardigans and furry hats. During the Festival, round-the-clock drinking is not just available, it is almost compulsory. I'm afraid let the side down and sneaked off to bed at 3am. I'll try harder tonight...

The Hills Have Och-Ayes

2006-08-18T15:42:00.000+01:00

If you are spending time in Edinburgh there is one thing that you absolutely have to do. Not shop at posh store Jenners, not visit the Castle, not eat haggis, but go up Arthur’s Seat. This is the 825 foot hill – actually an extinct volcano – that towers over the city. In the same way that the Mona Lisa’s eyes follow you around in the Louvre Arthur’s Seat always seems to be in the distance in Edinburgh. I’m currently sitting on my sofa in my flat opposite The Pleasance Theatre and looking out of my window the edge of Arthur’s Seat is just about visible through a sopping wet mist.

Yesterday I made my annual pilgrimage up the hill. Over the years I’ve done it in different ways. You can do the first part on the road up the side of the hill and a couple of years ago I cheated and took a cab for this bit. I've also cycled nearly to top and had to padlock my bike to a tree, which felt strangely odd. This time I walked all the way. Stopping frequently to gasp lungfuls of air of course.

As I was approaching the lake at the side of the hill I saw a cheerful sight. A couple of smiling Japanese tourists were standing by the side of a Nissan hire car being serenaded by a bagpipe player. You don’t get many bagpipe players in the middle of nowhere, so I presume they hired him for the occasion to add to the atmosphere.

After this it was a steady climb to the top, where the views across the city are breathtaking, if you’ve got any breath left to take. The brilliant thing about Arthur’s Seat during the Fringe is it gets you totally away from the comedy. So what should happen when I turned the final corner and prepared to plant myself on the summit? I saw madcap comedian Boothby Graffoe in front of me. Now I know how Captain Scott must have felt when he saw a Norwegian flag and realised he’d been beaten by Amundsen to the South Pole.

It did give me an idea though. There are gigs here in cars, gigs in damp basements, gigs in curry houses. Why doesn’t someone do a gig on the top of Arthur’s Seat. Former Perrier winner Daniel Kitson is always going on about how he wants to cut his fanbase down to around twelve - “call them disciples if you like,” he says. This is one way of whittling your audience down to the truly committed.

Quite Good Minds Think Alike

2006-08-17T12:02:00.000+01:00

Plagiarism in comedy is a perpetually thorny issue, yet having never put a toe onstage I never thought I’d be accused of it. But there’s always a first time. I was catching up on comedian Richard Herring’s excellent blog called Warming Up at his website www.richardherring.com and I saw that someone had accused me of copying Richard’s blog entry about Tim Vine’s gargantuan poster advertising the fact that Vine is not even appearing on the Fringe this year. Now in my defence I’d have to say that given that Vine’s poster is probably the largest one in town, and given the fact that it is about a five minute walk from my flat and I pass it almost every day, I’d have to be Mr Magoo not to have noticed it myself. The coincidence was probably that we had both suggested that maybe Vine should win the new Eddies Spirit of the Fringe Award. Which doesn’t seem like the most original of ideas anyway, as the new Eddies Awards have been a bit of a talking point on the Fringe.

But coincidences do happen in comedy. Jokes which seem original the first time you hear them suddenly send a shiver down your spine when you hear them told by someone else, but it is possible for more than one person to come up with the same gag. I won’t name them but I have heard two people talking about giving up smoking and taking up telling people that they’ve given up smoking. I’m not for a moment suggesting this is plagiarism, it’s just the kind of gag that might be coined during a conversation about giving up smoking, a popular topic in a city with an indoor smoking ban.

Similarly there seem to be lots of comedians making gags about organic produce at Waitrose this year. But I don’t think one person came up with the gag and everybody else followed suit. It’s just a case of reasonably good minds thinking alike. There also seem to be lots of gags about Mick Hucknall, but then there are lots of gags about Mick Hucknall every year.

I came across another intriguing coincidence yesterday. Mark Watson tells a story in his show about how he was mugged by a 13-year-old boy and was embarrassed by the fact that he only had a fiver on him. Now funnily the hugely enjoyable sketch combo Cowards do a sketch in their show at the Pleasance in which a mugger’s victims can only offer a Zone 1 oyster card season ticket and a Starbucks loyalty card which nearly entitled the user to a free coffee. Now I happen to know that Tim Key of Cowards is a friend and occasional performing partner of Watson - did they come up with the gag together? Was it a true incident? Did Watson tell the story then Key turn it into a sketch with his permission? At the end of the day both Watson's and Cowards’ versions are strikingly similar but both very funny indeed. So, unless you are a lawyer looking for a bit of work, who really cares?

Marking Time

2006-08-16T12:17:00.000+01:00

Who says size isn’t everything? Mark Watson obviously believes it is. Having done a 24-hour gig at the Festival in 2004 and a 33-hour gig in 2005, the nervy, skinny but quietly muscular comic went one step beyond on Monday and Tuesday and did a record-breaking 36-hour gig. I’m ashamed to say I wimped out and only turned up for the final hour, which was mostly taken up with Watson listing all the people who had helped out and popped in during the previous day-and-a-half.

The atmosphere in the Pleasance Dome was electric. A bit like a hundred Hogmanays and a handful of World Cup Finals rolled into one. The women behind me were dancing likes dervishes even when there wasn’t music playing. The man on my right was waving his arms like a loon.

At one point Watson received a call from friends in Australia who had been watching the show online. One fan had amazingly started watching the show in Edinburgh, then flew to Australia - I presume they were going anyway – and continued watching it there, which I suppose is the comedy-fan equivalent of Phil Collins doing gigs in London and America on the same day for Live Aid.

The trouble with doing such a monumental gig is how do you follow it? A previous marathon gig climaxed with Watson proposing to his wife – I guess short of her giving birth and Watson delivering the baby live onstage, which would take some miraculous comic timing, or him proposing to another woman, which his wife might not rally like, you can’t top that.

As the clock struck midnight Watson seemed torn between going home immediately, doing a quick encore and doing another six hours. In the end he saw sense and after a standing ovation during which his wife held up the meaningful sign ‘Mark Watson - Time Defier’ he was gone.

Watson has a day off now and then on Thursday its back to the day job, doing his excellent one hour set at the Pleasance every night. The other day I suggested Robin Ince should win the inaugural Eddies Spirit of the Fringe Award. Watson may just have nipped ahead of Ince in the betting now. Except that Watson is also surely a contender for the main Eddies Award which replaces the Perrier. Two Awards in one year to the same performer? Now that would surely be a record breaker.

The Barefoot Cheek

2006-08-15T12:46:00.000+01:00

If there is one unexpected trend at this year’s Festival it’s the rise of the barefoot comedian. For some reason - and I don’t think it’s the heatwave, which was so last month here – a number of comedians are performing without shoes and socks.

This is a risky business. There’s broken glass to think about. Or stubbing your toe. But I suppose it lessens the risk of corns, if not corny jokes. I guess comedians do it to keep their feet on the ground in very sense. Or maybe they just think it will get them a mention in my blog.

When I heard that petite Lucy Porter’s show at The Pleasance was called The Good Life I assumed she was repositioning herself as the Felicity Kendal of Comedy. Seeing her walk onstage without any shoes she was more like the Sandie Shaw (ask your dads) of Stand-up.

Another risk is attracting the wrong kind of fan. Porter recalls how a previous punter saw that she had tiny size three feet and started writing to her. Firstly to ask whether she bought her shoes off the shelf or whether she had them specially made. Gradually, however, the correspondence got a little more personal and Porter stopped replying and started considering moving house. It was an unsettling experience, but looking on the bright side it did give her a good five-minute routine.

Musical comic Tim Minchin at the Gilded Balloon also performs barefoot, adding another string to his quirky, geeky man-boy, scarecrow-haired Mozart genius persona. It seems to work, but again it is a brave thing to do. When not seated at his white grand piano singing rude but catchy-as-heck MOR songs there’s a fair bit of walking around on stage, giving him a Stub-risk factor of eight.

Russell Brand, who opens at the Assembly Rooms on August 19th has performed in shoeless style in the past but he’s so popular now - his show was one of the fastest selling runs on the Fringe – he’ll probably keep his feet covered in case young female fans try to take souvenir toenail clippings from him mid-set.

Already doing a storming set at the Assembly Rooms is Adam Hills, who is clearly the master of compromise. On Saturday night he took his shoes off and left them at the back of the stage but kept his socks on throughout the gig. Interestingly Hills has a prosthetic foot, but whether this was the reason for the half-measure was never explained. He said he just likes it that way, but I’m not so sure. Maybe he’s just after a sponsorship deal from Marks and Spencers’ underwear department.

Dirty Pretty Things

2006-08-14T15:46:00.000+01:00

The inaugural if.comeddies Spirit Of The Fringe Award should be interesting. Whoever wins it will set an intriguing precedent for the kind of person the judges want to pick in the future. The panel could do a lot worse than give it to Robin Ince. If nothing else it might mean that Ince will be able to afford to go out and buy a new frilly shirt - he seems to have been wearing his salmon-pink number for the last couple of years.

