This years Perrier Comedy Award Finalists have been announced:
…and we saw two of them. Not bad.
Also, this week XFM are broadcasting from the Fringe, with Spaced’s Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The shows have been very good so far. Have a listen (on the web-stream if you’re not in London) 16:00-19:00, all this week.
Yes, I know it’s been on Slashdot, sorry. Oh, and B3ta. But look! It’s a Network Switch…..inside a Teddy Bear.
*sigh* Christ!
Following on from Dave’s comments, here’s an [interesting] statistic about monkeys and marks. Shows that included the word monkey scored a [mean] average of 6.58 in Dave’s system but shows that had no monkey mentions averaged just 5.17. Now, ok, I did a stats degree and know that shows nothing but let’s still say the phrase “conclusive proof that mentioning monkeys makes your show on average 27% funnier”.
For completeness, the monkey-mentioners get a mode and median of 7 and the non ape-fans get a mode and median of 6. I’ve got to get back to work, so we’ll leave discussions of the standard deviation and kurtosis for now.
I’ve now put all the photos of our week in Edinburgh on our server. I’ve also been through all of my “Dave-inburgh” entries and linked various events to relevent photos. I think Paulys going to do the same with his entries at some point. Enjoy!
OK, heres my summary of the shows we saw, as marks out of 10 (no half marks!) and whether or not they mentioned the word “Monkey” (from my poor memory).
| Mark/10 | Monkey? | |
| Hollow Men | 7 | Yes |
| Ross Nobel | 9 | Yes |
| Bachman & Evans | 8 | Yes |
| Chris Addison | 9 | Yes |
| Trev And Simon | 1 | Yes |
| Springer The Opera | 5 | Yes |
| Electric Eel | 3 | Yes |
| Phil Nicol | 8 | No |
| McCloud & Black | 0 | No |
| Noel Fielding | 10 | Yes |
| Andrew Clover | ?4? | No |
| Brendan Burns | 8 | Yes |
| Club Seals | 7 | Yes |
| Dan Antopolski | 6 | No |
| Sonnie Mann | - | - |
| Simon Munnary | 5 | Yes |
| Norman Lovett | 6 | No |
| Lucy Porter | 7 | No |
| Oram & Meeten | 7 | Yes |
| Richard Herring | 9 | ? |
OK, to be honest, I can’t remember the “mentions of monkey” for most of them, so those might be wrong, but you get the idea: A lot of them mentioned monkeys, hence more proof that “Monkeys Are Funny”.
My absolute top of the shows was Noel Fielding. Joint seconds to Richard Herring, Ross Nobel, Chris Addison. True stinkers (worst first): McCloud & Black, Trev & Simon, Electric Eel.
Ah, here we are, back in London. Holiday over, Pats just left, time for my final entry on the last week. At least I’m now on my own computer, not playing Beat The Clock in the internet cafe.
Day 7
After leaving the internet cafe on Saturday afternoon, we headed round some shops, bought a few CD’s, visited Pie Maker for the final time (yet another Apple and Blackberry for me) and then to the Plesance. We only had tickets for one show, so we thought we’d get some for an early evening show as well. The Sold-Out board was pretty covered. I couldn’t get anything for Navelgazing, but did manage to get tickets for Oram and Meeten: Ding Dong. It was a sketch show with three guys, fairly good. Seamed to be partially centred around them working in a super-market, but only partially, and I’m not really sure why they bothered going back to that. A lot of the sketches were pretty good though. Not super-great, but good. Two guys from Electric Eel were in the row behind us, and appeared to be enjoying it. Hopefully they were taking notes. I think I’ll give Omar and Meeten a solid 6/10.
Ten minutes and one mint-choc-chip ice-cream later, and it was time for our last show of the festival, Richard Herring: Talking Cock. We’d been pretty unsure about this when we initially flicked through the Fringe guide, but once we got to the festival there seamed to be quite a buzz about the show, so we bought tickets early on in the week. I’m glad we did too, because it was a very very good show.
