Edinburgh – Part 3 (the 16th) Sunday, 23rd August 2009

The 16th started with a hunt for somewhere to get breakfast. Eventually, after collecting roughly 300 flyers each, we found the lovely St Giles Cafe and got some food and had a look through the Free Fringe programme again. We decided to go see And Bosnich Is Off His Line by the Cambridge Footlights which was much better than our other Free Fringe experience but the most crowded show I’ve ever seen, and definitely the hottest of the whole fringe. There was some nice musical comedy though and all the comedians except one were very good which is pretty good for a free show. Again, I have no idea what any of them were called and google is being no help, I might have to do some investigating later.
Edit: The comedians were Liam Williams, Keith Akushie, Daran Johnson and Rob Carter. Liam and Keith were quite good, Daran and Rob were ok.

Then we headed to the Underbelly to meet up with the lovely Team Tiernan/Angry Feeters which I was a bit nervous about, having never met any of them before and I wasn’t really looking forwards to having to go up to a whole group of them myself. Luckily I found Misha and her friend Em first before the rest arrived and once I’d met the rest they were lovely. Tiernan Douieb’s show was brilliant as expected, apart from the strange woman in the front row who got a bit too excited about everything and wouldn’t stop plugging her show. Afterwards we went outside to wait for Tiernan for a Team photo.

Then they all headed off to various shows and I had to say goodbye, being very sad I was leaving later that night and wouldn’t see them again.

We had another wander around (and saw Misha and Em again) and then headed to the Bongo Club for Simon Amstell. I was a bit disappointed by Simon’s show, but my expectations were probably too high, having seen so much amazing comedy that week and him being one of the most  famous comedians I saw. It was good but there wasn’t much interaction with the audience which I think is important for comedy shows. There were some nice stories though and it was good to see there was someone even worse than me at relationships.

Unfortunately that was the end of our time in Edinburgh and after Mum got a little bit lost we were on our way home again. Sad times.

Edinburgh – Part 2 (the 15th) Saturday, 22nd August 2009

More Edinburgh blogs. Again, I’m doing it exactly a week later, I promise it’s just coincidence, I’m not nearly organised to do this deliberately.

Saturday started again with a 3 hour drive to Edinburgh, but eventually we arrived at the Travelodge to be told that check-in wasn’t for another 40 minutes so we all walked up to High Street (our hotel was right between the Pleasance and High Street, it was great) with our bags to get some lunch and collect the tickets that we had to collect at the box office. Me and Abi started to queue up to get Chris Cox tickets as Mum had agreed to go see him since he “was a cheeky so and so” and had joined in trying to persuade her on twitter, but (luckily) I was looking through the programme and realised he was at the Pleasance Dome instead of the courtyard and we wouldn’t have time to get there so we escaped from the queue. We did meet Marc Hogan in the queue though who seemed very nice and I was a bit disappointed we couldn’t go and see his show either.

Anyway, we eventually got back to the hotel and checked in and decided to fill up some time and go and see our first Free Fringe show, Some Comedy (In A Cave) in the Rowan Caves. The venue is pretty much the opposite of every other fringe venue since it’s pretty much pitch black (except the stage of course), wet and cold. I can’t actually remember the names of everyone that was on (I’m trying to find out though) but Gareth Morinan hosted it who was ok, then Eric Lampaert came on who I was a bit wary of at first and wasn’t sure I’d like but he turned out to be completely insane and was the best out of the whole show. Then there was Simon Lilley who was alright but I wouldn’t go and see again, and then Fred Forse, who’s entire act was based on an old porn magazine he’d stolen off his dad which wasn’t funny and probably a little bit too risqué for an afternoon show. But it was free anyway and at least there was one good comic there.

After that we went for a little wander, Abi bought some new boots, I tried on a dress which looked really nice on the hanger and awful on me and then headed to the Pleasance for Pappy’s Fun Club who were just amazing. The opening song about how they didn’t have time to do an opening song was genius and it got better from there, from Dean the Dinosaur to the world’s tallest man and shortest woman falling in love. And of course the entire audience being turned into Quakers.