Ince has already picked up umpteen plaudits in London for his regular Book Club. Up here is his doing a daily solo show and the Book Club too. And last night as a special treat there was the second chapter in an occasional series of Dirty Book Clubs at the Underbelly. It was a show that captured the spirit of the Fringe perfectly. It was unpredictable, overlong and featured more comedians vying for the audience’s attention than you can shake a whole crate of sticks out.Highlights were many and various. In keeping with the title, acts were supposed to read from rude texts, but most of them went well off-script. Australian Neil Hannon lookalike Asher Treleavan stuck two forks up his nose, Matthew Perrett recited Elvis Presley lyrics in the way that Kylie did I Should Be So Lucky at that Royal Albert Hall poetry night with Nick Cave years ago.

Natalie Haynes cleverly – and when does she not do things cleverly? – crowbarred some of her own Watching The Detectives show into the proceedings by finding the two sauciest bits in a Murder She Wrote novelisation. There were invaluable contributions from Simon Munnery, Wil Hodgson, Josie Long and many more too humorous to mention. In fact it would be easier to list who wasn’t in the show.

The highlight, however, came at the very end of a very long, tired and emotional night. Throughout the evening Ince had ben getting increasingly exasperated by the sound of Coldplay oozing into the venue from another Underbelly club. Eventually he cracked - like the Peter Finch character in Network he was as mad as hell and he wasn’t going to take it any more.

A helpful fan quickly taught mild-mannered guest accordionist Martin White the tune to I Am The Music Man and then Ince got the entire audience to conga downstairs to complain about the music. As finishes to a show go it takes some beating, and as complaints about bad taste in music it is pretty persuasive too. I might try the same thing next time I’ve got noisy neighbours at home – if I can rustle up 50 badly dressed slightly inebriated friends at 2am.

Warning - Comedians At Play

2006-08-13T12:40:00.000+01:00

What is the collective term for a group of stand-ups? A giggle of comedians? A chuckle of comics? I don’t know, but that’s what you encounter when you go to the Loft Bar. This is the new place to be seen on the Fringe. It’s at the very top of the Gilded Balloon venue, but worth the climb. Go up some stairs. Go up some more stairs. Then some more. And if you haven’t succumbed to altitude sickness or an asthma attack it is the best place to unwind at the end of the night.

If you are a critic, however, you take your life in your hands. Getting to the bar means weaving through the minefield of stand-ups - how about that for a collective noun, a minefield? – who you would rather not meet. I’ve always believed that critics and their prey should stay apart. I remember Alexei Sayle in his heyday saying that he didn’t go to celebrity parties in case he met Phil Collins and the drumming soulman turned out to be nice – how would Sayle be able to make nasty jokes about him onstage again?

The trouble with the Loft Bar is that there are two types of comedians there who critics have to avoid. The ones who you’ve given bad reviews to but also the ones who you haven’t reviewed at all. With 275 different comedy shows on the Fringe it is the second bunch that roam the late-night bars in the largest numbers. And to very loosely paraphrase that great master of the one-liner Oscar Wilde, if there is one thing worse than being reviewed badly it is not being reviewed at all.

So I spent most of my time lurking in a shadowy corner, occasionally making forays over the the drinks area where, sure enough, I’d be cornered by someone each time. What can one do, but apologise, promise you will see their show and try and write something. Anything. Of course, they then get nervous that you are going to write something mean about them in your blog. That’s the trouble with comedians, who with their love-me solo shows are probably the most needy people on the planet. There’s no pleasing them. They’d probably even complain about a five-star review if there wasn’t a picture of them at the top of it. Perhaps the best way of describing a group of them is not ‘giggle’ or ‘chuckle’ or even ‘minefield’. Here’s a good description of a group of latterday clowns gathered in one place – a paranoia of comedians?

The Plot Sickens

2006-08-12T15:32:00.000+01:00

So you’ve got your Edinburgh show sorted. You’ve got your lovely pre-recorded intro prepared which sets the show up nicely. Every member of the audience has been given a numbered ticket on the way in because, as the voiceover explains, we’ve all just been killed in an Easyjet plane crash and are queuing up to get into heaven. Timing is everything in comedy, and you could say Welsh comic Rhod Gilbert has got his slightly wrong, although it might not have been so bad if I hadn’t been to see Knocking On Heaven’s Door on the day that news of the latest terror plot broke.

But what do you do if events overtake your show? Gilbert was philosophical: “I thought about changing it, but then I thought, ’sod it’”. Besides he added, if suicide bombers were going to choose an airline they probably wouldn’t choose Easyjet because they’d want one last free meal.

Babyfaced banter merchant Michael McIntyre at the Pleasance Dome was more of a one-man rapid response unit. Grabbing a punter’s handbag he asked why it wasn’t transparent. Later on he reflected on news reports in the past and how the neighbours of those taken away for questioning always say that the people next door all seemed lovely and/or kept themselves to themselves. No-one ever said ‘ooh yes, I thought they looked like suicide bombers as soon as they moved in’ . Never mind the fact that this felt like the kind of routine done when alleged serial killers are arrested, it had the desired comic effect and broke the tension.

One of the brilliant things about stand-up is the way it can react so immediately to events, while the film, TV and theatre world moves slowly, like an oil tanker by comparison. Full marks to McIntyre for improvising. Gilbert’s show is great, but it would be even better if he could seamlessly work current events into an already clever concept.

Smells Like Stand-Up Spirit

2006-08-11T12:32:00.000+01:00

There is a school of thought that says that there are two types of comedians. The ones that are funny onstage and truly miserable company off and the ones who are constantly ‘on’. Eric Morecambe was always ‘on’. Frank Skinner is always ‘on’. But I can’t quite imagine Jimmy Tarbuck being much fun offstage. Then again, I can’t imagine Jimmy Tarbuck being much fun onstage either.

Brilliant young comedian Russell Howard lives for fun. In his show at the Pleasance he hops around grinning from ear to ear, flirting with old ladies in the front row and laughing about the time he saw a pigeon following a drunk man eating a bag of chips. He can even see the funny side of saving his brother’s life when he had an epileptic fit in the middle of the night. His brother was naked at the time, which was a cause of embarrassment for his mum but merriment for Russell.

On the other hand hangdog comedian/actor Graham Fellows doesn’t seem like the life and soul of the party judging by his dark, frequently, curmudgeonly comic creations – MOR songsmith John Shuttleworth and builder-turned-hopeless after dinner speaker Dave Tordoff. The latter character is currently also at the Pleasance, in the amusingly titled Neighbours From Hull.

Yet Howard tells a really funny story about how he met Fellows backstage and Fellows explained to him that if you put smelly socks in a plastic bag, seal the bag and return 24 hours later the pong will have completely vanished. Fellows then put some cheesy socks in a bag to demonstrate this little-known scientific fact. The two performers met up the following day and Howard opened up the bag, preparing to be amazed. Instead he was nearly knocked unconscious by the pungent aroma.

It was not just a joke, but a joke with a punchline that arrived 24 hours after the set-up, which must be some kind of record. There is something beautiful and almost poetic about the notion that the people who seem the least likely to be ‘on’ all the time may turn out to be the ones to watch out for.

Watts All The Fuss About?

2006-08-10T12:39:00.000+01:00

I’m always fascinated by people who walk out of a gig in the middle. Have they been fooled by the adverts into buying tickets for the wrong show? Have they suddenly remembered they’ve left the gas on? Or do they just not get the joke?

It must have been the third reason why about five people walked out of Reggie Watts’ gig at the Gilded Balloon. Watts is an eccentric black American frizzy-afro'd comic who is almost uncategorisable. He uses samples and sound loops to create original songs, he puts on funny posh English accents and tells bizarre nonsense stories, with no start and no end and very few punchlines. He dances like a loon. Yet at his best he reminds me of Reeves and Mortimer in their surreal heyday. If only you can get on his wavelength he’s hilarious.

As one confused, disgruntled punter in the front row got up to leave before the end Watts told the audience the man was his cousin. The man replied, “You’re still shit”, before accidentally opening the door to a broom cupboard, which was one of the funniest moments of the night.

Most people are either too good-mannered or don’t have the nerve to leave, however much they are hating a performance. Either that or they just glue themselves to their seat and think, “I’ve paid my money, I’m getting my full show, even if I don’t like it.” I remember a couple of years ago I saw a comic at the Gilded Balloon called Ben Bailey. About ten seconds after this towering, crop-haired American walked onstage there was a lot of shuffling in the audience. A group in the stalls thought they’d bought tickets for Bill Bailey and had just realised their mistake.

I suspect that noone has walked out of controversial US comic Doug Stanhope yet on the Fringe. There have been so many articles and reviews saying how sick, rude and taboo-busting he is people ought to know what they are getting with him. However, there is a risk here too. Stanhope is being so heavily hyped as the comedian who dares to say anything it can only be a matter of time before someone gets up and walks out because they are offended by the fact that they’ve not been offended as much as the previews promised...

Second Show Syndrome

2006-08-09T14:12:00.000+01:00

In the music business they call it Second Album Syndrome – when a band that has come from nowhere and made a splash with their debut faces the almost impossible challenge of following it up. Comedians in Edinburgh seem to suffer from Second And Even Third Show Syndrome. In recent years there have been a number of acts who have made a terrific impact but then, with all that expectation heaped upon them, every time they come back they can’t quite improve on that first perfectly formed hour.