A free programme was handed out as we stood in the queue, which explained the show a little, and had some extra material that didn’t fit in to the hour. The show itself was Richard on stage running through material based on answers he’d received (and is still receiving) from respondants to two on-line questionaires that he’d posted at www.talkingcock.co.uk. The delivery was just pretty much like a presentation, using some Dave Gorman style slides of statistics and captions, and was given with Richard talking as himself, rather than as the semi-childish and/or smug character that he used to come across as on Lee & Herring TV shows. Despite the tag-line of “Warning: May Include Knob Gags” it actually, as the Observer put it “Very clever and thoroughly researched”, but still fantastically funny. I think I’d quite like to see the show again if he brings it back to London, where he’d be able to carry on past the 1 hour mark, since he obviously had a lot more material he wasn’t able to cover. Final verdict: 9/10, and that’s only because we’re not doing half-marks.
After the show we headed back to the flat for the final time (picking up some McFlurrys from McDonalds on the way), and sat in front of the telly, recovering from the week.
Day 8
Thats it, there’s no more to see. Got up early, did a little cleaning, and hit the road. The girls train was at 12pm, us boys headed off a little before 1030. The journey dragged quite a lot, partly because of the miserable weather, partly the heavier traffic, but also because we where heading away from the holiday.
The first services we stopped at claimed to be The Best Services in England. I’m not sure who awarded them that….maybe themselves? It was very small, had no McD’s or Burger King, and a rather limited shop. It was however close to the largest grass-covered building in Europe! Other than that (and Pat/Pauly wetting themselves at a mix on a tape I’d made), the journey was pretty uneventful. Traffic was terrible, and we were all tired. We swapped drivers more than on the way up. Finally reached home around 1930, taking about an hour longer to get home than to get up there. We finished off the week with a nice large delivery from Perfect Pizza.
All in all, its been a fantastic week, a lot of fun, both down to the shows we’ve seen, and the people that I was up there with. I really enjoyed the festival, and the city, and really hope I can go again in future years, maybe widening the circle of people we haul up there with us. I’ll post again with the summary of the shows we saw, and links to the weeks photos, but for now, hope you’ve enjoyed reading the blogs. Back to work next week!
Reading through some interesting bits and pieces that somebody sent me and came across this definition of a geek. I’m too tired to have thoughts about it at the moment – mostly looks quite reasonable and tends towards the kind of view that was held on alt.geek last time I looked I think. But is this a geek? And what is different about an antigeek? Thoughts would be interesting, obviously.
Also, this seems a good time to remind/inform that you can receive free (lol) updates when this blog is updated if, for some reason, that’s of interest to you. Let me know or something.
So, I was going to tell you about Lucy Porter. She’s a lovely lass, she really is and her show was typically “lovely”. Plenty of self-depreciating stuff, nothing that might put the audience on edge (hell, she even went and got a bloke a beer because he was coughing a bit) and some good laughs. There was a mixture of old and new material here and, sadly, the now seemingly compulsory “comedy characters”. Luckily, she didn’t take these characters too seriously and the bits didn’t last too long so the fact that they weren’t terribly original or particularly funny didn’t matter too much. The rest of the material certainly made up for this and it was a lovely happy way to finish off an evening.
Yesterday was our last “proper” day in Scotland’s finest city (I haven’t actually been to any of the others, but I do feel fairly confident in saying that for various reasons) and a great deal of time was spent eating Piemaker pies, sitting in the Pleasance courtyard drinking, writing stuff in the cyber cafe and, um, laughing at Pat for going to buy some rock for some reason :)
Navelgazing was sold out, so instead we headed for Oram and Meeten – Ding Dong which was one of the few things not to be up on the sell-out board. It was billed as another sketch-show, though there was a surprising amount of audience interaction and I suppose it almost defined a new genre. There were some funny lines – some very funny lines – but there were definitely long sections which dragged. But, hey, one of the characters was very much like Crazy H Man from the ThundercatS ho(w) and one of the performers reminded me slightly of Simon Hyde for some reason. So probably a thumbs-up on the whole.