There was a quick walk back up to the High Street to find some food (Pizza Paradise just off the High Street does make very nice pizza, although it’s not the nicest looking restaurant) before going back to the Pleasance to see Matt Kirshen. The show started fairly regularly, including an amazing story about a rap battle that me and Abi are still quoting to each other, but as the room got steadily hotter the audience started getting quite odd. About 5 people left for the toilet at the same time and one nearly groped a woman in the front row by accident. The only experience I’d had of Matt Kirshen’s comedy up till then was at Twitcom when he hadn’t actually finished his story since he was texting it in so I was pleasantly surprised to find he was one of the best shows I saw. At the beginning of the show he’d spoken about how the British actually like things to go wrong, and how we’d have laughed much more at him falling on his face when he’d walked out than we would at any joke he told, so he ended the show by falling over on his way off stage since we’d been such a lovely crowd, although slightly odd. And then the song playing as we left was based on the rap battle.

Part 3 will come soon.

Edinburgh – Part 1 (the 12th) Wednesday, 19th August 2009

I finally got round to writing this

Me, Dad and Abi went down on the 12th and stayed with Dad’s friend Josie, who’d found out I want to do medicine and uni and then do research and since that’s what she did for 30 years that was the main topic of conversation, not the most interesting thing in the world. And then we had to go for a big walk along the Forth (me and Abi got bored so we started singing). And then finally it was comedy time. Yay. We got to the Assembly @ George Street, went to get drinks and then were told that the queue for Mark Watson was outside. So we went outside and walked all the way down the street and round the corner and down the street a bit more to find the end. We weren’t there too long though and we ended up with ok-ish seats, in the bottom section at least. Mark Watson appeared on stage after a bit but I didn’t actually notice him walk on due to the fact he was wearing a red tshirt and blended in with all the Assembly staff, but he wasn’t really on stage yet anyway and was just coming to warm the crowd up again since the announcement telling us to switch of our phones had ruined it. So after getting very sidetracked, 20 minutes later he “hid” behind the curtain and after popping back out about 10 times to point out he wasn’t really hiding and that you should never tell someone you’re about to hide since it’s a pretty big give away he finally announced himself and came on properly to start the show. Since we’d wasted so much time he appointed a timekeeper in the front row who turned out to be called Maldwyn (prompting many jokes on the basis that he was an entirely fictional person – “He made up his name, he can make up the time”), made even better by the fact Mark had just told us he wouldn’t pick on anyone. It didn’t last long. He also gave a girl in the front row a plastic bottle to hit if she thought something was funny but didn’t get a laugh. The girl turned out to be Sarah K from Angry (Feet) but I didn’t get a chance to say hi at the end. Mark was very good though and the bottle didn’t need to be used once (although that could be because Sarah didn’t really want to), I’d heard most of the jokes before but enough was improvised and the one’s I’d already heard were still good anyway.

After Mark Watson finished we ran away outside again, only pausing to wave at my friend Alex’s little sister in the queue, and got back in the stupidly long queue for Adam Hills. We were actually further ahead in the queue but ended up in the second row of the second tier of seats which meant I had to keep bobbing from side to side to see Adam. It was a slightly more conventional start than Mark’s show but only just. But since when as Adam Hills ever been conventional anyway? He came into the audience because someone had given him a pint because they “knew they’d be late” and he wanted to make sure it didn’t belong to anyone and he started speaking to one girl and a guy from the other end of the room wolf-whistled, it turned out that he knew her but it was a long story how. So Adam Hills went and stood on the seat next to her and interrogated her how (it was from a sports club) and realised that about half the audience seemed to know Mike (the wolf-whistler). In the process of all this Adam nearly gave a Glaswegian a lapdance and then refused to believe he was Glaswegian when he said “oh, it’s quite alright”, and made friends with an 80-year-old woman called Iris. It turned out Iris turned 80 a few days ago and this was her birthday celebration so Adam ended up giving her a lapdance. Finally, (about 20 minutes later, noticing a pattern?) he started the show properly which was brilliant and ended up being truly lovely at the end. And then he downed the entire pint. We didn’t get a chance to wait to meet him either since we needed to go on a very fun walk back to Josie’s flat, in the pitch black down a number of little paths next to random streams and stuff. And with the worst timing ever I remembered the stories from a couple of Christmases ago when two different dead bodies were found on different paths in Edinburgh. Scary stuff.

We drove back up to Meldrum the next day (after the best shopping trip ever, Dad gave me £20 and in about 15 minutes I’d managed to buy 3 books and a skirt with it) but only for a few days since me, Mum and Abi were going back for the weekend.

I’ll finish this later. It’s really long as it it.