I’ve just finished watching the Olympic ceremony ending, and am trying to draw parallels between this and the end of the fringe. Help me out, I’m struggling a bit here.

That might be because the contrast between the bang of the Beijing games finishing and the whimpering way the Fringe peters out couldn’t be more contrasted. For a start, there’s not even a real sense of when it ends in comedy-land. The if.com party usually signifies the climax of it all, but then we all go and gig the following day, so that’s not the end. And then only half of us are actually finished then; the rest have to do this bizarre Monday gig that is justified by the fact that it is a bank holiday (but not, I believe, in Scotland – though nobody seems able to confirm this). This water is further muddied by the fact that a handful of comedians cancel their last show as they can’t be arsed – or – as in some cases, it sells so badly as to not be worth it. A real pity after the typically super-busy final weekend that can easily sell out and give you some of your most responsive and rewarding audiences, but understandable. However, I won’t be doing that this year; and bizarrely, I’m relishing my final Monday, for two reasons that I’ll cover later.

I’ll rewind back 30 hours or so to cover my busiest day so far, last Saturday. It started early with a trip to the Edinburgh Food Festival, where I improvised my breakfast from 100 different varieties of pickles, jams, cheeses and whiskies on oatcake fragments snaffled from increasingly cynical stallholders. Not to be outdone by just about every other festival in Edinburgh, they had a ‘performance area’ too, where I saw (while stood – it was packed out) Hardeep Singh Kohli attempt to cook Pork Belly with a gooseberry Cranachan. I couldn’t hear him at first as the sound was useless and fed back when he stood next to the oven, and when I did, I still couldn’t see him as what lighting was provided was shining off his 1970’s style Adidas tracksuit. When my eyes finally acclimatised, it transpired that the gooseberry cranachan was actually raspberry, and the only thing I could hear him tell us is that he wasn’t actually much of a cook, with his only culinary reknown being his short stint on Celebrity Masterchef. This hasn’t stopped him releasing a cookbook which he was plugging every 5 minutes; though that frequency dropped markedly when he burnt a pan of sugar shortly after telling us how important it was not to burn it.

After that, it was off to do ‘On Heat’, Matt Forde’s panel show; the format having hardly changed from last year and still entertaining and baffling punters in equal measures. The show I sat in on was so laid back that team captains Mark Olver and Jon Richardson seemed to spend the entire hour the audience’s side of the 4th wall; though with the venue being the tent in SoCo, walls 1 through 3 were never going to be an issue. Still, a lot of laughs were had, especially regarding Stuart Hudson’s romantic failings at the hands of an amorous pig-farming love rival; and my rantings about the evil that is Johnny Vaughn got a good response also. As ever, I lost. I can’t help feeling this ‘Second’ thing is graduating from show title to all-out curse. Certainly putting a bet on the if.com results didn't help.

And then off to do my show – which, hooray, had sold out.



I’ve never quite understood the ‘sold out’ board – surely this is only for acts’ egos only. Why would a punter entering the courtyard want to know which shows they CAN’T see? It’s like having a menu in a restaurant only showing you what food is off. A much more useful system would be a daily list of ALL the shows in the Pleasance with the sold-out shows being rubbed off. But then, I guess it’s a tradition.

Thankfully my show was a good one (though not as good as tonight’s – that was a breakthrough show; I decided to just relax and play with the audience and unbelievably, cracked it. Oh well, I only did it with a day to go. This is reason No. 1 for me looking forward to Monday. Still not the best show though; that came the Monday before, which just had a magical feeling about it. After it, a lady from the audience came up to me and said, “that was the best show I’ve ever seen on the fringe, I cried throughout the end”. To which I said, “thank you”, and then, after a short pause, “I’m really sorry”. What’s the decorum for addressing strangers who have told you that you made them cry? Apology or gratitude?). Then it was a race off to host Jongleurs Edinburgh again, and then, with my voice beginning to crack, back to the Pleasance to host the huge BBC Comedy Presents Gala in Pleasance One. Acts included a very on-form Craig Campbell, a nicely chilled Carl Donnelly (who agreed with me regarding my thoughts on Russell Kane’s show - see below) and closing act Andrew Lawrence, who overlapped the if.comedy award announcements. No major surprises in the award to Sarah Millican, and well done Sarah, and while everyone agreed that DoD was totally deserving of the main award, there was definitely some surprise. In the Green Room afterwards, Ella from the BBC admitted to a dream/premonition in which she had (correctly) predicted the award outcomes, and while most people were quite shocked it wasn’t Rhod’s prize (as it was so universally accepted for how brilliant it was), myself and Carl agreed that Russell’s show had flashes of totally gobsmacking elements; where you felt that something almost unworldly was happening in how funny and focussed the show had become; a total sense of empathy with the performer and an ability to unlock your inhibitions about laughing so hard and long, that it almost hurt. I know it’s just my opinion, but it really was that good. And it wasn’t even perfect. Best comment came from Andrew Lawrence though, who jokingly commented, “Where do I get a new agent?” as his agency (Hannah Chambers Management) had scored the double with Sarah and David and no doubt will have their hands full with two of the hottest tours of the next 12 months.

No mention of the panel prize though, which I didn’t find out until I got to the if.com party, though by now I was truly exhausted from 7 hours of performing. Which might explain why I thought at first people were winding me up when they told me who the recipients were; all the comedians at the fringe. The prize: a free bar up to the value of four grand at a venue to be determined. Right you are. How ironic that the ‘spirit of the fringe’ should be to throw away £4K on a piss up nobody needed in a city we wouldn’t normally be visiting in return for the vague belief that we’ve achieved something. Well, if that isn’t the spirit of the fringe, what is?

Anyway, the upshot of this is that we can all now technically put ‘if.com’ winner on our posters next year. Paul Kerensa has put in his blog that he wishes there were no awards (a comment made at the party of an awards ceremony, though I’m sure he’s aware of the locational irony in that musing); simple solution Paul – if we all sport our ‘if.com’ winner prize on our posters, it’ll devalue the award enough that nobody will bother with it again. They haven’t thought this through, have they.
Too much drink and too much mixing of those drinks meant today was a tricky proposition. I was up at the crack of dawn to do Jon Richardson’s show on 6music - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/rh6m/. After my show, I went off to see Daniel Kitson’s show in the bizarrely steep Traverse theatre, where I bumped into if.com newcomer Sarah Millican and Gary Delaney. Her glee at winning is so infectious I almost felt triumphant just chatting to her. So pleased she got it – couldn’t happen to a nicer person. Sarah told me her post-Ed gala show will be at the Apollo; in one night, she could play to an audience 3 times the size of her entire Edinburgh run added together. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that as she did a bit of a girly gulp at that point. A word about the Traverse though (and yes, Jay Richardson is right, people really do need to know if a venue can detract from the enjoyment of a show). We found a row to sit together which was ridiculously uncomfortable; the seats were practically on the floor meaning your knees are up by your chest. It was like sitting in the back of a Porsche for an hour and a half – not comfy at all. That said, Daniel’s wonderfully poetic way with words always enthrals me and distracts me, and I felt many pangs of empathy in his sentiments. Definitely a good show though the worryingly over-enthusiastic crowd was clearly bugging him because on a couple of occasions he berated a punter for her rather shrill and dominating laugh – which to be honest I couldn’t hear. I guess being over-loved has its drawbacks too.

So, almost there now. One show to go – and tomorrow it will be performed to the newly crowned if.comedy newcomer, as Sarah and Gary had admitted to actually buying tickets to my last show, which I feel terrible about; I could have easily walked them in. I’m looking forward to it because Gary’s feedback is invaluable; he’s one of the few comics on the circuit who is as obsessive about the art and execution of stand-up as me, and therefore never short of a worthy insight. So to wrap up tonight, as promised, here’s my big list of shows for this year’s festival; in the case of the shows I’ve seen, I’ve got reviews that can be joined on to them, but as per Paul’s great blog entry of yesterday, it’s up to you to work out which one relates to which show.

