The Fear Blog. Part 8.

12 August

Felt better today, so got up and went to Bobby Carroll's Hungover Comedy Club. I did my set without hangover, which went okay. The only thing that was a bit dodgy was my vertigo stuff, which I assumed was going to be my stand up salvation but looks to be as troublesome as all the other stuff I do. People have stopped laughing in certain places, and I can't work out why. My room is looking messy. I barely noticed until just now. I don't know why I let it get so messy. I don't notice for a long time. I doubt that it will have any bearing on my life success, but I had previously decided it would so should probably tidy it up. Should is a good word. “Probably” and “should.” A decisive combination. I realise I am drinking coffee in a coffee shop every day. That's almost £5 a day on coffee. I don't have that kind of money, but I still do it. Maybe I'll just see what happens.

I went to see my housemate Madelaine's show. It was insane. Lots of her flitting about and being surreal. I would like it more if she had just a touch more conviction, but some bits really hit the mark. Half the people left, that's a good sign. She is clearly going to become very good at what she does. She knows Claudia O'Doherty and Sam Simmons, and she is on course. I wish I had a role model. If I had a genre, I would have a role model. I file myself under “material that no one else would want to use.” It's a good place. Some people congratulate me for not being mainstream. Be under no illusions. Being mainstream is tough. You have to nail those observations. You have to think of something funny and yet make it so that 4 out of 5 people can pretty much anticipate what it's going to be. Yikes.

I bought a pot of pasta in Tescos. I was reduced to 19p. I knew it would be only borderline edible, but 19p! Reduced from £1.50. If I ever get money, which is not altogether likely, I hope I never pass up a 19p pot of unappetising pasta. Why the sudden discount though? Probably it had been left by a plutonium isotope. I read the packet to see what an acceptable intake of plutonium was, but nothing doing. I shall write to my MP.

Later on I did my show. I tried to flyer at the Half Price Hut but I couldn't be bothered to outalk the professional flyerers. I flyered outside the venue, but put them away whenever a big bunch of lads came by. Daniel Kitson isn't performing on Fridays and Saturdays for that reason, so it's legit. Mike came along and helped me. He said “Accomplished comic, free at 9.” I like 'accomplished', there's no hyperbole. It's like me saying “I won't waste your time.” That's the standard I aspire to. I can live with that level of expectation. Somehow loads of people came in. It was hard at first because of the constant disruption, but then I got into the show and the laughs were big. It was great. So great that I overran and forgot the ending. Shame. But, a little closer to good. I need to still make things sound like a joke. I still mutter and fudge quite a lot. I will improve.

After the gig, we went out. I saw Daniel Simonsen. We swapped numbers and he's going to comp me into his show. I love that guy. He asked me if I was going to the Just The Tonic Party. Poor Daniel. He thinks I'm people. I didn't really want to go. I don't want to get into the Loft Bar. I know that people hang around there to be seen, but it's a boring waste of an evening. Probably good for career progression, but so would oral sex on promoters, and I'm not doing that. Especially not with beard upkeep to think about. We were in the Library Bar. That's where unimportant acts hang out. It was mildly depressing. I bet you there will be a time when I wander to the library bar alone and look for someone to have a drink with. No, Ed. Promise that you won't. I said hello to a comic called Jackson. He pretended not to know me at first. He does his show at noon in a yurt and gets one star reviews. Nice to know where I'm at in the pecking order.

People tell me that my flyers are really offputting. In future I will stick to whimsical flyers. Next year maybe I will call my show SlEDgehammer and just have me like Peter Gabriel on the video. What do we think?

Still no reviewers. I just need one good review to get the ball rolling. If someone would like to make up a comedy website or blog and give me four stars, then I'll totally go with it. Even if it's the Norfolk Livestock and Dairy Association. I saw a review for a show. It said “The pleasure that this show gives is immeasurable. Four stars.” Not immeasurable then. Four stars. It should say “The pleasure this show gives is a little less than a five star show. Four stars.” Are people doing this stuff on purpose, I wonder?

The Fear Blog. Part 6.

Aug 10

Hmm...