Sue Perkins, from Mel and Sue, has tackled the predicament head-on by calling her show at the Pleasance The Disappointing Second Show. As in warfare that is what is known as a pre-emptive strike – except in warfare it usually involves ballistic missiles, in comedy it usually involves getting your bad review in first before the critics have their say.

There are a number of acts up here grappling with this follow-up problem. New romantic parodist Gary Le Strange has ditched his dandy robot persona and gone for a besuited futurist business outfit this year for his new show entitled Beef Scarecrow at the Underbelly. Fellow former Perrier Best Newcomer, ex-wrestler-turned-Chippenham punk Wil Hodgson, is back at the Holyrood Tavern with his all-new show. Though at the time of writing it was not clear if he has ditched the pink mohican and obsession with Care Bears.

Justin Edwards is another performer who has had his ups and downs on the Fringe. As a member of sketch group The Consultants he also picked up a Perrier Best Newcomer Award. He then made his solo debut as brilliantly boozy, bitter kids’ entertainer Jeremy Lion and picked up more plaudits. He returned as Jeremy Lion the following year and it just felt like more of the same. Then last year Edward honed the formula to perfection with Lion downing endless alcoholic drinks live onstage and hiding bottles of whisky inside a stuffed cow. He deservedly picked up a Perrier nomination. Last night I was explaining my thoughts on Lion to a friend, not realising that Lion’s creator Justin Edwards – back at The Pleasance as himself doing delightfully twisted comic songs – was sitting directly behind me. Performers being fragile egos on legs, he probably only heard the bit about the second show being pants. If there’s a Foot In Mouth Award this year that ought to make me an odds-on favourite...

The First Comedian Who Is Truly Not All There

2006-08-08T12:30:00.000+01:00

Phew, this is more like it. A couple of days into the festival and I was beginning to wonder if the most dramatic news of the month was the bombshell that the critic from The Stage temporarily lost his bag down a gap under his seat during a Simon Amstell gig. But the Festival spirit is starting to kick in. There are people falling over on the Royal Mile, manic stares in the Assembly Rooms bar (mainly from needy comedians already panicking that they’ve not been reviewed yet) and even mild-mannered Tim Fitzhigham, who once sailed up the Thames in a paper boat, briefly ended up in a cell after becoming embroiled in a drunken altercation in a taxi. He was completely innocent of course.

What we are still waiting for, however, is somebody who perfectly embodies the spirit of the Fringe. The replacement for the Perrier Awards, the if.comeddies Awards will be handing a new prize to this mythical individual. Last year the Perrier organiser Nica Burns wanted to give a similar gong to veteran comic Arthur Smith. You might know this wrinkly Sid James lookalike these days from his appearances on Grumpy Old Men, but before he had to give up drinking for a living Smith used to do uproarious midnight walking tours of Edinburgh. If people weren’t drunk at the start they certainly would be by the end. Arrests and nudity, in no particular order, usually occurred too. Smith once said that when he moved into his temporary Edinburgh flat there was a note pinned to the door that said “Tuesdays and Thursdays are rubbish days.” How did they know that? he wondered.

Burns hatched a plan to hire four burly men to kidnap an unwitting Smith on the day of the Awards ceremony and then deliver him onstage where he would receive his prestigious accolade. Unfortunately Smith smelt a rat when Nica tracked him down earlier in the day and jumped on a train out of town immediately – if this urban myth is true it sounds like the kind of curmudgeonly spoilsport behaviour that I guess makes him the perfect talking head for Grumpy Old Men.

So who might win the inaugural award this year? It is early days yet, but a front-runner has to be punmeister general Tim Vine, who is always game for an original laugh. Walking down Cowgate there is a huge poster with Vine’s face and name on it. Below are the words “is not appearing”. While every other comic in town is desperate to plug their show, Vine has eaten up their space by announcing that he doesn’t have a show to plug. It is a brilliant bit of anti-PR, part Malcolm McClaren, part-Chris Morris, part-Salvador Dali. Presumably Vine’s evil svengali promoter Nigel Klarfeld had a hand in the stunt. Last year Klarfeld stuck up the biggest poster in Fringe history to advertise Omid Djalili’s show in roughly the same place, so he’s the prime suspect.

Of course if they were going to give the award to Tim Vine there is one obvious problem. He’s not there...

Shearer Agony

2006-08-07T12:44:00.000+01:00

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival finally kicked off for real on Sunday. I know because I couldn’t get across Edinburgh to the Assembly Rooms because the roads were blocked off for the annual opening procession. I finally made it via Newcastle, Inverness and Berwick.

The thing about the Fringe is that there really is something for everyone. There’s Hamlet on a bouncy castle, something called Tossers which apparently features jugglers, and 275 shows in the comedy section alone. Picking a winner is a real challenge, and, as I found to my cost, going for famous names is no guide to quality.

Harry Shearer is best known for playing moustachioed bassist Derek Smalls in This Is Spinal Tap and for doing various voices in The Simpsons. He opened his show with with chanteuse wife Judith Owen by doing a quick Mr Burns impression and waving a pair of yellow rubber gloves, but that was about as close to Springfield as we got.

Then again, we can’t say we weren’t warned. The show is called This Is So Not About The Simpsons - American Voyeurs. What we weren’t warned about was the fact that the show consisted of turgid, angry political songs. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the subjects weren’t the kind of topics that stand-ups in Edinburgh have already done to death over the years – Michael Jackson, Botox, Telly Evangelists. You name it, Burns and Owen droned on about it.

There was one very good moment, however. They had somehow got hold of footage of George Bush being filmed deep in thought just before he went on TV, and his bizarre facial expressions and Shearer's running commentary of the President's imaginary conversation with God were almost worth the ticket price alone. But only almost.

The trouble is that the one good thing draws attention to all the bad things in this show. This Is So Not About The Simpsons has its heart in the right place but it does bludgeon you over the head with the flipping obvious. It might have been better if they’d made a few more concessions to Shearer’s older fans. If only he’d donned a droopy Derek Smalls moustache when he accompanied his wife on bass the show would have been less intense, but much, much funnier.

So, things didn’t get off to a great start, but that’s nice in a way. The bar has been set so low things can surely only get better...

Derailed, Delayed, But Delighted To Be Here

2006-08-06T11:37:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my blog. Or, indeed, welcome to my world. Because for the next three and a bit weeks I'm going to be in Scotland reporting on the highs, lows and strange fuzzy bits in-between at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It should be a thrilling cavalcade of non-stop laughs but it got off to a pretty grim start yesterday before I'd even got here.

I arrived at King's Cross and wasn't allowed to take my bike on the train. On the phone I was told I could take it on any train if there was space. Once there, however, the first guard said I couldn't because without booking there would be no-one at the other end to take it off. The second guard muttered something about not being insured, then went to get a book that said bikes could only be taken if prior reservations were made. A supervisor offered to help then disappeared. For a while I thought I was in the middle of some sinister, strange pre-Edinburgh performance art show/welcoming party in which actors dressed as GNER employees were intent on driving me mad. I eventually got on a train 90 minutes later, but that was a morning at King's Cross I'd never get back. I clearly need a serious dose of comedy to stop me turning into a grumpy old man.

Having finally reached Edinburgh, however, something truly historic happened. A show started bang on time. I arrived a minute late and wasn't allowed in, because the venue boasts the kind of well-thought-out typically-Fringe design that means latecomers have to walk across the stage to get to their seats. In fairness I can understand performers not wanting to be distracted, but how inconsiderate of them to start at the time it states in the programme.

The show I meant to see was Natalie Haynes' Watching The Detectives, which is all about her near-autistic obsession with daytime telly sleuths. Apparently Haynes thinks the world would be a better place if it was ruled by Dick Van Dyke from Diagnosis Murder, but I'll let you know why she thinks that when I've actually seen her. Hopefully in the forthcoming weeks I'll be writing more about the shows I've actually got into rather than just the ones that I've got close to seeing...

the last laugh

2005-08-30T16:04:00.000+01:00

Well, it really is all over now. The clowns have packed up their red noses and the circus has left town. Waverley Station yesterday resembled The fall of Saigon, with anxious performers frantically trying to escape as quickly as possible. It is a time of mixed feelings. Sad to be saying goodbye but flipping delighted to be going.

So how did my Supersize Me experiment go? Well, I think I survived. All the walking may have made me fitter but all the drinking may have cancelled out the extra exercise. Physically I’m OK, but mentally is another question. The sheer barrage of gags does get to you in the end. I’m glad I wasn’t a Perrier judge this time because by the final week I’m not sure if I could tell what tickled me any more. The Evening Standard doesn’t give star ratings but if it did there would have been a lot of three star shows that week. The only thing that kept me going was the occasional belter. I sensibly saved Stewart Lee for the final week and he didn’t disappoint, while pun-meister general Tim Vine’s no-messing performance was like a stand-up sorbet, the perfect way of refreshing a jaded comedy palate.

I know from experience, however, that once I’m back in London I’ll feel raring to go again. The problem with overdosing on the Fringe is not particularly the sheer number of comedians but the sheer, repetitive tedium of going to the same hot, sweaty, damp venues time and time again. The Underbelly’s subterranean spin-off The Baby Belly must take the biscuit as the worst venue. Somehow it manages to be cold, clammy, damp and baking hot all at the same time. If you haven’t got bronchitis before you go there you’ll probably have it when you leave. It’s not so much a theatre, more a cave. Maybe now the performers have moved out Osama Bin Laden can move back in.