Enjoy.

Shows I saw during the Festival
Richard Herring (and I saw the Preview)
Lloyd Langford (and I saw the Preview)
Patrick Monahan
Glenn Wool
Ivan Brackenbury
Justin Moorhouse
Andrew Lawrence
Rhod Gilbert
Andrew Maxwell
Dan Atkinson
Chris Cox
John Bishop
Aaa Standup
Jason Cook
Andy Zaltzman
Gav Webster
Jim Jeffries
Ian Stone
Russell Kane
Jimmy Carr
Danny Bhoy
Mark Watson
Tim Minchin
Markus Birdman
Comedy Reserve
SYTYF final
Edinburgh Food Festival
Daniel Kitson

• Great, but by his own lofty standards, not a vintage year.
• Should be seen by all comedians who want to understand how to put together a near-flawless show.
• Masterful and controlling, but a bit ponderous in places. Audience loved it throughout though.
• His best Edinburgh show yet. Best gag is the opening one though, and it doesn’t get as much as it deserves.
• Loads of great material let down by a lack of structure, but really good nonetheless
• Wish I’d seen this at the beginning of the run. A masterclass is feel-good delivery. Great.
• Good material, good comedian, but the venue did the show no favours. I really enjoyed the video section but some of the press didn’t agree at all.
• Unashamedly shambolic in large parts and just brilliant too. My top recommendation to other comics.
• Great to see a great comic who unlike others who have ‘made it’, doesn’t rest on his laurels and continues to work hard. My friends argued that this was his best show to date and I think I agree.
• Good and annoying in equal measures. Man has unlimited charisma though
• In places, disappointing – but only because it had the potential to be loads better. Still a good show though.
• Beautifully put together but surprisingly repetitive in places; definitely good but I still prefer last year’s show.
• A good second show and heartwarming to see a comic enjoying their craft so much.
• Most laughs I’ve had in the afternoon. Jokes stick in your head too. Excellent.
• Good. There’s a genuine rough gem in here.
• Funny though a touch frustrating – a good show but he’s capable of being so much better, and he probably knows it.
• As good as last year’s show, so I enjoyed it. No real message but that doesn’t matter.
• Edinburgh’s most underrated performer. Clever and funny.
• Good material made great by an ever improving comic in a frankly poor venue.
• A nice variation from the sort of thing I normally watch and genuinely clever in loads of places.
• Surprisingly good, and he owned the sell-out room. In my top 10. Shame the people he attracts to his gigs can be utter bell-ends.
• An ever-improving comic with a show that was being unfairly derided in some of the press. Loads to enjoy and unfair comparisons with his previous show were baseless.
• Very good, but maybe not quite as good as last year’s show, though the critics clearly thought the opposite of me.
• Some absolute high points and some utter rubbish too. Rollercoaster hour. Audience frankly had saint-like patience.
• 10/10 for invention and funny throughout as well. Blown away by his ever-expanding gift for voices which I never knew he posessed.
• Every mc’s worst nightmare.
• Exemplary. My favourite show of the festival. Even though it had loads of holes in it, there were moments when it took your breath away. Stunning.

Shows I've Been In
3 * Old Rope
4 * Late N Live
2 * Late Show Underbelly
Political Animal
Afterhours At The Dome
2 * Sytyf Semi
Mervyn Stutter
Lunch With The Hamiltons
3 * Bbc Comedy Presents
3 * Edcom8
25 * Stephen Grant
Stand Glasgow
2 * Jongleurs Glasgow
3 * Jongleurs Edinburgh
Montreal comedy showcase
E4 Podcast
2 * Comedians Countdown
On Heat
Chortle Student Awards Final
Fred Macauley Show, BBC Scotland
BBC 6 Music Jon Richardson Show
Forth 2 Morning Show

Shows I Should Have Been In
Electric Cabaret At C Venue (Nobody Turned Up)
Andrew J Lederer's Anthology (I Mistook 12:50pm For 12:50am)
Karen Bayley's Midnight Gig (Clashed With Another Gig)
Feeling Funny Downstairs A The Tron (Clashed With Another Gig)

People Whose Previews I Saw
2 * Lucy Porter
2 * Reg D Hunter
Hal Cruttenden
Phil Nichol
Michael Fabbri
Bethany Black

Stuff I Wanted To See But Couldn't
Fakespeare
Rob Heeney
Literally
Mort
Free Fringe Show
Comedy O Clock
On The Waterfront
Michael Fabbri
Neil Delamere
Craig Campbell
J J Whitehead
Maeve Higgins
Karl Spain

Overlap Impossibilities
Kerry Godliman
Zoe Lyons
Pappy's Fun Club
Terry Saunders

People I Could Never Get Into Because They Sold Out
Otis Lee Crenshaw
Sarah Millican
Michael Mcintyre
Jon Richardson
Tim Vine
Ed Byrne
Steve K Amos

3 days to go and try as I might, I can't hold back the highly self-indulgent philosophising. I'll do my best not to do all of it 'out loud’ as I’ve spent the last week reading a lot of other people’s blogs and realise that in many cases with blogs, not only is less more, even less is practically morish.

The problem here lies in that the final few days up here are spent thinking whether your Edinburgh has been a success or not. Last year I had a breakthrough year, so keeping the momentum was going to be tricky. And it has been. But that’s a discussion for another blog; you never have a true perspective of how good your festival has been until it has finished; and seeing as it hasn’t yet, I’ll hold back on that one.

What I will do though is talk about the effect doing a show for nearly four weeks can have on you. For a start, it’s groundhog month. Doing the same show every night has massive advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are simple; you get to perfect and polish a body of work in a way you’d never be able to do on the circuit. All that stage time – no matter what level you are at in your career, can’t hurt. The disadvantages are slightly more cryptic though; on top of the drain (emotional, physical, mental) of doing your show each day, you start feeling almost like someone with a day job; true enough, it may only be an hour a day, but you start to run out of the motivational energies that keep you pepped the other 11 months of the year. And this year I’ve found that if you include a personal / heartfelt element in your show the net result of saying it each day is the complete polar opposite of what you think it might be.

I’m not saying I’m at Jason ‘death’s door’ Cook levels of personal tragedy* (please note this is a running joke with Jason after an earlier blog insinuated that Jason is a near-suicidal character. I would like to reiterate that I still cannot confirm or deny this.) but the passing remarks within my show about my ongoing and increasingly difficult divorce – which aren’t discussed in any detail and are played for laughs – are actually getting harder to say each night. I originally thought that putting a personal element in would numb me to the effect of the true story behind it, but actually it just throws it into sharp, repeated, focus each day, and that’s not what I wanted to do at all. But then even worse, is the actual premise of the entire show, which is all about how I’ve come second in life. The purpose of this show is to try to celebrate my near-miss successes both in my social and professional life, by highlighting and laughing off my failures, but actually it’s making those “almost-moments” of this year’s Fringe even more stark and annoying.

And by this I mean the review that was editorially bumped down from 5 to 4 stars which could have changed the whole perspective of my fringe, the press people who ran out of space and time to publish their pieces on me, the important TV and international festival bookers who just missed the start of my show and therefore couldn’t see me, the three ‘completely random’ shows that were frankly abysmal and just so happened when the if.com judges / main reviewers were in; I could go on, but I won’t, because it makes me sound like a whinging tit. The only problem is, whereas in previous years, I could laugh off and move on when these sort of bad-luck stories surfaced up, I am now doing a show about how they have shaped my life; and therefore they’re plaguing me each day as I relive my most famous (and anecdotally funny) failures. Anyway, in summary, my show topic was a very good one, but the net effect of doing the show each night has backfired. Some days I just feel miserable after reliving it all and it’s all of my own making. Nuts.

