Edinburgh Diary (Part 2)

Andrew Kaye’s Edinburgh Diary – Part 2

DAY 4

Feeling increasingly blurry. Up for a stroll down the Royal Mile while the sun is out. It’s a kerrrrrazy place during the festival, if by kerrrrrazy you mean hundreds of overconfident stage school kids desperately trying to get your attention away from all the other overconfident stage school kids. Go early and they’re putting some effort into it. Go in late afternoon, it’s more, “Here’s your flyer, now piss off.”

There is also a massive quantity of street performers – mostly Australian, mostly riding unicycles. What is it with Australians and unicycles? Do they teach it in the schools over there? Period 1: Chemistry. Period 2: Unicycling. Period 3: Juggling unusual objects. The problem with the street performers is it’s always 58 minutes telling you what they’re going to do, followed by 2 minutes of actually doing stuff. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do and it’ll only take a second: I’m going to go leave.

Spotted Stephen K Amos and Phil Nichol getting interviewed in Pleasance Courtyard. John Hegley hanging around the Courtyard too. Definitely peaked too soon with the Clarke Peters thing.

Shows seen:

Colin Hoult’s Carnival of Monsters. Dark character comedy punctuated by some genuinely eerie moments and creepy little monologues. Any comedy/horror hybrid inevitably gets compared to The League of Gentlemen, but Colin Hoult is no pale imitation. Frequently spine-tinglingly good and completely unforgettable, this guy could easily become very big indeed.

Stewart Lee: Peerless comedy majesty from the crumpled Morrissey/squashed Albert Finney lookalike. Targets include Frankie Boyle’s habit of shouting down women on Mock the Week, Top Gear presenters, and the way adverts are appropriating and sullying bits of culture. He could easily be playing a big room on the back of his telly success, but he’s still at The Stand – an independent venue, and one that’s here all year round. Kudos, Mr Lee, kudos.

Paul Sinha is a gay Bengali GP who’s turned his back on medicine to be a stand-up comic. This year he’s mostly talking about his love of quizzes. (When I was channel surfing a couple of months back, I flicked over to Mastermind and said,”Bloody hell, that’s Paul Sinha sitting in the chair!” He came last.) Some really engaging stand-up, and technically he’s getting better every year.

Daniel Kitson: There are not many comedians who would kick off their show at midnight, tacking as their theme the inevitable death of everyone you love. Not many comedians would tackle the subject for a solid two hours, checking their notes openly and regularly. Not many comedians would tell a punter down the front, quite seriously, to stop laughing so much: “Could you try and stifle every third laugh? Thanks.” There are however many, many comedians who would give their left nut to be half as good as Daniel Kitson.

DAY 5

You’ll rarely see the sun shine constantly for two days (you know what I mean) in Edinburgh, but it can rain constantly for two days without even trying. That’s one annoyance. Another is the inevitable descent of the dreaded weekend crowds. I don’t want to sound like an Edinburgh snob – but I am, so that’s how it comes out.

These weekenders. They clog up the venues, buying up tickets willy-nilly; tickets I may have wanted. They have children with them – many of them – disgusting things. They clog up the streets. They get in the way.

And the weekend comedy punter is the worst. Beery groups of lads, going to see “him off the telly, you know, him. He was on Mock The Week and McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow“. The tiny-bladdered gimps sink four pints then go into a show. Suddenly you’ve got fifty people getting up to go to the toilet through the show, and in a small venue that really disrupts things. During the week people manage, somehow, to sit still for a whole hour – yes, a whole 60 minutes! Heroes! At the weekend, this skill is unaccountably lost.

Spotted Charlie Chuck sighing through the rain and crowds at The Gilded Balloon. John Hegley, Richard Herring & moustache, Ben Moor, and Daniel Kitson (finally!) wandering lonely as a cloud in the Pleasance Dome. Nicholas Parsons (again) and Marek Klang in the Pleasance Courtyard. Marek can make his face look almost human, when he makes the effort.

Killing Me Softly: there’s been a small but thriving theatrical genre these last few years at the Fringe – the dramatic verse monologue. And you won’t find many better practitioners of it than Richard Fry. Killing Me Softly starts simply enough with a man throwing a coming home party for his wife, but quickly spirals into a genuinely chilling story of family tragedy and domestic violence. And karaoke.