So all in all it was a successful Fringe and a successful experiment. There are plenty of comedians I’d happily see again – Daniel Kitson (who apparently took his top off and wrestled with fellow wag Steven K Amos onstage at Late & Live on Sunday), Perrier winner Laura Solon and sketch twosome Penny Spubb’s Party, who were a welcome v late discovery – but there is one by-product of all the rubbish written about the Fringe that I don’t want to see again. And that’s the use of certain cliched journalistic phrases.

So can we please bid a final fond farewell to the following, starting with one, mea culpa, that i’m ashamed to say I used in yesterday’s blog...

Jokers In The Pack

No Laughing Matter

The Joke Isn’t Funny Any More (unless writing about delightful arch-Smiths bore Robin Ince)

Hitting The Funny Bone (or any headline with the phrase ‘funny bone’ in it. Not even one using its Latin name of humerus. Not even mentioning humerus in a review about Alex Horne’s teach-yourself-Latin show)

Comedy Is A Serious Business (although Serious About Comedy is fine, because it’s the name of a BBC7 round-table review show I’ve appeared on)

Has Perrier lost its fizz/sparkle? (delete as necessary)

Stand-up and Be Counted (although I’d quite like to see someone advertising cut-price gigs use Stand-up and be Discounted)

Any more greatly appreciated. And now, like al the other people who have spent nearly a month in this mad, mad world I’m going to try to forget about stand-up by doing a bit of lying down for a while.

oh, I've thought of one more – The Last Laugh (unless writing your final Festbuzz entry)

jokers in the pack

2005-08-29T17:59:00.000+01:00

I’m entering uncharted territory now. I normally leave Edinburgh straight after the Perrier Award announcements, but GNER, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to choose the Bank Holiday weekend to do engineering work on the London to Edinburgh line, meaning that for a £90 fare travellers are offered the bonus of part of the journey on a bus. So instead I really am sticking it out to the bitter end.

Last night was one of those perfect Festival nights. Possibly because I didn’t see any comedy. Instead I had a drink with friends in the City Cafe, the legendary diner between Cowgate and the Royal Mile. From there I went to play cards with performers Dan Tetsell and Chas Early and director Richard Hurst. Tetsell had just finished the run of his intriguing show about dealing with the fact that his maternal grandfather was in the Waffen SS, Early and Hurst have been doing Slight Return. their homage to late, great US stand-up Bill Hicks.

I felt slightly awkward about going because I’d reviewed both shows and not been entirely complimentary. Tetsell’s write-up was pretty positive but I'd suggested he’d bitten off a little more than he could chew, subject matter-wise. Slight Return has its moments and like Hicks himself has a growing cult following, but when it was at the Soho Theatre before Edinburgh I’d described it as an upmarket tribute act. No-one mentioned the reviews, so I think I may have got away with it.

It’s not a good idea for comics and critics to meet though. I remember Alexei Sayle saying he didn’t want to meet Phil Collins in case he turned out to be a really nice bloke, which would make Sayle feel awkward about putting the boot in onstage. And of course Tetsell, Hurst and Early were all really nice blokes.

In fact they were such really nice blokes they didn’t seem to mind too much when I cleaned up at the poker table. I’m not even a particularly good player, it was just on of those occasions when the gambling gods smiled upon me. As I said, a perfect Festival night.

Winning isn't everything - but it certainly feels like it to comedians in Edinburgh

2005-08-28T20:08:00.000+01:00

So Laura Solon did it. I had a sneaking feeling that she had a good chance of winning the Perrier Award despite being judged an outsider by the bookies. Her character-based sketch show always felt like a strong candidate. There were of course omens against her winning it – the narrative of an outsider coming from nowhere has now happened two years on the trot. Plus I don’t know when a show on at 1.30pm last did so well.

Still, good for Solon and the Holyrood Tavern. Last year they scooped Best Newcomer with Wil Hodgson, this year they’ve gone one better. The stranglehold that The Pleasance, The Gilded Balloon and The Assembly Rooms has on the Perrier gets weaker every year. The Underbelly is now established as a major player and the Tavern’s reputation is growing too. The latter plays great indie-punk music between acts too.

The Perrier party was supposed to be a small VIP affair this year, in which case there are a lot of VIPs in Edinburgh. Over 700 people crammed into an empty office building near the Scottish Parliament. One almost expected to see David Brent lurking by the bar telling bad jokes to Finchy. In fact Ricky Gervais is in town for the TV Festival, but apparently hasn’t been able to get to any gigs because he keeps getting mobbed.

Paul Merton hosted the Awards which seemed to be over in a flash, about as far removed from the slog of the Oscars and all the better for it. Thai food was served in dinky New York-style cartons and everyone seemed to drink fast and furiously and tried not to spill wine on the carpet.

The general feeling was one of surprise mixed with acceptance. There was strong support for Jeremy Lion and Chris Addison, but it was not to be. Lion’s creator Justin Edwards told me that his next show might be Lion on the wagon and off the booze, which will be a challenge. Edwards was one of the few people not drinking at the party, but then after downing Special Brew, whisky and Listerine every afternoon in your act alcohol is the last thing you want to help you unwind.

There was greater teeth-gnashing over the Best Newcomer Award going to Aussie musical comedian Tim Minchin. If I had a pound for everyone who said they hated musical comedy I’d have, ooh, seven pounds by now. Seriously though, his genre – and his rats’ nest hair – did divide both critics and performers. Someone suggested giving the Award to Ben Folds - his songs are catchier and wittier and the banter between them is funnier. Mark Watson and Rhod Gilbert looked odd only getting Newcomer nominations when they probably did two of the best twelve shows in Edinburgh this year.

I recovered from the party at Daniel Kitson’s lunchtime Listening Club at the Cafe Royale, when he spun records dear to his heart, threw biscuits into the crowd with brutal ferocity and told his audience off for talking during the music. As well as Pulp, Stephen Malkmus and a bloody awful racket from the Smashing Pumpkins which the sentimental sod only played cos it was the first record he ever bought, he also played a Ben Folds track about a middle-aged man leaving his wife for a younger woman. And yes, it was much funnier than Tim Minchin.

hits and myths

2005-08-27T11:58:00.000+01:00

There is light at the end of the tunnel at last. The Perrier Award winners are announced tonight. The last week has been a little odd for performers. If they aren’t nominated they can’t help feeling a little flat and unloved, but if they are one of the five shows nominated it has all gone to their heads a little. They know that the judges are in to see their shows for a second time and they have to put in the performances of their lives.

Sometimes, however, the audience gets in the way. Last night the panel was in to see Jason Manford at The Pleasance. And so was a woman who insisted on interrupting him and engaging him in conversation throughout. Manford – whose show is an entertaining romp through the world of well-worn urban myths, from psychopathic hitchhikers to subliminal messages in Disney movies – coped well, suggesting she left and went to put the mockers on the rest of the shortlist.

I’ve been doing some in-depth research about the shortlist, mostly in the bars in the city, and this year’s competition is too close to call. There’s a solid base of support for Chris Addison, a growing swathe of fans of Laura Solon and a few thumbs up for Jeremy Lion. Manford also has a bit of a following.

The nomination of Dutch Elm Conservatoire for the main award is still utterly baffling. I don’t recall seeing any rave reviews of them – unlike Alan Carr – and I haven’t come across anyone who thinks their sketch show is worthy of a nomination. Could it be that the only ten people in Edinburgh that like them are the ten people on the panel? The most worrying thing is that one insider has suggested that there are a number of judges who think they are the best thing in Edinburgh.

It’s all my fault of course. Before the Festival I complained that there were too many theatre critics on the Perrier panel and not enough comedy specialists. This year, unusually, the line-up includes comedy experts from Five, C4 and Paramount. Dutch Elm are undeniably polished and maybe appeal to them because they look more TV-friendly than stand-up comedians.

Another theory is that they got through because their name started with a D, so when the panel was eliminating acts by working through them alphabetically it didn’t feel the need to be so ruthless at that stage. I’ve always thought that that is why Andrew Maxwell and Will Smith didn’t get through last year. If only they’d been called Mandrew Axwell and Bill Bith comedy history may have been different.

Now that’s a more relevant urban myth for Manford to investigate.

For what it’s worth I think Solon might come through and snatch it, although William Hill make her the 4-1 outsider. Australian musical comic Tim Minchin will probably get the hotly contested Best Newcomer Award. Rhod Gilbert is equally deserving but his tales of Welsh misery may be too subtle. Mark Watson could snatch it too, though there is a school of thought that he should not be on the Newcomers list. Rules discount anyone who has done a full-length show in Edinburgh before. Last year Watson did a show that ran for 24 hours. Only one of them, but surely that’s the equivalent of 24 one-hour gigs.

A spanking bad time

2005-08-25T20:14:00.000+01:00

I’ve seen a lot of great shows in Edinburgh and quite a few ropey ones, but last night’s late night gig rates as one of the most awful. Not particularly because of the acts – though they were pretty desperate – just because of the whole tone of the night.