Woke up with a hangover, filled an empty white wine bottle with water and lay in bed. I will now tell you about what happened yesterday. It's not thrilling. This is like my flyering technique. “Is the show any good?” “Err...well, yeah. It's okay. Look, I'm a comedian, not a flyerer.” Like the Pied Piper.

First of all, stand up is hard. It's really really hard. People say “I don't know how you do it.” That's not hard. You talk into the microphone and screw up your face every so often. The question should be “I don't know why you do it.” I don't know either. If the crowd is good, my timing is good, my mood is right, the venue is right, there's a north easterly prevailing wind and Jupiter is aligned with Saturn, it's really a brilliant thing to do. If not, it feels like a horrible way to waste your time. I've probably lost the best evenings of my youth to stand up comedy. Well, I say that. I probably would have squandered them anyway. It's not as if I would have been learning to flamenco. But still. Even when you do a great new piece of material you sometimes still think “Oh, this is great!” and then ten audiences later, no one goes for it. You're emphasising the wrong bits, you can hear the gears clunking, your shiny new bit is suddenly tarnished. You can't remember why they laughed in the first place.

Friday started promisingly enough. Nice weather again. I considered going up Arthur's Seat but decided to go on Saturday if the weather stayed good. (Oh you poor sap, take your chances when they come along.) I did some web design stuff in a cafe by the Scottish Parliament. I'm quite a regular there now. It's a nice cafe/ bar in a contemporary style (I'm not sure if styles have changed since 2006, but that's when it was built. In fact I can honestly say, I have no idea what's developed since 2006-2012. It makes me shudder to think that I am living in such an anonymous bunch of years. Did people growing up in the 60s think “This blows!” Is it always hindsight? Seriously, what's changed? Smartphones? I think that's it. Keane may have released an album. Oh, and you can use oyster cards on the overground. Yep, that really is it.) It is a nice place to work and the beer is boring, so I'm not tempted to drink. They have a flag on each lager tap, but it really is stretching it. Thus CARLING has an English flag, Tennents a Scottish, Grolsch a Dutch, 1664 a French, Carlsberg a Danish flag, Budweiser an American...come off it. They're all brewed in Newcastle upon Tyne. They all taste the same and are available anywhere. Duff, Duff Light, Duff Dry. All from the same tap. The illusion of choice.

The highlight of my day was making a Spanish omelette. I used sweet potato in it. It came out perfectly and was very tasty. I had it with a salad. If you're a fan of omelette stop reading now. It doesn't get any better.

Flyering has got too hard. I don't want to do it. I don't mind trying to be funny onstage, that's something I will do pretty much voluntarily. But this flyering business is foul. I'm actually surprised when someone takes one. It's horrible to see the piles of flyers in the bin. Thousands of them. In the age of the slightly upgraded smartphone, flyering is a ridiculously inefficient way of getting people to the show. I see that the Fringe organisation isn't even mentioning the environment this year. Ironic that what is supposed to be an artsy festival is so damn destructive. If it isn't the forests felled to provide flyers for a show that no one will ever enjoy, it's the oil pumped to provide the garish printing ink. “Hey, I really think the planet should be destroyed a bit more so I can talk about self-scan tills. People NEED to hear this.” The Edinburgh Fringe: Fucking Up the Planet.

In the end I decided to talk to people instead. They laughed, they said they would see the show, they did not. An enthusiastic young girl flyered for me and got some people in. Then she sat and looked confused and left after 20 minutes. A ringing endorsement! One guy told me he was now a big fan. Taking over the world. One fan at a time. Phew. My brain needs a sit down.

