Previously on my Edinburgh Blog: Oh fuck! I met Paul Merton! Oh fuck! I met Suggs. £1.40 for a bus! £3 for a day ticket!
Day 2 - Nutters Of the British Isles: A Complete Field Guide - Espionage - 2:15PM
We had tickets for Paul Merton lined up for the mid-afternoon and bought some Paul Foot tickets for the evening as soon as we hit town, but we were left with some time to kill before my favourite comedian and now personal acquaintance Mr Merton at 4. The thing about Edinburgh is that it's the kind of place where unless you take a few punts on people you don't know, you've done it wrong. Sure you could just go and see Michael McIntyre's ridiculously over priced work-in-progress shows (£31 for something that by it's very nature isn't finished yet? Really? At a festival where between £10 and £15 is a standard and reasonable ticket price?), and you'd be guaranteed a good time, but you'd also be wrong in your whole approach to Edinburgh and frankly people like you make me sick! (Too much?)
But it needn't cost you the world, or worse still the price of a Michael McIntyre ticket, to see something that may well turn out to be not very good. There are tonnes of free shows taking place in pubs all over the city, and thanks to a flyer and a convenient time we chose to check out the Nutters Of The British Isles. As I say you run the risk of seeing a bad show and this was, I'm afraid, one of them. At it's heart was some basic observational comedy, pointing out different groups of people and analysing what makes them weird with the help of lots of audience participation. To be fair, it seemed to go down with mixed results in the crowd, a few loved it, some liked it, about half sat in complete silence, or uncomfortably stood in complete silence because they clearly hadn't expected these crowds when they booked the venue. It cant have helped that I was stood at the back, in the dark, a long way from the stage and was therefore not really part of it. I had the bar forming a kind of proscenium arch between me and the stage, alienating and, quite literally, distancing me from the performance (all right Brecht! Jeez). Not that there was anything they could do about the size and layout of the venue.
There was a tall one who did the observational stuff and led the show, and a short one who reacted and said silly things. It's not a particularly inspiring way of doing a double act. Not that original either. They had a couple of good jokes, but to retell either of them here would ruin half of their good stuff, so I don't want to.
Paul Merton's Impro Chums - Pleasance Grand - 4PM
We arrived early and joined the queue - although we're now friends, I didn't want to impose on Mr Merton by asking for queue jump. As we arrived the audience were leaving from that most prestigious of theatrical happenings An Evening With David Hasselhoff. If the guys from the A Guide To Nutters show wanted to do some further research into the subject, I would suggest they start with the kind of crowd The Hoff attracts. Predominantly they are weirdos. What David Hasselhoff does to them for an hour, I can't fathom. I don't know what he does outside of running in slow motion. I mean, I'm hoping he didn't subject them to this kind of thing:
Anyway, Paul Merton's Impro Chums: This is the comedy show I've seen more times than any other, because it's different every time and - on what I think is my sixth time of seeing it - I can confirm that it really is. There are lots of improvisational acts in Edinburgh, a lot of the ones I've seen are very good (generally speaking the earlier in the evening the better as they're not pandering to the suggestions of drunken audiences, but there are some great late night ones who thrive off that and do well). A lot of the improv acts have their own spin on it (improvising a musical, a story, some new games etc.). But these are the legends of improv comedy. They've been doing it since before I was born and they have got very good at it. Merton, you know from Have I Got News For You, can deliver the witty line at just the right time to steal the show, but the others too are all regulars of London's Comedy Store Players (anyone free, any Sunday ever, drop me a text and we'll go see them. Legends.). Richard Vranch is the man who used to play the piano on Whose Line Is It Anyway? but if that's all you know him for, he'll impress you so much more when he's actually playing in the games. Lee Simpson is one of the wittiest comedians you'll see improvising and it's a tragic failure of the TV industry that you probably don't know who he is. Mike McShane can make songs up on the spot, it's an incredible talent. Suki Webster is Paul Merton's wife - and during a scene where she was a stripper he continued to interrupt to protect her dignity, it was quite sweet really. It's such a ridiculously mad cliche to assume that two comedians living together would be the cause of non-stop laughter, but it's kind of impossible to imagine these two not just making jokes of everything. In fact I would like to believe that all of the Impro Chums live in a big house in the country and have a whale of a time. Occasionally popping over for tea, as he did on this day, would be Greg Proops, of Whose Line...hair, glasses, and American fame. He became the unexpected star of this fringe for us, and this was Proops sighting number 1. Keep reading for more. For now, lets just say it was a pleasure to see a man so witty, gelling so well with the Merton chums and being bloody hilarious too.
