The Times They are A-Changing

Things are about to change at this year’s festival.  The honeymoon is to end tomorrow.  It’s a pity we can’t keep this period of £5 previews and 2 for 1 deals that makes everyone so happy from the performer playing to a full room to the cheap-skate punter looking to get art at a price Lidl would call unreasonably low.  I include myself in this group.  I have been a kid in a comedy candy shop for the past week. (Shane Langan’s Not Also But Only 2pm in the Gilded Balloon is by far the best show I’ve seen so far – you should go see it before it sells out.) 

I don’t know who to blame for the shift in mood that is going to occur in Edinburgh over the next week.  Until now people have plucked flyers from your hand, more shows have been sold out than ever before, “comeuppance” has not been had and the sun has shone.  For the first four days of the festival the performers’ optimism is so palpable that it feels like heat coming off the pavement.  It’s the subsequent five days of mishaps, drinking, review reading and reality dawning that dampens the spirits.  I’m not a pessimist by any means but a spoonful of realism, to my mind, is as essential as sleep to surviving the Edinburgh Fringe. 

I’ve spent past week like most fretting about my show, juggling it around and chopping out Irish references that fall on deaf ears over hear.  In the evenings I’ve been doing the Best of Irish show at The Stand.  Doing that show feels like going over to your Nan’s house after school.  The Stand is like an Irish Embassy of comedy from 6pm to 7.30pm every day and I love it. 

Today I met Paul Currie wheeling one of those tartan “old lady bags” on wheels past the Gilded Balloon.  This is a guy that the next 5 days won’t affect.  Paul is like a modern day Andy Worhol of comedy.  That sounds like an overstatement.   But to me any man that can make you laugh harder than you’ve ever laughed while he sits on stage eating cornflakes to the tune of “Arthur’s Theme” by Christopher Cross is worthy of the compliment.  He is playing a venue on the Royal Mile called the C Cubed and has had some trouble getting people on his seats. 

I’m arranging a basketball game for comics that play so far JJ Whitehead, Rich Hall, Wilson Dixon, Des Bishop, Aidan Bishop, Daivd Thornton, Mike Wozniak, Jordan from the Axis of Awesome and me are up for it.  If you are a comic and you can play get in touch and maybe the next week won’t be so tough and the next blog will have some hilarious sporting tales within it.