I’ve been meaning to go to Spank in London for a while now but finally sampled it at the Underbelly. I’d been told that it was the new happening late-nighter and that The Gilded Balloon’s legendary Late & Live had gone off the boil. What I wasn’t told is that Spank is the closest thing a comedy club has come to replicating a night out in Faliraki. Not, I have to admit, my idea of fun. Though maybe I’ve just been out a little too much in the last month.

The comperes aren’t exactly stand-up comedians, more jumped-up Butlins Redcoats. I’m used to a few gentle gags to warm me up, not someone onstage screaming that every time they say “Spank” we have to shout back “You love it!”. Worse was to come when we were all told to stand up and dance to a tacky techno track. At least it wasn’t the Birdie Song.

This went on for some time, along with being told that drinking heavily was compulsory (what about Muslim comedy fans?) and that if we spoke during the acts we’d be taken onstage and spanked as a punishment. The chap next to me seemed to be enjoying himself though. So much so that he fell off his chair a couple of times.

I’ve been getting a bit fed up of rowdy, stag-night-packed comedy clubs in London where the priority seems to be getting drunk first and maybe occasionally listening to some gags in between listening to Terry from finance telling you what happened when he went to Manumission last summer. But nothing prepared me for this. And by the way, I’m not anti-partying or anti-alcohol, I just don’t think they mix with comedy very well.

Other venues at the Underbelly are so damp you need an umbrella in there on a sunny day. If you don’t have bronchitis when you arrive in the Underbelly Caves you’ll have it by the time you leave. But even those are preferable to Rank, sorry, Spank.

Maybe my Supersize My Comedy Intake experiment (see first blog) is taking its toll, but can anyone recommend a good monastery?

the battle for the bottle

2005-08-24T15:07:00.000+01:00

Sorry I didn’t blog sooner today, i’ve just been getting over the announcement of the Perrier shortlist:

Chris Addison, Dutch Elm Conservatoire, Jason Manford, Jeremy Lion, Laura Solon

Addison shouldn’t be on the list because last year’s show was better (which is possibly why Will Smith didn’t make it), while Dutch Elm Conservatoire’s show was probably one of the worst sketch shows I’ve seen this Fringe. Perfectly adequately performed, not remotely funny. I’ve no problem with Manford, but if the judges were going to opt for a mainstreamish northern comic what happened to Alan Carr?

It would have been nice if Lucy Porter was on their too as her show Happiness was the kind of show that sticks a smile on your face for sixty solid minutes.

And on the subject of missing persons, where was Andrew Maxwell? Or festbuzz’s most mentioned performer, Latin scholar Alex Horne. As one wag put it, he may have already had his acceptance speech written: “Veni, vidi vici” (“I came i saw I conquered for those for whom Latin is a foreign language, which i suppose is all of us). I guess The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players were just a bit too twee for the panel, but it would have been nice to have had a comedy music combo on the list.

If you are wondering where Welsh wizards Mark Watson and Rhod Gilbert are they have somehow ended up on the Best Newcomers list alongside Tim Minchin, Charlie Pickering and another slick but hollow sketch combo, Toulson & Harvey.

The debate will no doubt rage on in Edinburgh bars into the night. And on this blog in the forthcoming days. This’ll have to be a short entry though. I need a serious lay down.

My tip for winner? Demented solo sketch/character comic Laura Solon, though it would be funny if spoof kids’ entertainer Jeremy Lion won as water is about the only liquid he doesn’t drink in his high-spirited booze-sodden set.

Malcolm In The Muddle

2005-08-22T12:35:00.000+01:00

I went to Aaaaargh! A Tribute to Malcolm Hardee last night at the Gilded Balloon. In case you don’t know, Hardee was the south London comedy legend – famous for his naked balloon dancing and huge testicles – who sadly died in January, falling from his dinghy into the Thames on the way home to his boat after a very boozy, very late night.

Umpteen myths have already sprung up about this inveterate scruffy, curry-stained rogue. One story I heard at his funeral was that the reason he drowned was because he had just won a £600 fruit machine jackpot and the coins in his pockets weighed him down in the water. At the inquest a policeman reported that his body was found clutching a can of beer.

The show featured many of Hardee’s old cronies telling stories about him. Compere Arthur Smith described Hardee as “one of the worst comedians who ever lived, but that didn’t prevent him from being one of the funniest.” Various Edinburgh scams were recalled, such as the time that Hardee wrote his own rave review under a pseudonym and got it printed in the Scotsman. Then there was the time he drove a tractor into the neighbouring tent venue during an annoyingly pretentious performance artist’s set because he was getting on his nerves.

Hardee was a weird mix of genius marketing man and walking shambles. He cannily called his Fringe shows Aaaaargh! so that they’d always be first in the programme. A true one-off.

I dealt with Malcolm in London when I previewed his gigs in Metrolife and his business practices were unique to say the least. Last year he attempted to launch a new club in Greenwich to follow in the footsteps of the riotous Tunnel Club and relatively sedate Up The Creek. The first week he failed to send in the listings. The second week they arrived after the deadline. The third week the line-up changed completely after we’d gone to press. By the fourth week I was determined to give him a proper plug. He told me the line-up personally. I rang him back just before press-time to check it. It was all systems go. Then just as the magazine hit the streets I got another call. The club had been closed down before the show when it transpired that Hardee had never applied for an entertainment licence.

As I said, a legend.

www.malcolmhardee.co.uk

can you fracture your funny bone?

2005-08-20T15:29:00.000+01:00

My stand-up Supersize Me experiment had been ticking over nicely until last night. Something strange happened to my brain during Demetri Martin’s gig (George Square Theatre). Gags I’ve heard over the two weeks seemed to merge into one big joke pudding and I found I couldn’t stop thinking about comedy. I think after the Edinburgh Festival I might need to have my funny bone x-rayed for serious signs of wear and tear.

In the middle of his excellent, laid-back show Martin told a story about injuring his neck. He found that he could only look at someone by his side by turning his whole body to face them. As he result he recalled how even the most friendly offhand remark seemed threatening when accompanied by this pose – try it, it’s true.

As the punchline nestled in my head it seemed to hook up with a story told by Natalie Haynes (Pleasance) about going up to do a gig in York after putting her back out, which meant she was OK driving in a straight line but stuffed if she had to turn a corner.

This gag segued seamlessly into a one-liner told by Tim Vine (Pleasance) about asking a friend what music he should listen to when he was driving from London to Newcastle. “Bjork,” said his friend. “No, B’Durham,” replied Vine.

This made me think of Joanna Neary (Underbelly) whose quickfire character comedy show this year repeats some of the highlights of last year’s show but annoyingly not her brilliantly deranged Bjork impression.

Neary does, however, do a freakishly funny impersonation of an adolescent deer, all antlers and embarrassed shuffles. Luckily this made me think of a forthcoming documentary on Taxidermy called Stuff The World, which goes out on BBC2 this Wednesday. I’ve seen it and it’s great. And best of all, thinking about it helped me to stop thinking about comedy for a few minutes.

Even the sad, untimely demise of great politicians seems to link back to comedy at the moment. Mo Mowlam’s death reminded me that the last time I’d seen her, only a couple of months ago, she was introducing Eddie Izzard onstage at the Hackney Empire where he was doing a benefit for her charity. And on the day of Robin Cook’s funeral in Edinburgh last week a comic bemoaning his poor ticket sales remarked that “he’s dead and he’s getting bigger audiences than me.”

A site for sore eyes

2005-08-19T20:29:00.000+01:00

I saw Arthur Smith’s distinctly idiosyncratic version of Swan Lake today and if you are in Edinburgh tomorrow or Sunday get to the Pleasance Courtyard at 4pm for the final performances (and here’s a tip, don’t worry if you don’t like ballet or if it is sold out, it is so chaotic no-one ever collects your ticket). Smith is an Edinburgh legend (see also Double Acts blog) who used to do late night drunken tours, much to the amusement of the locals and the police. Illness has latterly forced him to give up alcohol and clean up his act so this year he has gone legit and very loosely adapted this classic work.

This being Arthur Smith,”loosely” is very much the operative word. The production is site-specific, which means the wandering audience was taken round the back of the Pleasance onto the notoriously dodgy Dumbledykes council estate (a name surely part of the inspiration for Dumbledore - JK Rowling created the early HP in a cafe round the corner). Singers serenaded us from balconies, dancers pas de deuxed in glass-strewn playgrounds and, most notably, a group of locals bombarded us with water bombs. The first fusillades were scripted, but they took their roles to heart and followed us around, drenching us at every corner.

The finale was pretty spectacular. On cue ballerinas appeared in the distance 800 feet up on Arthur’s Seat, the breathtaking hill that towers over this side of Edinburgh. And also on cue, one of the dancers fell down the hill. I assume it was a dummy. As Smith said, “that was probably the most long distance gag ever in Edinburgh.”