Paul Foot: Kenny Larch is Dead - Belly Dancer - 7:30PM
To clear up what I know is a confusing paragraph heading, Belly Dancer is the name of the venue, Paul Foot did not do belly dancing. Though if you've seen him live you'd certainly believe it's possible he might. If you like to think about jokes and try to make sense of them, do not see Paul Foot, your brain will hurt. If you like complete randomness (at one point, he just reels off meaningless sentence after unconnected meaningless sentence) that just is funny and you'll never be able to work out why, see this show. The stories flow randomly from one to another without need for satisfying links, although he ties them all together near the end, after a brief look at Supermarket Puns which are the only conventional jokes of the show.
As we'd had a couple of hours between shows, we'd arrived early to get ourselves centre front-row seats again. To be honest, this hardly seems necessary as the stigma of sitting in the front row is feared amongst comedy punters. Personally, I have never been particularly afraid to sit in the front row. I also have aspirations to be a performer so maybe that's not surprising, I'm quite definitely the weird one. But I think to be part of the show is an honour. If you've never done it, sit in the front row of a comedian who "picks on" (stupid term) the front row, it's actually really kind of exciting when they chat to you. Prior to this Simon Amstell had taken the piss out of my having legs at his 2008 fringe show and on Norman Lovett's DVD when someone in the audience puts their hand up to indicate that they think they're God. That's me. I'm not really clear on the DVD, just as well as my hair is stupid, but it led to a very pleasing moment when he recognised me after another gig a few months later.
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| Norman Lovett and the man he referred to as God (ironically) |
This time, Paul Foot shouted in my face - very close to my face - that I didn't care about the seriousness of actress, Sue Johnston (The Royle Family) having to take a month off work. We both tried intensely to hold eye-contact, but I found it impossible not to laugh making him shout more. Thom was also shouted down for making Paul's notes disappear. It was very fun and a bit of a weird thrill.
Night Out In Edinburgh
I'd been to Edinburgh before, but always with the family never with friends, so a night off from the entertainment of the festival had to be arranged to sample the night life of the city and to try a Bucky bomb. It's a shot of Buckfast in a glass of Irn Bru. It's proper Scottish. We'd heard it on good authority (Sandi Toksvig at a News Quiz recording) that it fucks you up. When I googled it for more information, I discovered that a website, which rather grandiosely calls it a "cocktail," says that "Out of 25 visits. 0 people gave this a thumbs up." It didn't fuck us up though, in fact it was rather pleasant and only £2 ("cocktail" pah!). So I bought two more, always wise with a drink that doesn't fuck you up the first time. Actually, drunkenness-wise this was a relatively tame and sober night, not that you'd be able to tell from my dancing, as somebody put a room that played cheesy music next to the bar and so over-the-top jumping around and camp hand gestures had to occur. Certain friends will know what I mean when I say "Full on Dakota first year dancing." Others will have to extrapolate what I did from the information: I still have bruises. Still, I was glad not to be too drunk and to have sweated out the Bucky bombs, because Scotland had now been exposed to my best moves and I had an early (that means before 1pm in Edinburgh's drinking culture) start tomorrow to see a play.
Next time: A day of non-stop shows, some plays, some Proops and late night Frenchness.
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