My Edinburgh Ballache. Part 3.

Thank God for Lach’s Anti-Hoot. It’s an open mic showcase which is usually on every night in Edinburgh. This year it’s only on Mondays. Last year I met a lot of great comics and performers there including Eric Hutton, Tim Renkow and Jen Carnovale. This year, I go back to see them again. Eric Hutton is a treat to watch. He’s consistently hilarious with his full blown death metal parodies, but off-stage he has such a modest, laconic, personable way about him. It’s my oasis away from the usual crowd of comics and festival nightmares. Tonight it had everything. At this point I’d put a ‘from’ and ‘to’ to conform to lazy journalistic standards. But highlights included a Korean guy talking to a toy seal, a French outfit called The Neighbours with their faltering English and songs about how Paris is shit because it doesn’t have ravioli. At one point we swiveled around to listen to the soundman sing Tony Bennett. I closed my eyes and let my scotch and coke do its work. It was a total joy. Five stars.

Today’s show was much better. I hardly left the crowd in ecstasy, but everyone had palpably enjoyed themselves which left me pleased enough to go sit in an internet café and scratch my head about a website which I still haven’t successfully fixed, but stopped being profitable long ago.

There was a guy on the Anti-Hoot today who was good to listen to (he wore a cowboy hat and played a harmonica and sounded like Jethro Tull) but off stage he kept bemoaning the fact that he was in constant demand for gigs. I sat and nodded and chipped in when necessary. He was being a self-aggrandising bore but I didn’t roll my eyes or look away once, because I’m not a douchebag. See, other people? Be decent.

Earlier I was walking along looking at Bo Burnham’s posters announcing that the guy is a five star prodigy and I thought to myself that I didn’t have that natural star quality that makes a great performer. This may be true. But it’s also true of many fine comedians. For most people it just takes work. A lot of work. Not for Mozart, or Burnham or others. But for most. I think when I was a teenager, I wanted to be exceptional at something. Now it seems pointless. You don't have to be a genius anymore. We have the internet. After I die, two people can look me up and think "I like this guy's stuff. Bookmark." That's more than enough immortality. It'll all be dust in a few generations anyway. I’m in a much better frame of mind today. I think it’s called sleep and not drinking. Now I’ve had moderate drinking and I’m planning on sleep. Tomorrow may be great or it may not, but I will have to let it unfold as it chooses. I’m sure it doesn’t matter so much one way or another. This may be the moderate amount of scotch talking. Half the fun's in finding out. The other half is in not.

My Edinburgh Ballache Part 2: The Big Whinge.

Today I woke up hungover and demoralised and gave myself an impromptu day off to really get to grips with how shitty I felt. Yesterday’s show was yet more hard work. It’s all very well me concentrating on the show and not worrying about people’s reaction, but when the people are straight in front of you, that’s something else. One man on the second row was actually stifling laughter. He was too uncomfortable about laughing in a quiet room. That is the true Borg mentality of an audience. There is probably a psychological study about this. Audiences have no idea how much they can alter a performance. People seem to have an idea that an audience will laugh when something is funny. That isn’t the case. They will laugh when the collective mood allows them. The audience do not play a passive role in a good performance. They are its fuel. They sit there in silence wondering why they are sitting there in silence. Okay, it wasn’t silence. But it was underwhelming. And it made my material feel underwhelming. And it isn’t. With the right crowd it’s funny stuff. I felt the energy draining from me. Someone from the Theatre Royal in Nottingham asked me to email him after Edinburgh has finished to talk about the show. I don’t know what will come of it. What was worse is that firstly, someone was taking pics of me on a big SLR, which suggests press. On the strength of that show, I’d be lucky to get 2 stars. Again. Unless the reviewer can see passed the audience. They rarely can. Even worse is that two hungover girls came to the show. These girls saw my show last year and have stayed in touch since. Last year’s show was about insecurity, and they laughed like drains. (Strange expression. Don’t drains just drain?) This year, they sat at the back and mostly looked bored and hungover.

After the show I changed my pound coins from the pint glass for notes and looked around for the girls. They had gone. I hate feeling shit after a gig. It pervades everything I do. I imagined they had hated the show and fled to the hills, then I found them outside. Festival paranoia. I may not come to the Edinburgh Festival next year unless I have something to gain. So far, it feels like I have gained nothing at all. Sometimes the show feels like it's better but then I have a bad day and it knocks me over. Especially with the reinforcement of bad reviews. In London during August, there are more gigs available and mini-fringes. I may do one of these instead. I can spend money and feel tired and ignored and then go home on the tube.