With this in mind, it’s probably quite poetic that I came 2nd in Comedy Countdown to Alex Horne (who, might I add, has been on ACTUAL countdown, proving how bloody good he is). I lost by a single point. I would have won if ‘dueted’ was a word, but it wasn’t. Arse. That said, I clearly had an evil streak in me; I managed to get the numbers game to 666 and thought the audience conundrum was ‘daemonics’ when in actual fact it was ‘comedians’.



Alex quite sportingly allowed me to keep half of the trophy (the top half) of a glass bowl. Here I am wearing it as a hat.



And spreading my dirty ‘coming 2nd’ curse involved top Brighton new comedian Seann Walsh who came 2nd in this year’s So You think You’re Funny. Seann wasn’t helped by a – shall we say - ‘not quite on form’ Rhona Cameron bringing him on cold for the start of the 2nd half, but he still acquitted himself admirably. Sean won £1000 for coming 2nd – not bad – but I know how much the £4K for winning would have actually changed his life (genuinely) so I think he was gutted in that respect. Either way though, he’ll go on to be an immense comic. What’s so good about him after just a year of doing stand-up is that he’s utterly unique in delivery and he’s getting there in content too. The best definition I’ve heard about him so far is ‘like a surfer Dylan Moran’ but even that’s not that close. Look out for him.

Oh, and speaking of winning a grand – but less poetically – I came 6th in the 'best joke in Edinburgh' poll on the TV channel Dave. The winner (who got that grand) was fellow Brightonian Zoe Lyons (and yes, Brighton really is the new up and coming circuit, in the same way Bristol was 4 years ago and Manchester 4 years before that). Her joke – and mine – is here. Well done Zoe.

Anyway. Unlinked to today’s post, I saw Andy Zaltzman’s show , which was ace (and I shared a cab there with Karl Spain who was performing in Stand 2 upstairs at the same time, which was embaressing as I really should have seen Karl instead), I bumped into a very svelte looking Jimmy Carr on the way home and stopped for a great chat about his brutally busy upcoming tour (to give you an idea of just how famous he is now, people were taking cameraphone pictures of him while we talked – just surreal), then I went home to eat and go for a quick meeting before my show, which went surprisingly badly and frankly upset me; and for a completely unrelated reason, had the show from hell today in which 2 people were ejected by security for heckling not just me, but other members of the audience and the warm-up computer. That’s right, they shouted abuse at an inanimate object. One for a future blog entry again, methinks.

And then it was racing off to Jongleurs Edinburgh to host the show there – I got there in good time but that still didn’t stop the Jongleurs staff getting confused and thinking I was 2nd act Steve Williams and delaying the show until I ‘arrived’, while I was actually there. Easy mistake. The other acts on the bill were Kerry Godliman and Janey Godley which makes you wonder how much of the booking at Jongleurs is done alphabetically. Afterwards, I met Maria Kempinska (sp?) - the Jongleurs co-owner - who was in the audience. I’ve never met her before and she’s really nice. I had no idea what to expect though – though you do panic slightly thinking, “if she hates me, that’s a fifth of my weekends diary gone”. Oh well. Let’s see what calls I get on Monday.

I was going to finish my blog by slightly (totally) ripping off Paul Kerensa’s idea, as I’ve also got a big list of shows I’ve seen; including ones I’ve been in, and then the rest of the shows that were on my ‘to do’ list and what happened to them. However, it’s dead late now and I’m off to the food festival tomorrow and need an early (it’s 3:30am) night – hence I’ll do that tomorrow. So I’ll finish ‘on topic’ by saying the one place I hope my ‘coming second’ curse doesn’t spread to is my original tip for if.comeddie success; Russell Kane. In fact, I really have put my money where my mouth is; If this bet comes good, it’ll cover the money I spent on badges and yo-yos in 2006, which still haunts me to this day.

Jay Richardson, him of Scotsman reviewing fame, has replied to my original blog post regarding reviewers, which I've cut and paste below (he couldn't get the 'comment' facility to work). This, theoretically, is a review of 'reviewing the reviewers'. Yes, my head is hurting now.

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Hi Stephen. Enjoyed your set the other night. And most of this post is spot-on. But I must take mild issue with a couple of your points as I have pressing work I'm procrastinating from.

Firstly, I think that if the review word count allows the space (and frequently it doesn't) a reviewer can have an obligation to note external factors outwith the comic's control. While acknowledging that it may not be the performer's fault, the reviews are primarily for the punters (specifically at this festival and visiting these venues in the case of many publications) and if they're paying a decent amount of money for a venue where water leaks from the roof every night and affects enjoyment of the gig, that is potentially worth inclusion. Playing devil's advocate, why shouldn't reviews of shows in consistently hot venues note the liquid or confectionary bribes that the comic supplies the audience with to ease their suffering? Sadly, it may have far more bearing on their enjoyment of the show than all of that comic's years on the circuit.

Also, if there's an especially drunken heckler who affects the direction of the show (ie the comic announces that they're dropping a large portion of it to deal with this idiot) it should be worth noting that this was not a typical performance.

Secondly, in the case of John Gordillo's show, I can only speak for the Scotsman. While they obviously respond to buzz about specific shows, that particular review was scheduled long before the Chortle review appeared, so it's not always a case of being dedicated followers of fashion. The online nature of Chortle means that their reviews can appear the following day or so, whereas the same cannot be true of a newspaper where a multitude of factors go into deciding what goes into any day's coverage.

The critical process of reviewing comedy undoubtedly should come under greater scrutiny. But, and I may be wrong here, there seems to have been a greater degree of 'student publication' bashing at this year's Fringe from comics as well. Much of it is doubtless justified when, as you say, a cast-iron headliner like Danny Bhoy or Glenn Wool receive an ill-informed one star review (though is it unknown for a top comic to turn up on the night, decide they don't like the audience and essentially take the money and run? Or begin coasting once they've had all the national reviewers in?). Anyway, I imagine there's very few comics out there who've turned down quoting a ridiculously hyperbolic five star review on their posters because they question the reviewer's experience and credentials.

Yours,
Jay Richardson

Just an ad-hoc blog entry from me after the previous set of marathon submissions, to say that after my piece on reviewers (which I’m sweating on slightly – and I’ll explain why in a few days, as the reason for this delay will become apparent) I have had the first of those reviews I mentioned, in The Stage; and it is here.

Even though The Stage doesn’t have a star rating, they have a ‘must-see show’ stamp, their highest recommendation, which they rarely to give to comedies. And hooray, I got one. That faint ‘whispy’ noise is me punching the air, albeit feebly. No Fest review out yet though and their website appears to be down. Which is still an improvement over ‘The National Student’, whose fringe review website doesn’t actually appear to be up, and apparently hasn’t been all festival. Meaning their reviews so far this year aren’t actually being published – in either printed or online form. I actually feel sorry for the reviewers.

Favourite review of the day though, goes to Jay Richardson’s review of Sarah Millican, which actually gives a quotable review of her boyfriend. If you check here, you can read about “the unremittingly vicious comic Gary Delaney, master of the one-liner”. Actually, that’s his bit in total; but such is the influence of Edinburgh you can be reviewed without actually having a show, or even being here.

As this is pretty much a non-diary blog, I thought I’d thrown in some random pics that I hadn’t posted yet:


John Ryan hugging Janey Godley. It’s hard to tell, but who means this the least?


Carl Donnelly and John Robbins – still best of friends just over halfway through the run of their double-headed show.

I’m not sure what the origin of the statement, ‘comedy is the most subjective artform in the world’ is, but it has so many uses. It can allow you to shrug off a terse appraisal from a mouthy punter who didn’t like your act; it can help justify a glowing reference of a comedian you cannot stand or do not rate, and is a great appeasing statement when a group of people go to see a show and as many of them hate it as love it. It works so well for a simple reason; it’s true.

Which is why the whole concept of reviewing comedy should be taken with a pinch of salt – everyone can speak for themselves, but only the most pompous individual could genuinely think that they’ll speak for everybody when it comes to assessing what is ‘funny’. The only opinion any reviewer can state that is unarguable is their own, and even in a small room, that opinion is a tiny percentage of the total.