Our final show of the night, and of the festival was Talking Cock by Richard Herring. You’ve probably heard about it so I’ll not explain in tedious detail the concept – it’s about penises and pretty much everything related to them. There’s a questionnaire at www.talkingcock.co.uk which you can fill out and contribute to the show, although this page does contain a near-naked picture of Richard Herring so be careful where you view it gentle reader! The show fitted neatly between traditional Lee and Herring stuff (”What would Jesus say about that?”) and the enthusiasm for statistics that up until now had been shown only by Dave Gorman (”25% of women would split up with a man because of the size or shape of his cock”). It was well put-together stuff, some good lines, genuinely interesting and there was a free programme.
Using a blog as a reminder for myself is a bit lazy but I must remember to write about (a) my top 5 (for some reason) and (b) the reason why so many shows got a review of “have seen them do better”.
Anyway, after a bit of a tidy up, we left our flat this morning and made the delightful (no, really) journey back to London stopping at the self-proclaimed “Best services in England”. It was shit. It was tiny, there was a choice of about three types of sandwich and there were no fast food restaurants. The last point is not strictly a criticism but it emphasises how small it was. A more accurate sign would have been “Best services in England, as selected by old women”. An even more accurate sign would have been “One of the shittest services in England”. Oh, the place is called Westmorland by the way. It’s not a theme park. In fact, the best nearby attraction (and one which it does its best to “big up” with a large screen in the entrance hall) is “Europe’s largest grass-covered building”. Great.
We travelled more, stopped, travelled more, stopped again and arrived back at the flat. We had pizza. Perfect end (literally, you see, because it was Perfect Pizza) to a perfect week. (On this, thir, your perfect day. Thir. Your, thir, perfect day). That last bit was for the benefit of Dave.
Oooh, bit of a pause from me due to (a) the brokenness of Easy Everything a couple of days ago and (b) spending yesterday afternoon meeting my parents (not for the first time) and carrying a big duvet. Actually, having returned to Easy Everything it seems that the system has been “upgraded” so that you can now buy 50p worth of internet time (the previous minimum was 1). That was definitely worth closing the whole place for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. Still, the wait around outside at least gave the chance for a couple of people that looked vaguely familiar to recognise me from RaW and try and sell us their show. Oh, and also for us to go and get a coffee served by the substitute Mark Trotter (side-on views only); we imagine that there must be a second substitute Mark Trotter for front and back views. He could possibly be two-dimensional, which would probably save money.
Dave has done a pretty good job of describing the past few days and, if he ever gets round to finishing it, Pat will provide more detail about things than I could ever possibly remember in his blog so I think I’ll just stick to the shows. Oh, and in the spirit of being anal I’ll present some kind of top 5 once we’ve finished seeing everything tomorrow. Hooray!
It was Mark that had first noticed “double thumbs-up girl” on the McCloud and Black flier. (Note to Mark: you might want to look at that website – there are McCloud and Black wallpapers and everything. Oh, and whilst you’re at it, ignore the rest of this paragraph – it will only upset you.) “She will be my wife,” he proudly exclaimed. And then had a beer or something. So we saw the show on the basis of them looking reasonably attractive and not having anything much better to do. I’m confused by what happened – it was billed as an hour of sketch comedy and yet there were neither sketches nor comedy. There was one lengthy piece with the girls in character as office workers that seemed to drag tremendously. And, er, that was it. It wasn’t just bad, it was the kind of bad that was obvious. Other people would have noticed. They could have had a word. Clearly they didn’t. The flier says “If they were glitter balls, boy would they sparkle.” I think I’d change that to say “If they were glitter balls, their entertainment value would remain roughly constant.”
