Tom Goodliffe: All In Good Time

Welcome back to Edinburgh. Can you tell us about your show?

Thanks! My show is 50 minutes of me being very silly about a lot of interesting stuff. Basically I bought a book to help sort out my procrastination issues, then decided to buy another book (about time) and I read that first. Unfortunately I am quite a slow reader. Come see a man dick about and make jokes of things he doesn't fully understand.

Hopefully this won't spolier your show, but what exactly is Time anyway? Do you think you've finally cracked the problem?

Good question. Through the ages, it has puzzled our foremost thinkers: Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Einstein... and now Goodliffe! So, no, I don't know.

What's your favourite piece of thinking (scientific or philosophical) on the nature of Time?

I take most of my science and philosophy from comedians, so... "Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once"-Woody Allen

Your show is allegedly 50 minutes long but, given that time flies when you're having fun, how long will the show actually be?

17 days, no interval, and the traditional lull around the 40 minute mark.

Marty McFly had a DeLorean, Bill & Ted had a phonebox. What vehicle would Tom Goodliffe use as his time machine and where would you go?

I was going to say rickshaw, but I guess it might be asking too much of the white guy with dreadlocks pedalling it to get up to 88mph. So I think I'll go with train. Quiet carriage though, I've still got a lot of reading to do.

This is your sophomore year as a solo act. What lessons did you learn in 2011? 

I learnt that sometimes sound desks blow up in the show before yours and when they do, it's not a good idea to try squeezing a 60 minute show into 40 minutes!

What's the one piece of advice you'd pass onto the newbies of 2012?

 Newbies, a month is a long time and every day is different. Pace yourselves and enjoy it.

And who else are you planning to see while you're up here?

Where to start? There's lots of good stuff in The Tron this year - Paul F Taylor is great and his 'Pauly Show' is on just after mine. I always enjoy Celia Pacquola and Bec Hill's shows and I'm looking forward to debuts by Nish Kumar, Daniel Simonsen and Joe Lycett. Set List and The Horne Section are late night treats. And finally, friend, fringe flatmate and fellow geek Helen Arney is doing all sorts this year, including an Edinburgh run of one of my favourite gigs, Festival of the Spoken Nerd.