Of course, in comedy, the credibility of those opinions varies on the basis of how knowledgeable and balanced the reviewer is with comedy as a genre. And the very best reviewers can be determined by a number of factors; including what they choose to ignore, which is just as important as what they notice. For example, they’ll ignore the environmental concerns such as how uncomfortable their seat might be, or technical problems during the show, that are clearly unique to the moment in time they are there; and bizarre occurrences outside of the comedian’s remit such as persistent hecklers, or external noises that are clearly one-offs. And this skill becomes even more pertinent in Edinburgh, when a show will be performed over a ‘run’ and the reviewer has to be able to imagine the typical scenario the show will be seen in, even if the show seen is far from a normal one.

The only element that it remains a grey area as to whether it should be ignored, is the reaction of the rest of the audience. A weak reviewer who dislikes (or likes) a show when the rest of the crowd acts the complete opposite may feel brow-beaten into changing their opinion. Fortunately, most reviewers don’t do this. However, the opposite can be equally disingenuous. In recent Edinburgh years I’ve seen comments such as ‘this show was crap; and the only reason the rest of the crowd laughed is because they were friends/fans/delusional/retarded.’ Can I just tell the reviewers out there, this rarely ever happens; if someone else laughs and you didn’t, it’s because *they* found it funny, and you didn’t. Simple as that. You aren’t wrong, but neither are they. Sure, it might have been a joke that was ‘beneath’ you, or possibly, one that went ‘over your head’, but it’s still a joke even if you didn’t laugh. A comedian has to learn very early on that an audience is very rarely ‘wrong’ – it’s themselves. This is something a reviewer doesn’t have to learn, but it would give them a much more rounded perspective if they did.

A slightly more realistic and considerate comment will read along the lines of ‘this part of the show wasn’t for me, but large portions of the crowd found it funny’. This at least acknowledges that some people enjoyed it. The problem here lies in the fact that it’s really easy for the most established reviewers to be pompous enough to think that an entire audience is wrong – and in some rare cases this includes reviews where the reviewer liked it much more than the audience (though these are rare occurrences indeed, mainly because a ‘not-as-comedy-literate’ crowd will be supposedly easier to coax into laughter than your hardened, comedy saturated journo). I’ve seen reviewers argue an audience to be comprehensively wrong, proving themselves to be seemingly as worthless as the most inexperienced reviewer who may base their opinion entirely on duration and depth of laughter. But there is a good reason for this; if you see enough comedy, you become hardened to the simplest devices and the hackiest lines, and like any drug dependency, the basic simple stuff no longer rocks your boat. You need your comedy tougher, more layered, more intricate and more intense; and suddenly the route-one gags that were knocking you senseless are suddenly leaving you cold. You scowl at the comedically illiterate crowds who worship the most basic and derivative of acts; even though those performers could wipe the floor with a full room of revellers in weekend gigs around the country, when they play to the sort of audience who may only watch live comedy once a year, or maybe even once in their lifetime.

Which is why those sort of ‘circuit acts’ get butchered in Edinburgh reviews by the more established reviewers, but sometimes worshipped by the newer reviewers who don’t possess a wealth of comedy viewing to judge them against. And in recent years, the gulf between these two types of reviewers, both essential to the constant drip-feed of press on acts, has widened and become somewhat acrimonious. The Scotsman has taken to boasting that their reviews are written by ‘serious journalists, not unqualified students’, though it has to accept that the vast majority of their journos were once exactly the latter, and were it not for these publications, they wouldn’t have got the skills they now have. Search online for the reviews of Terry Saunders for a good example of this gulf – and when there, you’ll see one of the most negative reviews of him complaining about the room he is playing in. This is no isolated incident either; I’ve seen reviewers complaining about the seat layout, the temperature (it’s a lot hotter for us you know) and the venue staff outside the door. Fair enough, these are all valid comments, but they’re not a reflection on the show or the performer, and shouldn’t be used to rate them as such. And certainly reviews criticising what the act is wearing only highlights the inanity of the reviewer, nothing else.

Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg. One reviewer recently commented at the top of his review how he was 5 minutes late to arrive at a show and was worried he might get picked on when he walked in halfway through. For God’s sake, how can you review a show that you missed nearly a tenth of? That same reviewer then prophesised as to why that comic was on at a 11:30pm slot, concluding that it was the smuttiness of their material; when clearly, as any comic on their debut year knows, that comic was on at this time because that was the only timeslot offered to him. I’ve seen comics blamed for so many elements that are outside of our control I wouldn’t be surprised to see a show marked down this year because it was raining.

And there’s the maddest part of it all; ratings, or more specifically, the star ratings. This matters – and I mean, really, really matters – to Edinburgh comics in a way that probably only Olympic athletes can currently comprehend. But the whole concept of a 5 degree rating for ‘the world’s most subjective artform’ is ludicrous. There will always be people who love a show and likewise, people who hate it. Sure enough, the proportions will vary as inevitably, some shows are better than others, sometimes exponentially so, but if you catch that rare person who loved a seemingly bobbins show, then bang – there you have it – a 5 star review goes up on the posters and suddenly it’s the talk of the town. And it really is. Look at John Gordillo; a great comedian, but at the Fringe outset, not appearing to have any particular selling point to pop his head over the parapet. Suddenly, there’s a 5 star review in Chortle, and the press and the public descend on his show like it’s a helipad. Totally deserving, but all as the result of a whim of one reviewer. I remember this effect from my 5 star review last year that helped me practically sell-out my run; I was under no illusions as to thinking this rating meant I had a perfect show, but it certainly meant that everyone was suddenly curious as to what it was I was doing that was so well regarded.

Within the comedy industry, that rating means an ugly competitive streak raises its head, and suddenly people are comparing themselves to comics they’ve secretly felt superior/inferior to all year. But on the basis of what? The random preference of a 19 year old Geography student? The system is so flaky and inherently flawed that most comedians would be better off rolling dice to determine a pecking order.

And of course, the flipside to this, is the 1-star review. I remember Glenn Wool getting one, and Danny Bhoy too. These guys couldn’t be more different – yet from a circuit perspective, both are cast iron headliners. What happened? Well, their shows both rubbed reviewers up the wrong way. So dripping in vitriol were these reviews that you started to wonder if it was personal – after all, I imagine on the nights in question, not only did these guys do a good show, they probably had the rest of the crowd in fits of laughter. The 1 star review is something special; you almost have to work at it for it to be that negative. A good comic who just stood up reading jokes from a book would get 2 stars. To get a 1 star review, you need to mine deeply into the most hated element of a reviewers psyche and twang all its strings. It takes effort.

But you can go lower that 1 star. The edfringe website allows you to select 0 stars as a review, which gives you an effective range of 6. And Broadway Baby has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and ‘5 plus’ stars. That’s also a range of 6. And on top of that, the Guardian’s ‘rapid reviews’ give – wait for it – a mark out of 10. Are these rating systems diluting the star system? No, not at all – it was always arbitrary at best and only someone with the value system of an exam marker would see any relevance. It’s desperately sad that it is the wording of the review that should be key; the Stage don’t give stars and never have, and their reward for this is that most of their Edinburgh reviews rarely make it onto comedian’s quotes, so obsessed as they are with ‘being scored’.

The worst thing about the star rating is that it makes no allowances for the subjective nature of comedy; it is just a scoring preference of the reviewer and the reviewer alone – yet it will never be treated as such. I recently saw a review this year which I discussed with Russell Kane where they said an act was ‘completely like Marmite – you’ll either love him or you’ll hate him’. A perfectly realistic quote. Star rating? 3.

Anyway, tonight I had the Stage, Fest, and The Scotsman in, and the reviewers in question from two of them are responsible for some of the quotes in my article above. They all saw the same show and I expect three completely different reviews. Will I be annoyed by that? Will I fuck. It’ll prove how subjective comedy is and be honest, we all knew that already.