If you are tickled by the idea of site-specific shows more to look out for are The Lover’s Tour of Edinburgh, in which your trip through the city is punctuated by the comic breakdown of a relationship and Charity Begins At Home, which is performed in a genuine charity shop (Barnardo’s 106 Nicholson St). And why not catch DJ Minicab (14 Picardy Place) who entertains you in his people carrier? Not just a show, maybe even a lift home afterwards.

the hair unbearable bunch

2005-08-18T19:33:00.000+01:00

What’s with the hair? I saw The Odd Couple (Assembly on the Mound) a few days ago and something has been troubling me about it ever since. Bill Bailey and Alan Davies recreate the roles made famous by Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon and there are worst ways to spend a rainy afternoon. Some critics have queried Davies’ accent, Chicago by way of Basildon or something, but there’s another thing that has bothered me.

The formica and old-fashioned phones locate the play in the sixties. The smart suits and loud Hawaiian shirts place it in the sixties. Yet Bailey and Davies still sport their usual modern haircuts. Did their agents draw the line at their clients having the chop? When Bailey appeared in the period courtroom drama 12 Angry Men here a couple of years ago he tucked his straggly shower curtain locks underneath a short-haired wig. Why not do that again? As for Davies, I guess those curls are his fortune so they aren’t leaving his head in a hurry.

It’s an odd little detail but the kind that can niggle away at a critic’s critical faculties. On television the other night I saw the new T Mobile ad campaign fronted by Paul Whitehouse and Mark Williams milking the last drops out of their Suit You characters. Now let’s put aside any political questions about selling out. After all, most of us would probably jump at the chance of doing a couple of day’s work for the kind of money these ads pay.

There’s a fundamental flaw though. They’ve gone to all the trouble of dressing Whitehouse and Williams up correctly. They’ve gone to all the trouble of recreating those Mr Whippy-in-a-whirlwind hairdos. The script is not that bad either. Somehow they’ve managed to crowbar in some decent comic innuendo by the back door.

The cause for concern is the lower half of Mark Williams’ face. Did my eyes deceive me or is he sporting a David Brent-style beard? Now maybe he’s spent weeks growing it to play Strindberg or Chekhov in Brighton darling. Or maybe he just said “It doesn’t matter how much money you bring round in that wheelbarrow, sunshine, the face-fuzz stays.”

That’s the problem with actors. They spend so much time on studio sets they forget the real meaning of the word “cut”.

The gift of the gag

2005-08-17T23:31:00.000+01:00

Among all the themed Fringe gigs boasting slide shows, characters, egocentric navel gazing, satirical sideswipes and state-of-the-nation addresses it is easy to overlook the comedians who simply remember the gags. And none home in on the funny bone quite as ruthlessly as Tim ‘brother of ageing Radio 2 punk rocker Jeremy’ Vine. The Tommy Cooperish comic is probably a bit too well known for the Perrier but his show in the Pleasance’s cabaret bar is crammed to bursting point with simple, crowdpleasing pun-based gags.

Critics have a habit of coming out with hyperbole on the lines of “I laughed so much a nurse had to be waiting outside to stitch my sides back up” but in the case of Vine this is almost true. His endless, sometimes winceworthy one-liners really do make you ache after an hour, which I suppose is both a bad thing and a good thing. If he hadn’t made you laugh so much you wouldn’t be in such pain. Maybe his posters should carry a health warning.

See my previous Double Acts blog for one of his great gags. It is not really fair to put most of them in print because as well as spoiling the fun of hearing them for the first time they usually rely on being spoken and putting them on paper kills them stone dead. It’s a bit like that thing they say about analysing comedy being like dissecting a frog – nobody laughs and the frog dies.

Howard Read is also a great one-liner merchant and his afternoon show at the Underbelly with cartoon sidekick Little Howard is a great laugh for adults and also older children whose parents don’t mind a little bit of bleeped but obvious swearing. The way he interacts with his own animations is totally cool. At one point he even wipes a squashed computerised ladybird off his screen.

Just one quibble though – Read does a gag about his family believing in the saying always fight fire with fire - which, he says, is probably why granddad was sacked from the fire brigade. It could of course be pure coincidence, but Harry Hill wad doing pretty much the same gag a few years ago. Still, it’s one line in a great show that everyone with a sense of fun and not just Harry Hill’s lawyer, should see.

Size isn't everything

2005-08-17T00:40:00.000+01:00

By the time you read this Mark Watson ought to have successfully completed his endurance test of a gig, performing continuously for 2005 minutes, around 33 hours. I can’t confirm it, however, because when I went along at 10pm the gig was full and I couldn’t get in.

It’s a heroically impressive feat, and he deserves all the support and praise, but it is also strangely pointless. Welshman Watson is one of the least macho men in comed, yet this record-breaking gig is the ultimate display of comic testosterone, proving that in every wimp on the circuit there lurks the alpha male sensibility of the biggest, hairiest mountain gorilla. In an intensely competitive world Watson has proved he can keep going longer than any of his rivals. Well done, now get some sleep lad.

As my my own Supersize Me endurance test of going to Fringe comedy gigs every day for over three weeks I think I’m over the worst middle-week lumpy stage. Funnily Morgan Spurlock’s film was mentioned in a show this evening by Angelo Tsarouchas (Pleasance), a Canadian-Greek 375lb man-mountain from Toronto. The meat of his appetising set was about how he has dealt with his weight - it isn’t a problem to him, he loves his food so gets fat. In fact he admits that when he came out of Supersize Me “I never craved MacDonald's more in my life.”

I can’t say that I’m likely to feel the same craving for comedy at the end of August, but I can see what he means. The more bad gigs I go to, the more I crave good gigs. When Edinburgh ends I won’t take a break, I’ll just be more discriminating, going for gourmet gigs rather than mainlining open-mic talent nights – the Pot Noodles of the stand-up world.

Although having said that the standard of new talent seems pretty high here. On Sunday I judged a semi-final of newcomers competition So You Think You Are Funny. It is only open to comedians who have been gigging for less than a year yet there were three acts on the bill who I think could make a living in the business. Joe Wilkinson from south London justified his place in next week’s final with some brilliantly delivered one-liners such as “If you laid all the smokers in the world from end to end...two thirds of them would drown.” It’s the kind of simple, effective killer line that puts seasoned stand-ups to shame. As long as I keep hearing gags like this my gigathon will be easy.

Double acts

2005-08-16T02:32:00.000+01:00

I saw Alan Carr (Assembly) this evening. He ought to end up as a big star even if his act is possibly a little too trad for Perrier consideration – although that didn’t stop Frank Skinner winning it in the early nineties.

Carr is already cropping up on television a lot, which is no surprise as he harks directly back to the golden age of light ent that the people who make the decisions these days grew up on. He’s got the teeth of Larry Grayson, the camp of John Inman and the mix of self-deprecation and self-righteousness of Frankie Howerd.

A lot of comedians these days seem to conjure up the spirit of comics past. Reeves and Mortimer have always been compared to Morecambe and Wise, Lee Evans seems to have inherited the knockabout clown crown from Norman Wisdom. There’s more than a hint of Hancock in Ricky Gervais, while king of the curmudgeons Jack Dee is well on his way to becoming the new Les Dawson. As for Jimmy Carr, David Walliams apparently now calls him Jimmy Carrbuck, which is a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one.

Over at The Pleasance another modern act seems to draw inspiration from a comedy icon. Tim “I’m so lazy even my smoke alarm has a snooze button” Vine has often been compared to Tommy Cooper – some of Vine’s snappy, silly one-liners have even appeared on Cooper fansites.

A further Edinburgh stalwart with a dead doppleganger is Arthur Smith, who is bringing a guided tour based on Swan Lake to the city from Aug 18 - 21 (meet in the Pleasance Courtyard at 4pm). Over the years Smith has been regularly compared to Sid James thanks to his filthy cackle and crinkle cut hair. Smith even started to cultivate the similarity, narrating a TV documentary on the Carry On icon. One day, however, he saw the light: “When I found myself making plans to seduce Barbara Windsor I realised it had gone too far.”

Oh, by the way, never mind the comics, a real celebrity was in Alan Carr’s audience tonight – Celtic manager Gordon Strachan, though he might have wished he was somewhere else when proverbial last man to be picked for the school team Carr concluded his set by announcing that all sport was rubbish.

Saturday night's not alright for heckling

2005-08-15T10:14:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness the weekend is over. It might be a great time for getting big audiences but at the Edinburgh Fringe that comes with a problem. Comedians here have longer slots than usual and often want to experiment with material that might require a bit more attention than the usual club set.

But nothing can derail a considered, thoughtful act easier than a bunch of drunken, noisy mates in the audience. Ironically Daniel Kitson (the Stand), one of the few acts capable of utterly demolishing anyone who dares to interrupt, refuses to plays Fridays and Saturdays in his current run because he despises these people.

Comics call it the “Jongleurisation” of stand-up, named after the successful city chain, which are viewed by some as places for stag and hen nights to drink, eat and occasionally laugh at a knob gag. Luckily there’s a backlash against this with special events like Robin Ince’s Book Club (at the Albany, W1 in London and in Edinburgh at the Pleasance) where the comedy is still rude and daft rather than cerebral but it rude and daft in a non-aggressive, knowing non-neanderthal way.

I had trouble at two shows over the weekend. Russell Howard (Pleasance) is a brilliant, young stand-up with an instantly likeable manner who plays football with Daniel Kitson and has picked up some of his mannerisms, which is no bad thing, although he hasn’t quite got Kitson’s merciless knack with disruptive elements yet.