I've not had anyone from the media in, of course. They are shortlisting prizes for things I'm eligible for. Surely they need to see my show? I'm not saying I'd win anything, but it would nice to be considered and dismissed, seeing as I'm eligible and all. Whoever wins the world series is the best baseball team in the world. The world being the USA and Canada. My show isn't stellar but it's definitely worth a few stars and a few nice things being said. There's still time for it, but I don't know...I've got a feeling...a feeling deep inside, oh no...The BBC got back to me to say I hadn't made it into their New Comedy Awards. I lied about how long I had been doing comedy on the application. I thought that might be a big deal. They didn't even notice, they just didn't like my stuff! I think I used the word 'fuck' three times in the recording. They asked for likeable. I'm not sure if swearing is likeable to the Beeb. I need to get out of life for a bit.When's the bus back to London? The 26th? Yuck. Don't want to go back to that life. Me in a flat in Brixton half-working. It's rubbish. Still, I can always watch multiple repeats of the Big Bang Theory so every cloud...

So after a fairly underwhelming show I went to the Anti-Hoot. A year ago it was cool. It was in the Gilded Balloon and felt artsy and interesting. People paid to get in, Lach (the host who looks like something between Woody Allen and David Cross and sounds like the leasd singer of REM) is strangely funny and makes surreal quips and does announcements for products like Air Guitars. At the old venue it felt counter-culture and subversive and great. Now he's on the Free Festival programme and the place was full of people who shouldn't have been there. Uninterested people who only came because they didn't have to pay, and yet somehow seem determined not to get into the spirit of things. The kind of people who come to my show. If you took a pub full of Yate's Wine Lodge punters and put them into a lovely country pub, would it make it still be a lovely place to go to? Nope. It would suddenly become a depressing shit hole. (Misanthropy riding pretty high there, Ed....No, sod that. I heard a 70 year old woman actually COMPLAIN because the Anti-Hoot didn't allow heckling. Bitterly complain! That's what she'd gone there to do! Didn't have to pay to get in with the express intention of sabotaging the show. “Scum. Subhuman scum.”)

There were 6 people left in that cavernous room at the end. I only stayed to support Lach. There wasn't a bill like there used to be. Just a sign up sheet. Too many open spot comics there. That killed it. Tough room though. Shitty room. I did some jokes there. Wow. Pulling teeth. Some guy actually interrupted my punchline. I told him no heckling, he said it was advice. I was too demoralised to make too much of it. ADVICE? My mother has apparently started shadowing me at gigs. I should have destroyed him. The comedian Michael Legge was there. He wouldn't look me in the eye after. Not because I was that bad, just clearly because he could see from my performance I wasn't worth talking to. That sounds a bit paranoid, but had I stormed it....

Because we were having far too much fun, I ended up at the worst 40th birthday party I have ever been to. I remember my mum's 40th. I must have been 5 or 6. I ate cake under the table. That was by far more fun. Michael may be a nice chap, but when we're having drinks together he gets out a little electronic scattegories type game and insists we play it. He doesn't approach women either. Starting to see patterns emerging. We were in a metal bar playing scattegories rather than trying to get Goth chicks when he got a text from a girl he had met at Daniel Kitson's show. We trooped over to a multi-level hell-hole called Espionage. Nothing about this place was secretive or undercover. Not the alcohol consumption, not the spray tans, not the groping. If Bond ended up drinking here I assume it would come post-breakdown.

Initially we couldn't get in as it was already 3am, but being a Mancunian Michael just slipped under a rope and found another way in and I followed. Working our way down the levels of hell, we got to the lowest bar. I remember snogging a girl there when I was 25. Grrrreat days. No they weren't, but I was 25, and that's the age we're told people want to be. Yay. At the back of the bar was a door and we had to say the word “Shaggers” and we were let in. Hilarious. A private party, a codeword on the door. Was it full of the cream of Edinburgh? Playboy millionaires and models? Nope. Five fat, middle-aged men jumping up and down to Come on Eileen. These luminaries included the promoter of a ragged chain of comedy clubs that doesn't seem to book me any more, one of the country's worst MCs and another of the country's most low rent comedians. Michael found the girl and realised he didn't fancy her at all. Did I tell you that Michael has to get 2 pint glasses for every pint to remove the fizz from the beer? Apparently it bothers his stomach otherwise. It didn't bother me before, but ending up at that party, it started to.

“Sorry, Ed”

“That's okay, Mike. All part of life's rich scattegories.”

They everyone started to do a conga. Ed, you're there. At last. The inner circle.

FML, viewers. FML.