What a contrast, then, as we leapt into Noel Fielding’s world of Voodoo Hedgehog. I’ve seen Noel a few times before, both on his own and as part of double-act The Mighty Boosh (alongside “that bloke out of the Metz adverts”, Julian Barrett) but this was the finest, most polished performance I have witnessed. He could do no wrong as he pranced around the stage delivering his lines of nonsense which were also funny (other comedians take note). His characters, “Bloke with backwards ram’s legs” and “The wolf that bums shadows” were both extremely entertaining as was The Moon, a face projected onto a screen which Noel watched, cross-legged, in awe. Fantastic.
Andrew Clover’s Birthday Party was everything we feared (although there were free sweets available at the start). A very enthusiastic man jumping around the stage with all manner of props, at points wearing a massive rubber penis at others a dress. There was much audience interaction (if you are in the losing team you have to sip from this bottle of Irn Bru with dog-shit in it), crazy music and energy. Were there many laughs? Well, a few but I think they were mostly relief that other people were taking his punishment beatings rather than you. I think that most curious thing about the whole performance was that Clover felt the need to speak in the voice that people in my class used in drama lessons when they were 14.
I’ve seen Brendan Burns be absolutely awesome. When we caught him in the Pleasance Over the Road, he was a little off this form but still pretty good. It was a shame to see him when he wasn’t at the height of his powers (he had a very bad throat which prevented some of his infamous venomous shouting) but he was still extremely entertaining, and that shows you how good he is. Traditional observational stuff, covering all manner of subjects but presented in an engaging and interesting way. The swear-count was predictably high, and he referenced this but the whole show was well thought-through and had fantastic momentum.
“Why the long face?” you might exclaim if you saw Marcus Brigstocke in the street. This is because he has a long face. However, Dave refused to say that to him, in much the same way he also refused to chat up McCloud and Black or check with Bachman and Evans if they had used the word “monkey” in their show. Despite his long face, Brigstocke is allowed to perform and was part of The Museum of Everything, an original concept-show put on by Club Seals. Whilst possibly slightly more suited to the medium of television (where the performers are well-known), the show had more hits than misses and was bursting with new ideas. The basic premise was that the audience was being taken on a tour of a museum, so there were Cornish tour-guides, talking exhibits, those disturbing marionettes, rubbish “experiences” and the gift-shop. A surprisingly small audience enjoyed the show. But enjoy it they did. Because it was good.
There’s not much to say about Sonnie Mann’s Chapel of Karaoke other than that it’s an excellent night of karaoke fun. I was initially dubious about the change of venue (from the Pleasance Cabaret bar to the Dome) but it soon filled up nicely and Sonnie Mann and Deputy Dan took to the stage with the cheesiness and skill expected. Pat got up and sang (and was good) which added to the fun. What a way to end the day.
I didn’t catch the second name of a bloke called Andrew who did a 20 minute slot in Simon Munnery’s show yesterday. And I’m glad about that because he was utterly shit and if I noticed his name in any TV schedules I would quite possibly set fire to Dave’s TV. Y’know how girls sometimes hang around with their less attractive mates in order to make themselves look more attractive (YES, girls you DO do this… don’t deny it). Well, here was the comedy equivalent. Not only had Parker left behind him the technical trickery of The League Against Tedium and the angst of Alan Parker but, so it seemed, most of his material. Yes, it was a relief when he put Andrew out of his misery but, frankly, it was a disappointing show (”look at me – aren’t I being a bit crazy, but wait am I profound?”) and it’s hard to believe that three years ago he was a perrier nominee.
Norman Lovett has possibly the gentlest style in comedy – at points it almost seems to be the ramblings of a slightly senile man. It’s very much the kind of comedy where you either Lovett or hate it. Sorry. No, really, sorry. Ahem. He wasn’t on best form (how many times have I said that this festival? Loads, and I have a theory which I will explain tomorrow if I have time) but was still enjoyable. He’s one of those comedians where you just know he’s a lovely person as well, and this was shown by him sitting at the side of the room at the end and having a bit of a chat to people. Not exactly the cutting edge of the fringe, but a good comedy wind-down.