A-Team: The Musical: If there’s one thing more popular than turning things that weren’t musicals into musicals, it’s 80s nostalgia. Put those together and you can’t lose. A-Team: The Musical feels like half a commercial opportunity and half a labour of love. A sharper script would be nice, but if you expected anything other than a silly romp then you’ve come to the wrong place.

Pappy’s Fun Club Once you accept a certain level of shambolic gaucheness, Pappy’s Fun Club are the most innocently hilarious act on the Fringe. Open your heart to these four young comics and your world will be a brighter, less cynical place. Or, like the couple of pricks next to me, just say “This is gash” and leave half-way through. Your choice.

Rhod Gilbert and the Cat that Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst: Another turbo-charged near-hysterical rant about how the simple act of buying a vacuum cleaner can tip you over the edge. He sweated so much I thought he was melting. He’s playing a big room this year, on the back of last year’s success and his appearances on every panel show and stand-up showcase currently on telly. (NOTE: Rhod Gilbert is appearing at Doncaster Civic on Nov 4th – D_b_R Robot)

Andrew O’Neill: Occult Comedian: Vegan, heavy-metal loving cross-dressing political activist, Alan Moore fan and occultist. Oh no, not another one of those. This year’s theme being magick and occultism, it may not be surprising that he never ever goes for the easy or obvious laughs. The many laughs he does get are unconnected to his bright pink tights which are, nevertheless, quite fetching. A furiously intelligent hour of comedy.

DAY 6

It’s finally stopped raining. Now it’s blowing a small gale. Result? The ducks outside the back of the flat seem to be having a good time, anyway.

Saturday is crazy time at the Fringe. Not only do you have the weekend crowds, you’ve got all the locals out for a drink or 20 and a show. You’d be crazy to enter the Grassmarket without full body armour and a can of mace. There’s nearly a fistfight over a parking space as we queue up. The midnight fireworks capping off the Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle can be seen all over the city, making it look more like a warzone than it already does.

Spotted one of Pappy’s FC kicking back in the Pleasance Dome, that Lauren Laverne in the audience at the Frank Skinner Credit Crunch Cabaret, and Lucy Porter looking for Adam Hills outside the Assembly.

Shows seen:

Kiosk of Champions: When two stand-ups come together for a sketch show they can frequently become more than the sum of their parts. Stuart Goldsmith and Richard Sandling present lo-fi, quite geeky sketches with a good amount of amiable banter in-between. They’re a charming double act with decent material, though compared to Pappy’s Fun Club or Colin Hoult’s Carnival of Monsters it can sometimes seem a little bit pedestrian. Good clean afternoon fun.

Frank Skinner’s Credit Crunch Cabaret: Frank Skinner, Joe Wilkinson, The Magnets, Russell Kane. Skinner’s broad appeal draws an odd weekend crowd. There’s a family with two teenage kids down the front – they’ll love the paedophile jokes. There’s some goon on his stag night dressed as Rab C Nesbitt, holding a sign that says “I heart penis”. He’s going to get a shoeing before the night is over. And there’s a mouthy incoherent drunk Scots women somewhere in the back.

Skinner more or less holds the show together, looking like a little old man in his ill-fitting tux. Works the audience, hosts a little quiz halfway through. Probably just as well the audience are already on his side, though. I am predisposed to like Joe Wilkinson as he shambles on with long hair, beard and brown cardigan – he’s my demographic.

Some self-deprecating cliché free stand-up makes me want to check out his delightfully named sketch show Two Episodes of MASH. The Magnets are an acapella beat-boxing singing crew from the U of SA. Good at what they do. Russell Kane’s ‘whippet-in-a-wind-tunnel stand-up moves at a ridiculous pace. Gags and funny lines fly past every couple of seconds. An extended piece about getting caught masturbating by his gran send some of the old folks scurrying for the exits. Wish he’d stand still a bit more though, it’s very distracting (*whisper* I think he may have had a few drugs *whisper*).

Rich Hall: So well loved here he can get a laugh pronouncing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Army Dinner-Jazz. Playing (and selling out) the biggest room at Assembly, he has a following all out of proportion to his occasional telly appearences on QI. The Scots in particular seem to love him because he loves Scotland, and he genuinely loves Edinburgh – being one of the relatively few comedians who come here because they enjoy it rather than seeing it as a three week audition for Mock The Week. Out of the blue, a guy went to the bar and came back with two pints – one for Rich. Rich was genuinely quite touched. He finished his show by getting a man on the front row to propose to his girlfriend. There was a ring and everything. He actually did it. Sensing he couldn’t top that, Rich made a swift exit.