Just as he was about to go on on Friday a drunken shaven-headed man in the row in front of me started singing “Kumbaya my Lord”. Oh no. It wasn’t any easy gig, but Howard pulled it off largely by ignoring him. The dilemma is do you engage with them or ignore them? Too much attention only encourages them. In the end Kumbaya Man lost interest and just spent most of the gig playing with his phone.

Maybe I’m the trouble magnet. On Saturday UK-based Canadian Sean Collins (Pleasance) had his first sell-out. His act has the clever gimmick of having another comic, Craig Campbell, backstage playing Collins’ inner voice, revealing his true thoughts about members of the audience, etc.

But as soon as Collins kicked off the couple immediately in front of me did something that drives me mad. They embarked on a discussion about everything Collins mentioned. For instance when Collins – who looks eerily like a debauched Cary Grant from some angles – joked about pubs that open at 5am for postmen (hence none of the post ever arrives) she nudged him and started telling him about the pubs in her area.

This continued for a while and eventually I snapped. My outer voice was just about to ask them politely to be quiet when my inner voice interrupted. As I tapped the man on the shoulder it blurted out “will you two ****holes shut up”. I immediately realised how burly the boyfriend was and slunk back into my seat, ready to say it was the man by my side that said it if he started trouble. Luckily they did shut up. But I still left the gig at breakneck speed. Edinburgh is a small city though. I’m just off to buy a false beard.

It's all a bit of a Blair

2005-08-13T19:34:00.000+01:00

The sketch show is not the hardest form of comedy – standing alone in front of a mic and making an audience laugh for an hour will always be hard to beat – but it is still extremely difficult to pull off. As a critic I’ve used the phrase “by their very nature sketch shows are hit and miss” so many times it is beginning to feel like my own Little Britain-style catchphrase.

Over the last few days I’ve seen a number of eerily similar sketch shows. Most of them have been interesting but they’ve lacked lacked that vital zing that has made the aforementioned Little Britain so big. Although if it’s any consolation, when Matt Lucas and David Walliams first played the Fringe together in 1995 they got rubbish reviews and audiences of about a dozen, so on that form any of the following might well be primetime entertainers in 2015.

Toulson & Harvey (Pleasance) add narrative to their scattershot show, which is based around an extended TV news report on a B list celeb threatening to throw himself off a bridge. That’s about where the cutting edge satire begins and ends. Steve Cooganish Harvey plays various smug caricatures including knee-fondling chat show host Michael ‘Pervinson’. Ouch. High point is the tousle-haired Toulson singing some comic songs worthy of Spitting Image. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to see this duo going on to greater things but they haven’t quite found their own voice yet.

Like Toulson & Harvey The Monkey Butlers (Underbelly) do a Tony Blair skit. In fact given that nice middle class Hal Cruttenden is often compared to Blair and Zoe Lyons does a hilarious wide-mouthed, bug-eyed Cherie Blair impression in her stand-up act I’m surprised they didn’t make more out of their uncanny skills here. The performances are OK but the script is pretty limp. You know the way curmudgeons say that TV ads are better than the programmes these days? Well the Monkey Butlers’ Pythonesque links are better than many of their sketches. There are two other members in this quartet but I won’t embarrass them by naming them.

The sharpest sketch show so far is probably Cowards (Pleasance). This effervescent quartet don’t use props or costume changes, they just conjure up slick, well-oiled and slightly weird inventive routines about English people in embarrassing situations. They play men trapped up a tree while laying on the ground, men standing around talking awkwardly about their jobs and they also do a Tony Blair routine in which the PM’s inconsiderate sudden death gets in the way of their inconsequential fun. Not a Perrier contender, but if they are eligible they could be in the running for Best Newcomer.

One of Cowards, incidentally, is Tim Key, the nerdy computer geek sidekick in Alex Horne’s Latin lesson routine When In Rome (Pleasance). This seems to be the show I’m mentioning more than any other in this blog. If it has stuck in my brain while so many shows have been quickly forgotten it must be good. If you can’t make it to Edinburgh to see it I’m sure there will be life after the Fringe. The Soho Theatre has already booked it for Sept 29 - Oct 1 - see www.sohotheatre.com

There's a plaice for us

2005-08-12T18:45:00.000+01:00

When you’ve spent time in the comedy world you develop strange prejudices. My particular bete noire is photos of performers with fish – and I’m not talking about Will Smith, whose Assembly Rooms show is entirely based on his childhood obsession with the lead singer from Marillion (and is incidentally the Perrier favourite on one strictly for fun betting website).

This phobia started earlier this year in London when The Hollow Men’s press shot featured them with a big fish. Snapper maybe. They are a perfectly good, traditional sketch combo, but there is something about the piscine reference that cries out “hey, look at us, we are wacky and the natural successors to Monty Python”. And of course, you can bet your pristine Fawlty Towers DVD boxed set that they aren’t.

Of course this is a completely irrational prejudice. Off the scale, you could say. Alex Horne, whose funny current show about learning Latin – it’s great honest – is on at the Pleasance, once did a cod-psychology show called Talking To Fish which was just as funny. And one year the Festival Fringe programme had a fish on the front cover which didn’t harm anyone. Presumably someone somewhere is toiling over a PhD thesis called ‘Fish In Comedy: From Palin To Marlin’ as we speak.

The reason I'm writing this is that a there is a comedy/theatre crossover show called Milk and even though one of the people on their poster looks a bit like a bespectacled Johnny Depp I can’t bear to think about seeing it because the duo in the picture have insisted on being shown with fish coming out of their mouths.

Maybe, to paraphrase Sir John of Cleese, we should forgive them, they are from Spain. I don’t think I can, but to make some amends, here’s a plug. Milk is at the Pleasance Courtyard at 5.35pm. It features two crazed clowns and like most other shows here, the Fringe programme describes it as “award-winning”. Now that’s another thing that gets my back up, all the shows that endlessly boast they have won awards...oh no, don’t get me started, I was just calming down.

Fin

laugh? I nearly did

2005-08-11T19:46:00.000+01:00

Marathon runners call it “hitting the wall”. I think it happened to me last night and I wasn’t even jogging. I’d just come out of a perfectly entertaining afternoon show by comedian Dan Tetsell (Underbelly) about his grandfather being a Nazi – stop sniggering at the back, it is a genuinely funny and interesting show – and I sat down on a bench to eat an apple. Suddenly it was a bit like the scene in Supersize Me where Morgan Spurlock leans out of his car and throws up. I didn’t actually heave but I had that moment of bleak, stomach-churning realisation when I registered how much comedy I’d seen in the last week.

I get it every year so I knew what to expect. As in running a marathon, the secret is to ride it out until it passes. Unlike running a marathon, however, I was allowed to have a two-hour break. I went home, watched a bit of telly, had a packet of blueberries and went out again. I was not exactly refreshed and renewed but I was ready to face the world again.

The two shows, both at the Assembly Rooms, aided my recovery too. Radio 2 regular Andy Parsons (imagine the offspring of Mel Smith and a King Edward potato) is a bit of a hectoring bread and butter satirist – Bush, Blair, Osama etc – but as a friend in the queue called him, he’s a home banker. It wasn’t a great gig but there were some choice moments. Thinking of a way of giving other football teams a chance he suggested that Chelsea should have his gran in goal.

Lucy Porter immediately after was even better. She is on great form this year and gives away vodka and sweets in her show which is nice and not a bribe at all, honest (I didn’t even get any). She also leaves the stage by riding a washing machine which is not something you see every day. I felt like I’d been through a few spin cycles myself earlier, but it’s funny how a couple of big gigs can get your spirits up again. I don’t think a couple of big Macs had the same effect on Morgan Spurlock.

I'm not a celebrity, get me out of here

2005-08-10T20:23:00.000+01:00

I had the pleasure of taking part in a new BBC7 discussion programme today. The format of Serious About Comedy was somewhere between Radio One’s Round Table and BBC2’s Newsnight Review. The host was the delightfully pointy-nosed Robin Ince (I can say that because he told me he’s avoiding anything that might contain a review of his - v good – show at The Pleasance), who is much shorter than Mark Lawson but much funnier. The other panellists were Stewart Lee and Sue Perkins. It was a brand new show and I fully expected to be annihilated but such latterday wits. And I was.

The three things we reviewed were Chris Addison’s R4 series The Ape That Got Lucky, Danny Wallace’s BBC2 show How to Start Your Own Country and the DVD release of Terry and June. I was relieved that we were reviewing Addison’s radio show as it meant he wouldn’t be a panellist and I’d just given his new Edinburgh show a regally damning review in the Standard. As I liked his radio show better than the live show I was able to make amends a little anyway. Perkins wasn’t keen, Ince sat on the fence and Lee spoke guardedly in Addison’s defence and said he looked too young to be making such grown-up jokes. They both belong to the same management company though I’m sure that’s a coincidence. It is more more to do with solidarity among stand-ups.

Next up was How to Start Your Own Country, which no-one but me seemed to like very much. So much for solidarity among stand-ups, but then I don’t think Wallace has ever done stand-up so my theory still stands - hoorah!. I had a big cerebral speech planned about the show taking the Ronson/Theroux school of documentaries up a new trail (albeit it one partially blazed already by Wallace’s chum Dave Gorman) but ended up waffling on about the blonde highlights in Wallace’s mini-mullet, which occasionally mucked up the continuity.