Just to wrap up, here’s my favourite review fuck-up so far.

All Andrews are equal, but some Andrews are more equal than others.

Right - I'll write a proper blog soon enough, but I've spent what little additional time I've had recently trying to work out how to edit video so I could put together a few clips of the 'comedy countdown' event last Monday. I'm not sure how watchable it is, but here it is ...

If that hasn't worked, the video is here ...

Enjoy!

Just got back from the inaugural ‘comedian’s countdown’ which I got some photos and video from, and I’ve given up trying to edit and upload it tonight hence my blog is a touch shorter than usual – sorry. (Also I'm fairly tired - my day started at 11am when I had my blood pressure taken for a press thing featuring John Ryan's new show and some lovely ladies from Unison. My blood pressure is 137/88. I've no idea what that means. Any good?) Anyway, I’ve tried to master the art of editing video at 3am but it’s probably the least enjoyable part of my involvement in the fringe this year. I even met up with the bods from YouTube at the end of last week while they tried to show me how to do it.



Unfortunately, they were all Apple Mac people whereas I am a PC person, and if you need to know what sort of people use Macs and what sort of people use PCs, Charlie Brooker has got it completely spot on here.

However, video editing by no means is the least glamorous work within the Edinburgh Fringe. And it certainly isn’t performing, even though last Saturday consisted of me doing my show, racing to the Glasgow Stand, doing a show, and then racing back to judge so you think you’re funny – which didn’t feel even 1% showbiz.



So, here’s some of my possible other contenders for least glamorous job.

What about flyering? Well, the worst part of this job appears to be making the flyers up. Here, the gang from Bound and Gagged use a ‘rain break’ to staple seemingly infinite numbers of press cuttings to flyers, while flyering kapo Andrew Jobbins looks on.



What about putting up posters? Well, that’s not nearly as bad... as the job of having to take them off again. Here’s me sneaking a picture of the two guys who hose off and scrub away every poster on cowgate. They’re angry, angry people – and weren’t at all happy with me even taking this picture. In fact, they were so stroppy, I’m considering getting A1 posters of them taking the posters down and making posters of them, to put all along cowgate. For me, these guys have the least glamorous job.



Anyway, if you have any better suggestions of least glamorous Edinburgh Fringe jobs, I’m all ears. Comment aaway.

Right: Last picture challenge was 6 people, not 5 – apologies, it was very late. I also believe it is Jason Cook and not Ed Byrne but Jason’s never been a Pleasance act I think, so can anyone confirm? And it was Richard Herring, not Bob Mills! Tsk. Anyway, here’s your next challenge – getting a touch trickier I feel. Who are these 3?

"Emotional rollercoaster". I've given up how many times I've used that phrase to describe Edinburgh; to friends, to family, to other comics, and to journalists in interviews. Every time I say it, it comes across at best an exaggeration, and at worst unadulterated melodrama. But it's true.

Because 12 hours ago I was feeling pretty pleased with myself with a strong and positive 4-star Chortle review under my belt, and now I'm feeling a touch angry about a show that should have been sparkling, but in the end turned out to be a frustrating exercise in verbal firefighting with a knob of an audience member disrupting the entire performance.

Today had started so well. My Saturday show had been immense; a sell-out, the best performance so far, and I was still buzzing from how good it had been. Still on a high, I headed to Fringe Sunday to do my allotted 10 minutes. In the last month I have done two outdoor festival venues; Canizaro Park and Latitude, so I felt that I was on good form for this sort of gig. When I arrived, Patrick Monahan had just been compering. Unrelatedly, I imagine, the show was running 30 minutes late. Lloyd Langford did a stirling effort, despite getting 'heckled' by the ridiculously overloud cabaret tent next door.



Eventually, I went on, after an act that I can best describe as an Aboriginal Butlins Red Coat (once he'd got 2 different people on the stage after his first 3 singalongs, I was looking everywhere for the Robin Hood style hats.) Sorry if that's caustic, but he overran hugely - not good form. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, and even the parents of the kid in the yellow jumper were OK with the three f words that crept in. At least - unlike the Edcom show on Saturday - I didn't say 'this evening' repeatedly instead of 'this afternoon'. I felt that it would help sell out my show that evening - and it did.



But then things turned a touch sour with my show. I still believe that the majority of the onus of crowd control sits with the act on stage, so dealing with the people who'll disrupt and interfere with a show is YOUR responsibility. That said, when doing a Sunday show at 6pm, you're not expecting a room of pissheads nor an aggressive Jim Jeffries-style audience with verbal combat on their mind, so any deliberate disruption is a surprise. So when a bloke in the front row got up just 10 minutes in, I was bemused. When he was asked where he was going, he grabbed his crotch and aimed a pretend piss at the stage. The alarm bells weren't exactly ringing at this point, but I felt at worst the person in question was a touch eccentric. He had turned up to the show with his heavily pregnant wife; so I wasn't expecting him to be the utter, utter cock it soon transpired he was/is.

The clue, as ever, was that he was pissed. And this is where you rely on your venue staff; it's hard to throw people out of any gig, but if they leave of their own accord; it's simple, you assess how wasted they are, and if they don't appear able to control themselves, you don't let them back in. Unfortunately, this relies on your venue staff having not buggered off at this point - which they had, so ten minutes later, captain phallus reappeared and continued to butt in, chat, stare, cough, fidget and generally wreck the goodwill of the room. Now, I'm totally aware that this is where I should be in my element; and the antisocial activities of one idiot are a drop in the ocean to the scores of neanderthal stags and hens that I regularly joust with the other 11 months of the year. So, with a few key comments and sideswipes, he was duly, and repeatedly, dealt with.

But the problem here was that it had now changed the entire mood of the room, to one of an aggressive club environment. And what a reminder to me as to how much that differs from your classic Edinburgh vibe. The rest of the audience felt intimidated and uneasy, and the laughs and the momentum flipped in a milisecond. Even though his heavily pregnant wife was continually remonstrating with him to shut up and the audience cheered my every chastisement of him, the flow was interrupted so many times my timing started to lose its precision and bits of the show had to be edited out on the fly to abandon routines he'd chipped in on, and to keep me to time.

It takes every ounce of your experience to conceal your annoyance in this situation, and I'm never sure how much I pull this off, but naturally, this just happened to be the show when I had two press in - 3weeks and Metro. Last year, Metro really hated me, almost to the point where I was wondering if I'd upset the reviewer in a previous walk of life; and with 3weeks having already given me 4 stars for the show during a preview in the Brighton Festival, I was gunning for the 5. My friend Corry had came along to proffer a supporting laugh or ten, and told me that she thought the reviewers would be impressed with my handling of it. But it was obvious to me that it wasn't the show I wanted to do; or at the least, how I wanted to do it.

I'll be frank. Last year, I got a 5 star review, and that lifted me up into another league of the festival; judges came right up until the longlist, other reviewers who had ignored me suddenly wanted to see me, and my sales figures hiked impressively midweek. These sort of setbacks happen every day in the world of comedy, but the margins between 'great' and 'brilliant' in Edinburgh are so narrow, that this man's interference could easily be the difference that grades your show down a notch, completely changing the course of your festival.

And I appreciate it's not just me. The brilliant Andrew Lawrence is also in my room (the Pleasance Upstairs) and just so happened to be cursed by a much more venemous pair of hecklers on one of his opening nights. The only problem there was that this just happened to be the night when a ton of press was in. Has it affected his festival? Well, he's still selling out, but more than one review has mentioned this event, and I can't help feeling it has coloured some of the ratings he has acheived, giving a much more negative reflection than the show probably deserves (I have yet to see it though). Though I'm hoping the most negative snub of the lot was unrelated; in that the Independent did a breakdown of this year's shows from last year's if.comedy finalists, and completely missed him out. Compared to my slightly niggly knobhead, that's properly harsh.