Oh no! Run out of time to describe Lucy Porter. So, um, that’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Stay tuned and all that.
Ah, it’s Saturday, and there’s very much a feeling that the week is gradually winding down. We’re all feeling pretty knackered, and showed-out, but it’s been an excellent week. I can’t believe how long it’s felt. This time last week we were being scared in an M6 Services, but that feels like an age ago. We’re hitting the road back down south tomorrow, so, for the penultimate time, heres my entry.
Day 6
I’ll start with some stuff I forgot to put in the Day 6 entry in my previous Dave-inburgh blog. Basically, during our Tesco stock-up right at the start of the week, Pat had bought a rather large jar of peanut-butter. Pauly and I had spotted it, pretty much un-touched in the kitchen cupboard on Thursday morning, and so had wound Pat up about never being able to finish it before we left. Pat disagreed, stateing that he’d happily eat toast with this much peanut butter on (indicating a couple of centimetres with his fingers). That was on Thursday evening, so yesterday, as I cooked some pasta for lunch, Pauly made Pat a nice first-course. He ended up having to use a spoon to get the right amount of peanut butter on the toast, but when the spread was finally at the correct thickness, we called Pat in to the kitchen. Despite feeling ill, Pat felt he had something to prove, and did indeed manage to eat the slab of bread and peanut butter.
Actually, that brings me to a good point. So far, I’ve notched up over 100 photos during the week, and we’ll be presenting them as a long and boring slide-show when we return to London. OK, no we won’t, but watch this space, because they will be appearing on Nobodynet as soon as I can get them there, and Pauly and I have vowed to sift through the weeks blog and link events in to their matching photos. We’ll let you know when it’s done.
OK, so, with a peanut butter filled Pat, we went to see Simon Munnary, which I have already detailed in yesterdays post. After updating this blog, we headed back to the flat, since the weather wasn’t as nice as earlier in the week, and Pauly was busy meeting up with his folks, who were passing through Edinburgh.
In the evening we went off to see Norman Lovett. It was pretty much as I expected. No real belly laughs, but fairly good, laid back and rambling. Normans daughter also did a section, and given she is only 10, she really wasn’t bad. I would say that, on balance, she’s the best 10 year old stand up I’ve seen at the festival. Strange though – I mean, imagine being a 10 year old, and doing your very first stand-up comedy slot. So yes, show not bad as a whole, I think I’ll go with 6/10.
Pat was feeling ill, so he left us after Norman Lovett. He had claimed he’d been feeling ill for most of the day, and it wasn’t purely down to eating 200g of peanut butter. Pauly and I headed off to the Guilded Balloon Teviat for Lucy Porter, making a swift stop off at Pie Maker on the way. We also passed the Pleasance Dome, and had a look to see the line-up for the BBC Stand-Up show, as a possible follow up for Lucy Porter. Pauly gave the line-up a big thumbs down though, so we headed off to the Gilded Balloon.
Lucys show was pretty good. Again, a nice laid-back style, in a small venue. She did a couple of characters, which felt a bit clunky, but her stand-up was good, and she came across as a really nice, and funny person, rounding off “..a nice evening of gentle comedy” (Dave Smith, on the way home). 7/10.
So an early night last night, with our last show of the evening finishing at 2230. We headed back (Pat already in bed when we returned), semi-watched the telly and chatted with the girls until about 2am.
Its now Saturday, final full day. Haven’t done anything major yet, just watching telly and coming here before my 24hr pass runs out. We’ve got tickets for Richard Herrings “Talking Cock” tonight, and we might also get tickets for Navelgazing. That still leaves us finishing at 2130, so we might see one more thing, or just round off the week with another early night. We have got that lovely drive home tomorrow afterall. So, expect the final update either late Sunday night, or at some point on Monday.