Finally Terry and June was up for grabs. No postmodern reinvention of a previously hated mainstream late-seventies warhorse here. Everyone laid into it. Once again I mounted a stout defence about how it was attempting to subvert the BBC’s own twee sitcom history by opening with a shot of a totally empty house rather than a sofa and how Terry Scott’s repeated banging of his head was a chilling foreshadowing of the brain haemorrhage he later suffered. Ince, Lee and Perkins just said it was just artistically barren rubbish.

All the best, rudest and most actionable bits will probably be cut out, but you can hear what remains on BBC7 on Friday 12 Aug at 8.30am and again at 10pm.

anoraky in the uk

2005-08-09T12:21:00.000+01:00

One of the joys of The Edinburgh Festival is catching acts that you’d never see anywhere else this side of a lunatic asylum. The free-for-all nature of the Fringe means that if you can stump up the cash to pay for a venue you can do anything in it as long as it is legal, though there are plenty of crimes against taste here.

Yesterday’s shows threw up two 24-carat oddities. At the Underbelly at lunchtime Sirus Manzill invites you to join his collective in a show entitled Let’s Start Again. The anorak-clad (it could be a military jacket but then the title of today’s blog would make less sense) Manzill believes that dark forces have been systematically removing all the animals in the world and replacing them with robot replicas sporting hidden cameras to film our every move. Michael Portillo apparently owns the last real rabbit in England.

Manzill is a kind of surrealist survivalist. He claims to have spent the last year in a hut in Epping Forest armed to the teeth picking off these automatons and encourages the rest of us to do the same. If we can’t afford rifles he suggests catapults will do the trick. Not so much a comedy gig, more a piece of deranged performance art, complete with charts, video excerpts and catchy Britpoppy songs. File under madman or genius.

Another character who it is more certifiable than classifiable is Seattle fruitcake Reggie Watts (Underbelly). Apparently two people asked for a refund on Monday because he doesn’t sport the full Afro on his poster – after the photoshoot he decided to shave half his hair off. Not half the length, just the right half of his head.

Watts doesn’t tell gags, he simply tells deadpan nonsense stories about himself between songs which he creates by laying down his own beatbox rhythm track on a computerised gizmo then freestyling over the top. Sometimes Watts’ll do a daft dance too when the mood takes him, or stroke a female fan’s shoe. Very odd indeed and possibly the cult hit of the festival.

Maybe there is something in the Seattle water. The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players (Pleasance) – mum, dad and 12-year-old daughter Rachel on drums - play bizarre songs inspired by discarded photos found in garage sales and thrift stores. There will definitely be more about them after I’ve seen them next week.

For sheer laughs from quite famous people, Adam Buxton of Adam and Joe and Andrew Maxwell who won C4’s King Of Comedy reality TV lock-in last year will be hard to beat. Buxton, sporting a hilarious big beard, plays a spoof avant-garde filmmaker called simply Pavel, while Maxwell offers a seamless hour of stories and observations. Just when you think the world is spinning off its axis, Maxwell and Buxton (both at the Pleasance) restore some comic order.

See www/thisislondon/theatre for full reviews of Buxton/Maxwell

See www.manzillworld.co.uk for a glimpse of the mad, mad world or Sirus Manzill.

See www.reggiewatts.com/tangent for something completely different.

Do believe the hype (but only very occasionally)

2005-08-08T10:02:00.001+01:00

It’s Monday morning and Edinburgh Fringe Festival frenzy has started to kick in. I think the unseasonal Scottish sun has sent people madder than usual. Everyone has a slightly crazed look in their eyes like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

As well as seeing my favourite shows my main leisure activity is avoiding press officers trying to coax me into their clients' shows. On Saturday afternoon I bought myself a rickety old bike to be able to escape them quicker when I see them coming. I’m tempted to tell them that the less they push their acts on me the more I am likely to go and see them, but I worry that this kind of response might not compute and make them explode and I couldn’t have that on my conscience, so instead if they corner me I politely scribble their gig details and hope they will go away.

Everyone in the industry is focussed on selling more tickets. There is one comedy manager who is partially sighted – when he was telling me about his acts I was sorely tempted to doodle funny faces in my notebook, but I decided that would be downright mean. He does have a sense of humour about his vision though – he has just paid for the largest-ever comedy poster in Edinburgh of his star performer Omid Djalili in Cowgate so that it is unmissable, even to him. As a PR stunt it clearly works as here I am telling you to go and see classy Anglo-Iranian stand-up Djalili at The Pleasance Courtyard.

As for my Supersize Me comedy experiment, four days into the Festival I’m still laughing, though on Saturday comic legend Richard Pryor’s daughter Rain tried my patience with an icky sentimental set just about redeemed by some comic robot dancing.

Last night, however, life was good again as I saw three great shows. Character comic Joanna Neary (Underbelly) is like the Victoria Wood from Mars, specialising in bizarre women and talking deer. Scrawny Irishman Andrew Maxwell (Pleasance Courtyard), generally regarded as the comedian’s comedian, is back with a storming stand-up set and a great description of the Edinburgh Fringe as “exams for clowns”. Geeky Alex Horne (Pleasance Courtyard), the Eugene of the Fringe, attempts to teach his audience Latin in an hour and does it without one gag about Russell Crowe in Gladiator. A unique show – not just hilarious, it even lives up to the PR hype.

Full gig details on www.edfringe.com

Hit the north

2005-08-05T18:07:00.000+01:00

Please indulge me for a moment. I made it to Edinburgh last night, only twenty four hours later than planned. Having set off from London on Wednesday morning by camper van with golf clubs and bicycle packed in the back I got as far as Leicester when plumes of smoke appeared in my rear view mirror. The breakdown man sucked in a lot of air and recommended towing me back to London, do not pass go, do not collect £200. So Thursday morning I set off again by train with a small case, sans clubs, sans bike, sans pretty much everything but a Fringe programme and a change of pants.

Arrived just in time to catch one show - the Assembly Venues launch, one show but seventeen, count ‘em, acts. A long night and the absence of bearlike compere Dara O’Briain due a bad back – pah, lightweight – was redeemed by ridiculously silly Australians The Ennio Morricone Experience, who, as their name hints, pay homage to the master of spaghetti western soundtracks with bizarre instruments and a lot of whistling. Hard to see how they can spin it out for an hour at the Queen’s Hall every night, but fun enough to make me want to find out. Another musical highlight, The Magnets (Assembly St George’s West), are the smoothest a capella covers combo you’ll encounter in Scotland this month, but is the world really ready for a Flying Pickets revival just yet?

On the stand-up front Kevin Brennan (Assembly @ George St) came bearing an award from the Aspen Comedy Festival, which also unearthed 2003 Perrier winner Demetri Martin. Brennan’s humour is darker and politically incorrect in a Jimmy Carr way and has a distinctly Marmite-y flavour. You’ll either love or hate him. A more palatable form of patter came from flaxen-haired London-based Yank Dave Fulton (Assembly @ George St), who had a great line in slagging off his homeland’s neighbours. Canada’s only reason for existing, apparently, is “to protect America from icebergs.” So far no icebergs have hit an unusually summery Edinburgh yet, but rain is expected over the weekend – at least in the form of Rain Pryor, the daughter of comedy legend Richard Pryor making her Edinburgh debut.

Details of upcoming shows can be found at www.edfringe.com

I predict a diet

2005-08-02T11:23:00.000+01:00

Hello there. Welcome to my blog, which will track my progress as I embark on a cultural version of Supersize Me. Morgan Spurlock famously set out to see what effect living on a diet of McDonalds products for a month would have on his health. I’m off to Edinburgh to see what effect a diet of comedy at the annual Fringe Festival for three and a half weeks will have on mine. Will pigging out on comedians make my laughter muscles seize up? Will prolonged exposure to bad gags make me slump in my seat once too often and contribute to back trouble? Will running from venue to venue in an effort to get to shows on time induce panic attacks?

Fortunately I’ve been in training for this experiment for a while. As the Comedy Critic of the London Evening Standard I regularly go to two or three comedy gigs a week. But this is different. In Edinburgh I’ll be going to at least two or three comedy gigs a night. Every night. Some will, of course, be great. Some of the best gigs I’ve ever seen have been in Edinburgh and I’ll be recalling them during the course of this blog. Bill Hicks in the early nineties remains a high point. Stewart Lee last year was the comedic equivalent of Elvis’s 1968 return to form.

Other shows, however, will feel like pure, unadulterated torture. Sucker for punishment Mark Watson, the Paula Radcliffe of stand-up, is performing a marathon show at the Pleasance Dome starting on August 15th, that lasts 2005 minutes, but I’ve seen a lot of shows that are only an hour according to the programme, but feel like they last 2005 minutes. I just hope Watson doesn’t do a Radcliffe and relieve himself at the side of the stage.

Anyway, I’ve invested in a decent pair of trainers. And an umbrella and some sunblock as you never quite know what to expect of the Edinburgh climate. I’ll be keeping you posted throughout August. I’ll also be giving you tips on which acts to devour and who to push discreetly to the side of your plate. Feel free to comment if you disagree or even in the unlikely even that you might agree. You can also read full reviews of shows I’ve seen at www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/