Well done everyone who got Klang. Now, we're going up another level. All 5 people here, please.

An inquisitive click on my own show title at Chortle has revealed my review for this year; my second 4 star review (and hey, with a show about how second place beats first place, 4 star is effectively 5 star anyway). It's here, and is a fairly good description of the show and how I do it. Chortle came on my lowest audience night, so it's nice to see that acknowledged within the review; you need an experienced reviewer to understand the change in dynamics of a room when it's not capacity.

That pretty much describes the show in a nutshell. Got to head off now to Fringe Sunday, which is going to be odd as it's chucking it down. On top of that, I have both Metro and 3weeks in tonight; so if you're a fellow comic reading this who's been toying with when to blag a comp ticket and come and see me, come tonight please, and laugh like a tickled mentalist.

Just a short blog from me as I'm completely knackered - today's diary had me compering the EdCom showcase at the Cabaret Bar at the Pleasance (a sell out), doing my own show at the Pleasance Upstairs (a must-have-been-way-over-capacity sellout - some of the punters were sitting on the stairs), opening the show at the Glasgow Stand (a 50 minute drive away in torrential rain; weather was so bad I saw a crash unfold in front of me), and then racing back to So You Think You're Funny... to be a judge.

Which I've never, ever done before. But it was going to be my job to sit alongside 3 other industry people (who I have to keep their names quiet) and choose a winner form. This was heat 4, and I won't mention the contestants because

1) I can't remember their names as the Gilded Balloon took our marking sheets off us at the end
and
2) no 2). Just 1). Sorry.

But it was easy to be impartial as I didn't know - and hadn't seen - any of the acts before, and I didn't know any of the judges personally (Karen Koren was not present for this heat) so I wouldn't be swayed by any opinions that I had previously agreed/disagreed with. I'll be honest, I was excited.

After a quick introduction to my fellow panelists (a director/producer, a TV comedy person, and a journalist) we discussed what we'd be looking for. Overall, we weren't 100% sure, even though the GB (Gilded Balloon) had provided us all with clipboards, pens, and a sheet of paper for writing notes on each act (with no categories on them; just a name as a heading). I said that I was going to do two things; mark down if material was overly generic or 'borrowed' and try to make sure the act up first was treated as fairly as all the other acts, as sometimes the first on has to deal with a very difficult crowd reaction and being the last on the Judge's conscience when they come to decide a winner.

And there's a reason for my conviction here; back in 1997 and in 1998, I entered the three main competitions (BBC, Daily Telegraph, and SYTYF) and I'd only ever lost a round in any of those comedy competitions where the running order had put me on first (SYTYF, DT) or last (BBC). So I was adamant I would treat the first and last act up as if they had gone on 4th and 5th and not allow audience 'frostiness' to cloud my judgement of their perforamce.

Not that I was likely to get that; as the compere, a very bouncy Hal Cruttenden set out his stall nicely for the acts. Hal is a 'material' compere in that he uses his (perfectly good) banter with the crowd to segue into his preprepared routines. That said, the funniest bits of his show tonight came when an audience member offered to strip semi-naked (waist up) after Hal suggested he might want to do this (rapidly changing his mind), and then on discovering he was Austrian, accused this punter of 'only following orders'. His timing on the night was impeccable.

And then came the acts. I'm not going to divulge too much of how my personal judging process works; but the main bits included me marking up for originality, performance, material delivery, and of course laughs.

What a good night. The quality was high, the nerves appeared very low (why? why? What are new acts so bullish? At their stage, I was shakier than the Udderbelly's huge plastic legs) and the originality was on the whole, highly refreshing.

And just to prove a point to me - the winner was the guy who was up first, but my God it was damned close. I shall consider those demons exorcised; it's no barrier to success; it just took someone better to prove it!

Sorry there's no photos in this blog, but I was too busy judging *actual life* to start snapping away anyway. Still, by way of a compensation, here's a little picture search for you; one of the groups of charicatures on the Pleasance Doom walls. Who's who?

Oh dear. I seem to be down in the end-of-week-2 dumps at the end of week 1. I hope that's just endemic of getting it out of the way.

It might be the weather - though I've always secretly liked some elements of the appalling rain we've had here; cars look better, there's less dogshit, and wasps hate it. So lets rule that out.


Proper miserable.

Or it might be the legal stuff that's going on in my life at the moment, or even the rubbish diet, or the fact that there's virtually no proper reviews out of me at the moment and it's getting harder to generate momentum without that. That said, I got 4 stars in The List, but maybe I'm not as pleased as I should be as I got a tip-off that it could easily have been a five-star review that got subbed down (nearly 50 comedy reviews in the List, none of them were 5 stars). Either way, it was nice, even though my managers decided to put the quote "surely, he's destined to be a winner" on my posters which makes me sound like a struggling paralympian. I got them to add the quote "this show is an absolute pleasure, an intelligent fast-paced whirlwind of thoughts and theories" though, but I had to wait for this to be done as their first priority was updating the following quote that they'd added to Justin Moorhouse's posters.


In their defence, it was glued on very quickly.

Not sure that's the cause of my day-9 lull, either. So maybe Russell Kane's theory on what's been the most annoying thing for him so far this Fest has some credibility; and that is, doing late night shows on top of your main one-man show. He's now cancelled all of them, which sounded rash; but after some reflection, clever man.

Now, as a club comic and circuit regular, I've always done these extra shows. There's lots of advantages; they can keep you sharp, pay you a few quid (which is priceless in Edinburgh), and get you seen by people who might not see you normally - which is excellent for press purposes. Unfortunately, the negatives aren't great. They exhaust you, they can wreck your health (including voice), they take the focus off your main reason for being up, and they can be soul destroying, when, like Late 'n' Live can be, they're unplayably shouty and rude.

However, for me, advantages have always outweighed the disadvantages so I've taken them on en masse. This year I have 20 additional shows booked in; including AJL's Anthology, the BBC Comedy Presents, Late 'n' Live (times 6!), The Late Show at the Underbelly, After Hours, The Comedy Lounge at C Venue, Old Rope (twice), Compering the Chortle Student awards, EdCom8 (twice), Tron Late show, Fringe Sundae, ... it goes on. I'm even doing The Stand Glasgow, Jongleurs Glasgow, and a run at Jongleurs Edinburgh. AutoGrant. Insert coins, hear jokes.

However, recently, I've gone off this a bit. Firstly, the effect on my voice and the dent it puts in my day effects my rehearsals and my ability to do my proper show, both physically and psychologically; and secondly, I posess a guilt that I'm even doing these shows in the first place. You see, I believe there is a very strong argument that package shows shouldn't even exist in Edinburgh, full stop. I'm not talking about scheduled shows such as AAA Stand Up, the Comedy Zone, Comedy Review, Tiernan's two hander with Sean Grant, and the like ... I'm talking about late-night 'it could be any other gig anywhere in the country' shows, that hoover up the late night audiences who could be going to the one-man shows that Edinburgh comedy is completely founded upon. And yes I appreciate these are made up of acts like myself who are up in Ed already. Why do we have them? Audiences see them as better value and less of a risk, with up to 5 acts for the price of 1, and put their dollar where it won't leave them with a potential duffer of a show. Why ask audiences to put their money into the one thing we'll do the other 11 months of a year? It's madness. Lots of extra comedy shows, but no extra comedy.

Maybe it's because I've just had a mixed bag of them. What's bothering me is that my normal one-man show is going great, but the other shows are turning out to be so horribly unpredictable and variable that it's unsettling me. I'll give you a run-down of recent supplementary gigs;


Lunch with the Hamiltons. Look at this queue. See anyone under 35? Can you? Apart from me?


Here I am trying not to say c**t.


And here's me looking a c**t - as they make me play a game of trying to lift a cereal packed with my teeth without touching the floor.