On the plus side, I had Ron Swanson's favourite whiskey. That was nice.

*Note from August 2014: I edited this blog a lot. I talked about going out with these girls and how I ended the night feeling annoyed and disappointed. I guess I hurt the girls feelings. One of them got in touch, so I removed some stuff.

My Edinburgh Ballache Part 1...

If you go to the Edinburgh Festival and you have a lovely time and lots of fun, it's because you're not putting on a show. If you go to the Edinburgh Festival and you have a lovely time and lots of fun and you're putting on a show, then there's something wrong with you. It's like asking a veteran about Vietnam and him grinning from ear to ear and saying "Oooooh, you HAD to be there! Magic memories!" Edinburgh is not to be enjoyed, it's to be endured. Before Edinburgh, if anyone asked me "Are you excited about the festival?" I'd point at something behind them and then leap into a passing dustbin van while their back was turned. In fact the most relaxation I've had in the last 5 days was the 10 hour coach trip in cramped seats with broken air conditioning by a chemical toilet. That's me enjoying myself, that is.

Usually my problem is that I can't get enough people to see my show because they haven't heard of me, and there's no reason why they should see me. Usually they stare at my face on the flyer and say "Njjjjaaaahhhhh" to my face. This time my problem is that lots of people come to see my show in spite of the fact that they haven't heard of me. They are coming to hear things about the Roman Empire. That I happen to be there is by the by. Of course, I'd rather have a full venue than an empty one, but nevertheless I am piggybacking on the back of an Empire. The show may belong to me, but the subject doesn't. This means that some people will sit and just want to hear history, others will want to sit and hear stand up. Very few people will feel I've got the combination right. Those that do, love the show and, more importantly, do the bulk of the laughing. It's just a shame that none of them also happen to be reviewers.

This is the sort of thing I lose sleep over. On Saturday I went to "Meet the Press" at the Performers Centre. Sounds friendly, doesn't it? It isn't. It's long lines of performers waiting for hours in a queue so they can give a 3 minute pitch to a bored journalist. That's right. You spend your lifetime honing your craft, and busting your arse, and suffering the grinding lows of it all, all to impress a journalist who already knows what they're going to see. A fucking journalist! Most of whom wouldn't be at the festival if it wasn't for the free drinks. When I did get to the front of Broadway Baby and pitched they said "Yeah. We're down to see you, anyway". That was a 19 year old girl. I didn't even get to pitch to a grown up. I had a bored 19 year old girl look over my shoulder as I told her about my thematic approach to Roman history. I should have kicked her in the shins under the table. She was already convinced of the invincibility of media influence. Opinion is on her side. I have been smoking furiously. My nails are suffering too.


I saw Mike Shepherd on Saturday. He has his concerns about his show and life in general and I had the double whammy of a show and a pre-Edinburgh dumping, so we drank a lot together and I watched him slowly unravel (his words!). We were having drinks at Just the Tonic at The Caves. People were on nights out and having fun (stupid civilians). Two men climbed onto a large plastic cow to have their photo taken. One of them fell off and hit his head on the stone floor below, but he was okay. A table of people laughed. The friend of the floored guy glared at the rest of the bar: "He's FINE! THANKS for your concern." That's some level of stupid. Bad enough that you're climbing on a plastic cow, but much worse is the idea that you have the right to be furious at other people for lack of sympathy when you do something incredibly stupid like falling off it.

I am sleeping on a sofabed. It's uncomfortable. For two nights I had to share it with a snoring, constantly shifting man. Also, I've spent one night mostly awake worrying about reviews and one night awake questioning my general existence. Lol. It's the way my brain is programmed. If anyone knows how to deprogramme this monkey box, please let me know. I may pop along to the Hubbard Academy of Personal Independence on Nicholson Street, see if they're willing to take custodianship of my soul for a billion years. They're next to the embassy of the German Democratic Republic.


I think my Edinburgh show might well be me balancing on a large plastic cow. Most people have just come to see the cow. They didn't count on me. Some people will think "That's okay. He's living in the moment. It's fun. Good for him!" Other people will think "This guy's an idiot. He shouldn't be on that cow in the first place. I hope he falls off." Those people are reviewers.