Mickey Dwyer's Festival Fumble - SkinnyFest 2

Feature by Mickey Dwyer | 14 Aug 2006
Everyone has had that one night of madness, right?

The one that people keep for reference when you're about to make an arse of yourself again. They'll give you an alter ego, a pseudonym – "Oh look, he's turning into 'Pete'; hide any pink coffee mugs, he's on the rampage."

But I don't have a 'Pete'. I take full responsibility for the events that led to me being found snogging the soap dispenser in that disabled shitter.

Edinburgh has that effect on me. I've been to casualty eight times here and once I spent a week in Little France.

Perforated eardrums, severed thumb, Legionella, non-specific utheritus: I have an NHS record in Scotland thicker than my uncle's left ventricle. He's dead now.

Three years ago I performed the whole festival with broken wrists. Yes, both. It made page three of the Evening Standard and I finally began selling out! Five years of flyering my arse off on the Royal Mile when all I had to do was fall off a fucking wall! People thought it was a gimmick, actually poking and twisting my casts. Thank Christ the nurse slipped me an extra stash of morphine. I couldn't bathe myself or wipe my own arse, which, in combination with the opiates, made for a stage face that suggested the glazed shame of a man who has been freshly violated.

I also chalked up a personal record of eight gigs in one day. At the last two I was hijacked by a local who thought it was a good idea to take me to a strip club on the 'Pubic Triangle' and buy me a dance. Cruelty! A lap dance is the last thing a man without the use of his wrists needs. She did however help suggest how to wipe my arse: a technique I'll never forget. Take a yard of toilet paper, fold, then twist. Floss away your filth.

I swim in embarrassment, dance in shame and fight disgrace with a sword of 'I no longer give a fuck'. I am me. And as embarrassing as that may once have been I'd be ashamed to be anything other than the disgrace I've become.

Live the festival until something breaks.
Mickey Dwyer hosts the Phat Cave, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Until August 27 (not 21-22), 00:45, £10/£6 (£8/£6).