Here's Old Rope, Phil Nichol and Tiffany Stevenson's delightful new material night. Lovely crowd and vibe, but I'm stil not sure why I'm trying out new material while in Edinburgh - the crowd have never seen me before anyway, surely it's all new? I kept faithful to it though.


And here's backstage at After Hours. This was the first half section; Glenn Wool, me, Adam Bloom. It really does prove my point. Why spend the same amount on just one act when these guys are just one half of a show? It's an embaressingly strong lineup.


And here's me backstage at the Comedy Lounge at C Venue, proving why these late night shows can be literally pointless. I'm holding up my fingers to show what the audience numbers were. Yes, this was the night for which the compere was an improv group. Never saw that coming, did they. More annoyed that I didn't, either.

I'm not sure I have the Russell-Kane-esque direct ability to say 'pull them all!' and until I have got regular sell-out numbers, the opportunity to use these shows to market myself is too great, and I'm not taking any risks. The only worry is, the audiences aren't taking many risks either.

I've just had my day off, and on top of a lovely trip out to the countryside (in god-awful weather - Edinburgh has finally remembered that it has a duty to leave the ambient air so damp, people who want straight hair are better off swapping their GHD's for a George Foreman grill with flat hotplates) I have gone and seen a couple of shows tonight.


Evil, evil, weather

In fact, I've been pretty good at catching other shows; this year, I've seen as many shows as I've actually done so far (8). Tonight, I agonised over what 'overlap' show to see (when you are on at a set time, as I am, 6pm to 7pm, there's a whole host of shows you'll never see because they're on when you are on. Your only hope is to use your day off). So today I saw Chris Cox's show 'Control Freak' (who really has got some impressive illusions under his belt - and the show itself has the potential to get even better). Next week, on my only other day off, I'm seeing Jason Cook and Lloyd Langford. Oh, and I also braved torrential rain to fight my way over to The Stand II to see Gavin Webster's show, Webster's pictionary.

My reason for doing this was pretty simple - I'm a fan of Gavin's standup and wanted to see what his hour would look like. I frankly had no idea where the 'pictionary' title, a play of words on the famous internet dictionary, would come into it.

And the answer to that is, 'not much'. And that's no slight on Gavin; because your show title in Edinburgh is so much more than a description or moniker for the show; and in many cases, it's not even that.

Certainly, most do go some way to describing the show's title, especially if themed; like my title this year (Second) or something as obvious as Richard Sandling's VHS trilogy. But people forget that most comedians need to commit to their fringe entry paperwork LONG before the show has been written in anger; so even if they have an idea for the show by then, it may change massively by preview time, so deciding on a descriptive name can handcuff you to an idea you no longer want to do. Some comedians, such as Michael McIntyre, never bother with titles, as his shows are unashamedly themeless tour-de-force comic performnces. (In fact, McIntyre has been exponentially more minimalist in days gone by. In 2003, his show posters were a mugshot - and nothing else. No press quotes, no show times, no venue details - not even his name. Astonishing, really.) Other comedians just pick a title that can be a catchall for whatever they fancy; Steve K Amos is 'finding the funny' this year; well, you'd kinda expect that I guess - and Andrew Maxwell is 'Supernatural', though in my opinion his show should be called 'Fierce' as he uses that word just about once every 5 minutes in this year's show (to good comic effect, I might add).

But the show content is just one element - and an increasingly insignificant one - as to the reasoning behind a title. One thing Jimmy Carr told me that has always stuck in my head is that a show title allows lazy journalists to reference the title in their summary of the show - hence 'Bare faced ambition'. With 'Charm offensive' he practically wrote the overused line, "Jimmy is both charming and offensive" for the journalists himself. On the flipside, this year there's a show called 'Fuck this show' and I can easily predict some of the reviews there. In 2004 there was also a show called, "Take this and shove it" which naturally generated this rather famous 2 word review, "They should." Interestingly, Russell Kane's (excellent, excellent, excellent) show 'Gaping Flaws' has already sparked enough mentions in reviews of the fact that there are flawed elements, but seeing as this is the basis for Russell's show and that the title came from a previous review as the catalyst for the name, therefore being the precursor to the name and not vice-versa, it's poetically post-modern (which is something Russell would probably say).

And more and more often, comedians are punning on their own names for their titles. Maybe they are worried that an unconnected title will detract from their 'brand' or again, weren't sure of the content, but sometimes it genuinely does tick both boxes. Gavin's 'Webster's pictionary' may not have been very pictionary heavy, and I'm guessing it'll be a loose connection to the show content with Des Clarke - Desire and Nick Doody - Tour of Doody (I'm guessing as I haven't seen them). However, there's certainly show theming going on with the word association; last year I did 'Taken for Granted', and this year there's Matt Green - Grow up Green, Bethay Black - Beth becomes her, and Janey Godley's Domestic Godley. Good work.

However, there's an outside chance Janey is a touch miffed that, by chance, the show "Domestic Goddi" has appeared on the fringe roster as well. And that's another problem at the fringe; with such a large number of show titles, crossover is possible and regularly happens. I remember one year that Ed Byrne and Mark Little had shows called Psychobabble and Psychobubble. I can't remember which way round they went, but I doubt it made a huge difference, and I reckon a few punters would have got caught out.

Of course, the way around this is to pick a show title so achingly long it really would take an infinite number of monkey stand-ups with an infinite number of Microsoft Word licenses to replicate you. Mark Watson has been the king of this in previous years and "Mark Watson: All The Thoughts I've Had Since I Was Born" is unlikely to fit on most 25mm badges, but he's got some competition this year. "Zoe Lyons: Mangled Mantra Of The Messed Up Modern Mind" is nearly as wordy. But then that's beaten by "Alun Cochrane. Owner of a shed. And a son. Thinks the world is wonky". That in turn is beaten by "Sixty-Six A Church Road: A Lament, Made Of Memories And Kept In Suitcases, By Daniel Kitson", though that might be shorter if Daniel is starting it '66' instead, to make it alphabetically superior (from the genius who called his 2002 Perrier winning show 'Something' so that anyone asking for a ticket for 'something' automatically saw him). Still, we size up again with "Deborah Frances-White's How To Get Almost Anyone To Want To Sleep With You: The Advance Class" though most of that is taken up by her name, and we're getting all supersized when you stumble across "Lewis Schaffer: America, The Greatest Country In The World, By The Greatest American Living In Peckham", which is bordering on ridiculous. Firmly in the middle of ridiculous though is "Andy Zaltzman Boldly Unbuttons The Cloak Of Civilisation, But Is Perplexed And Perturbed By What He Finds Lurking Beneath.", which could be responsible for the massive delay in printing tickets at this year's fringe. If there's a longer named comedy show I haven't found it. Tell me if I've missed it.

Of course, with it being comedy, there's a great onus to make your show title funny, regardless of content, originality, or press insinuations. This year, "Craig Hill makes your Whole Week", and Dan Antopolski's "Penetrating Gaze" do the job admirably. Personal favourites for me though are Hal Cruttenden's "Climb every molehill" and the much brasher "Kiddy Fiddler on the roof". Still, they've got some way to beat my all time favourite : in 2003, it was the first and the last time I saw a show on the basis of the title alone. "Will Anne Frank please come to the diary room". Superb.

Special mentions have to go to "Jim Bowen - come and have a look at what you could have won", which has been spelt 'could OF won' on the flyers - unbelievable. Still, that pales into insignificance to Holly Walsh's flyers, which include notes sent to the agent in her blurb, so halfway through her list of acheivements on the back it says something along the lines of, "Do we really want to include finalist? It sounds a bit weak." They've been reprinted, but try to get hold of the originals - they're hilarious.



So which is my number 1? Well, this year, it's a dead heat. Joint first is "James Dowdeswell - No more Mr Nice Guy", as I came up with the name and concept for it a few years ago and I'm hugely proud a passing thought has turned into a full length show. And joining him on the top of the rostrum is "Tom Stade: Oh Fuck, Do We Need A Title, Too?" which neatly reflects just how arduous this process can be, when you consider it might make no difference whatsoever.

