Edinburgh - The most delayed journal ever.
Sunday. Got in the taxi, went to heathrow. Got on cramped plane, got off in Edinburgh.
Got a taxi to our apartment in Stockbridge. The apartment was stupidly big.
Our apartment was only 15 mins away from the city centre. Which was good. Then I went to see Amanda Palmer at the HMV Picturehouse. There was a massive queue stretching down the road so we walked to the front to check it was the queue for Amanda Palmer, which it was so we started walking back up the road to join the end of the queue. And then I walked right past Neil Gaiman! (He is going out with Amanda Palmer and was there to sign copies of ‘Who Killed Amanda palmer’ the book and be a groupie essentially.) It was amazing. My dad didn’t know who he was. The queue was full of Goths etc. and one of the girls in front of us was wearing high heels which were rubbing into her heel and it was all red and painful. Though she looked as if that may have been the intention…
We went inside and wandered up to the top balcony, where the bar was. We watched the support act - The indelicates - from there and they weren’t particularly amazing. Then I went down to get a good place in the crowd fro Amanda palmer, but it wasn’t Amanda palmer that appeared on stage, it was Zen Zen Zo, a dance troupe in Edinburgh to perform their show, Zeitgeist. They were basically almost naked dancers. It got a bit boring after a while. Then Amanda palmer came on and it was AWESOME. She played lots of songs which was good. Neil Gaiman did a reading from Who Killed Amanda Palmer, as did Amanda. They stayed to sign copies of the book, but I didn’t have it by that point, plus it was quite late (not that that makes much difference at the Fringe!) so we went back to the apartment.
Sunday we wandered over to the Pleasance, the hub of the Fringe essentially, where people shove flyers in your face CONSTANTLY, to see Russell Kane’s Fakespeare in the early afternoon which was Russell Kane (awesome comedian) doing something different and taking a Modern tale - this case the tragikal tale of king Nigellio, a banker affected by the credit crunch, in Shakespeare style. I loved it, it was funny and clever, but I don’t think my brother understood the jokes. Later on we walked past him in the street. I didn’t say hi though cos he’d changed his hair so I didn’t realise it was him till it was too late. Later we went to see Ivan Brackenbury’s Hospital Radio show. Despite being highly recommended he was a bit of a one trick pony, the first 5 mins were good, but after that the joke got very tired.Last thing on Sunday was the Scottish Falsetto Sock puppet Theatre Goes To Hollywood. They are pretty famous on Youtube, and a comical sock puppet show is a bit different. I thought it was hilarious, especially the ‘lyrics’ to Michael Jackson’s Earthsong. For the rest of the show I couldn’t really stop laughing, despite the sock puppets’ insistence that it was the worst show they’d done at this years Fringe. It was one of the best I saw at the Fringe!
Monday was first a strange musical theatre storytelling thing called ‘Johnny’s midnight goggles’ a fantasy story about other worlds performed by a guy and his cello. In the evening was Barry and Stuart: Powered by Demons, a sort of horror/magic/comedy show. The first trick was Barry swallowing a polo then Stuart using a cheesewire to garrotte him and pull the wire back out of his neck with the polo around the wire. The rest of the show continued in the same vein and It was the best thing I saw at the whole Fringe. After the show I met Andy Nyman, star of zom-com Dead Set, and and long-time collaborator of Derren Brown’s, who had also gone to see the show with his family. I’m a bit of a fangirl, so with the help of my mum I went up to him and got his autograph and had a chat about what I’d seen so far at the Fringe. He was really nice and friendly!
Tuesday was a visit to the Edinburgh Book festival, to see Tony Lee give a talk on how to write comics to some 7-12 year old children and their parents. I was kinda inbetween these categories. But I think Tony Lee is an amazing writer and the talk was really inspiring. And funny. After this we walked back to the apartment and it started to rain, which was when I was treated to the extremely surreal sight of Russell Brand sprinting past with an entourage in the rain! Tut tut, Goths don’t run, Russell. They saunter.In the evening we went to see Kristen Schall (of Flight of the Conchords fame) and Kurt braunohler do their comedy show, Double Down Hearts. It was very kooky and surreal, but very funny in its own way. I got given a big explodey thing at the beginning to trigger if I found something funny as a way of ‘feedback’. When I pressed the button it kinda hissed and didn’t explode. FAIL. But they noticed anyway and broke it open and showered confetti everywhere. And I got a high five from Kristen! It was quite awesome.
Wednesday shows started off with Paul Merton’s Impro chums, basically paul Merton and a four other improv comedians doing who’s line is it syle improve comedy. It was very good but there was one guy who wasn’t very funny. After the show we saw Paul Merton and some of his ‘Chums’ at the outdoor bar, trying to look inconspicuous… it didn’t really work, but we didn’t bother them. After this, I went with my mum and my dad to see Frank Skinner’s Credit Crunch Cabaret. He was hosting an evening of different acts from the Fringe. The acts were mostly pretty good, a young Indian comic, a hula hoop dancer and a Gay Indian Doctor turned Comedian. But the most amazing thing was I got to see FRANK SKINNER for £10! A pretty good deal if you ask me. After this we went to see David o’ Doherty, an irish comic with a cheap keyboard. In a church. He was very very good. And kept asking my brother stuff. And he had a song about lowering your expectations which I totally agreed with. Fun stuff.
Thursday. Thursday was the day we went to Dynamic earth and went up Salisbury crags in the rain. It was also the day Eddie Izzard came to town and ran up Arthur’s seat on the day off of his marathon running all around the UK. Which meant I was so so close to meeting him. But I didn’t…
Also on this rainy day we went to see Lewis Barlow, a close-up magician doing mesmerizing and baffling card tricks. It really was impressive.
Friday was the day we met up with our friends, the Mansfields. First thing we saw was ‘Blow Up - The credit crunch musical’. This was a comedian telling his tale as a German banker with an Oompah band playing music along the way. Most of it went over my head but there were free badges at the end. Badges are always good.
After that we went to see Pappy’s fun Club, a fourpiece sketch troupe trying to beat the world record of 200 sketches in an hour. That’s more than 3 a minute. It was very funny, especially the recurring dinosaur, always invited to do sports he was ill equipped to do, with his stumpy arms. It was rather adorable actually. The parents didn’t find it funny, they just thought it was like a scout gang show. We got badges after that too!
After that we went out to the pleasance courtyard and spotted Greg Davies (of We Are klang and the Inbetweeners fame) walking past. He is so tall! It was actually quite scary. At midnight we went to see ‘The Best of the Fest’ a compered show with several talented comedians. The host was Jon Richardson who was the best act there, had a lot of good banter with the audience. First act was Marcus Brigstoke, whom I love, but the material he did about different cities wasn’t very good. It was definitely not some of his best stuff. But there were a few gems in there. Next were some Germans who had a show called ‘German humour’. I obviously don’t have a German sense of humour because it wasn’t funny at all. Just baffling. After them was Des Bishop, an American-Irish comic who told us WAY TOO MUCH ABOUT HIMSELF. I think even the drunks found it uncomfortable. Last act was David o’ Doherty who is always amazing and did some different material to the show earlier in the week. Which was good.
Saturday we went back to London.