If people can nominate funnier, longer, cleverer, or more pertinent show titles, I'm all ears.

Quick blogging interlude before I head off to my first of two late night gigs; before going to go host the first of 6 late 'n' lives this year, I'm off to C Venue to be the opening act in a gig where the compere is ... an improv group. Any other place, any other time, I'd drop the gig like a red-hot saucepan, but here in Edinburgh, the 'sod it, why not?' index is practically off the scale.

Late 'n' live is another interesting one. I don't want to comment until I've done it tonight, so I won't. If you know me, you know my thoughts on this, but in the meanwhile, how about some light lounge music?

Anyway, speaking of the Gilded Balloon, congratulations to Seann Walsh, stand-out winner of the first heat of SYTYF on Sunday. Here's the contestants...



And here's the winner Seann with a friend and last year contestant Hannah George.



Bit embarassing as I know Seann from Brighton and being the host of the heat, it smacked of some sort of collusion that he won. But I have no involvement with the judging, nor do I have any sway over the judges, and most importantly, he really was the best on the day. Well done mate.

Show went well tonight; Adam Bloom has just arrived in Edinburgh and came straight to see it, which was really nice of him because he was quite fried by the journey. Lots of positive feedback; which was appreciated. Tomorrow's my day off so it's nice to go into the 'interval' on a high. Just awaiting List review on Thursday now, and hoping I can go into the 2nd week with a bit of momentum, though it's anyone's guess how this festival is going, even a week on.

Oh and found out I live next door to Neil and Christine Hamilton, whose talk show I was on today. On their way home, they nipped round today for five minutes today to say Hi, and for Christine to use the Loo. Even though they live next door. Randomness abounds.

From time to time I keep touch with friends back home while in Edinburgh. "How are you?" they ask. "Flat out" I say. "it's really hectic - loads on." I almost scoff at myself as I say it. I might be doing an hour's show, but the venue is only 5 minutes walk from my flat. How the hell am I so busy?

The thing is, it feels really busy because not a moment goes by when it doesn't feel like I'm working on the show. Not always literally - with rehearsing, tweaking, and rewriting; but thinking about it, researching bits in the show and watching back video recordings I've made to see if I can learn anything from what I've done. And when I'm not doing that, I'm off to do press bits or extra shows to help squeeze more people through the door. To give you an idea of how focussed I am on this show, this week I should be filling some August gaps at Komedia Brighton, programming the whole of 2008 for Komedia Bath, sifting through some fairly hefty divorce paperwork, and on top of that retrieve my classic car which is currently being held hostage (no joke) by a bodyshop, due to an argument between them and the garage I'm using, in a financial dispute relating to someone else's car. I should be doing all that, but all I can think is show, show, show.

And I'm paranoid about it. So much, that I deliberately waited until I was a week in blogging-wise before even mentioning the show, in case I jinxed it, or bigged it up to it being something that it would clearly never be. But I'm over that hurdle now, so let's tell you about it.

The show - my eighth full length show and my fifth full length Edinburgh show, is called "Second" and is all about coming second in life, and society's obsession with winning. The show follows on from last year's show and my near-miss audition for being the new presenter on Top Gear, and includes some of the staple stuff; new inventions, the story of another (actually famous) Stephen Grant and some personal stuff about what got me to where I am this year.

What makes this show different from all other years is that it's not a hook onto which I pop various routines written and honed during the year on the circuit. This year, the first thing I did, was that I sat and wrote the whole narrative - the arc, the payoff, and even an itinerary of points I wanted to make - without writing a single joke. And then I came back to it, and painstakingly over 3 or so months attempted to try to illustrate what I was trying to say with humour, be they gags, anecdotes, observations, analogies, the lot. Some of the really big ideas got dumped during the preview season as they simply baffled not only audiences but myself, and some of the throw-away additions turned into tour-de-force monologues on their own. I hate to use a term as wanky as 'organic' to describe what it has become, but I read through a first draft of the script from April this year yesterday, and it's almost unrecognisable from the show I did last night. That said; the whole point and purpose of the show has remained unchanged, and has actually been enhanced by the process.

Many people who've seen the show have commented on how true to the theme it has been, compared to the sort of show where a general hook assembles all the ideas into one rough ensemble. I'm certainly not denegrating that method of creating shows; certainly not when most of my previous edinburgh efforts have been written in this fashion. But the additional effort in doing it this way (and it really has been, taking me three times as long to write and perfect it) has been worth it for the end result alone. I'm not sure who else writes like this; someone told me this was Chris Addison's method of laying out a show, and Josh Howie (who I bumped into on the way home on Sunday from the Late show at the Underbelly) told me he'd written his show this way as well.


Josh and Henning Wehn starting the long road to reparation outside the Gilded Balloon's German sausage stand, which you think would favour Henning; but with a simple hot dog being an astonishing £4, Josh felt comfy too.

So what's been the upshot of all this? Well, the shows themselves have given me superb feedback - with all the people closest to me saying how this is my best show yet by quite some distance (you may say, "well, that's what people around you will say", but I deliberately immerse myself in company that not only will never shy from putting the boot in, but secretly enjoys it). However, it's too early days for that to translate into any commercial success; three of my shows have been quiet-ish, one sold out, and the other two about two-thirds full, which while perfectly playable is about 15% down on last year (that's a subject for a future blog). I specifically asked for no reviewers during the preview shows, which was a vindicated decision as I had quite a few techincal problems, and so therefore the only people who've seen me so far are the Independent, The List, and One4Review. On top of that, I've had one if.com judge and the chair of the judging panel has seen me too. The List came on a good night, but the Independent on a so-so show (the sold-out one) where the resulting heat actually left me mildly dizzy and unable to remember parts of the show, so maybe that won't be that sparkling a review. It's frustrating when the important people arrive at the few low points but part of being an Edinburgh success is not just having a great show but being able to turn out a consistently high performance night after night, and if I can't manage that, I have to hold my hands up and say that any shortfall in critical appraisal is entirely my fault, regardless of how good the show's content is and the fact that I'll never probably make those mistakes again (as someone had switched off the fan).

Thankfully, the show is a lot of fun to do and I think this is coming across. My small fight with Natwest (resulting in a win for me and some two-dimensional nudity - this will all make sense when you see the show), my scam for sending all post for free. and best of all my demolition of the myth of Scots as world-beating inventors (which resulted in three people walking out on Sunday night - check Richard Herring's blog for details) are generating a bit of a buzz with punters and fellow comics alike. The section on the collapse of my marriage and subsequent divorce always leaves me feeling a little sad (though nothing near Jason Cook type proportions), but the light and shade of it makes the final 'rant' where I convince people of the merits of 2nd over 1st have a touch more gravitas. I really hope you come and see it; for reasons both political and personal this is quite likely to be my last ever Edinburgh show unless something amazing and unexpected happens. If you're unsure as to wether to see it, I have come up with a control system flowchart on the back of my flyer to determine if I'm worth seeing, which is proving to be popular with the punters, even if it has sailed slightly over the heads of a few of my flyering team somewhat.



I know by my usual standards this blog entry is a little shy of pictures, but that's because I've spent the last 3 hours (as well as bloggin) trying to work out how to convert some video I filmed on the so-so (but very hot) night on Sunday to include as a little video section to accompany this blog. It might not work, and if it doesn't, I apologise, and will try again tomorrow. It does irk me somewhat that despite 8 years in IT I find some basic video editing tasks far too tricky, especially as the past masters of this seems to be a pair of puppet socks.

I hope that worked. (if it didn't, please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAf3bnIBeRY )

Stephen

PS Despite all the running around, I've seen 6 shows so far: AAA Standup, John Bishop, Rhod Gilbert, Mark Watson, Russell Kane, and Richard Herring. I enjoyed them all, though the last two shows being the standout offerings this year and utterly deserving of their 5 star Chortle reviews.