I sold about 60 tickets in the end, which is more than satisfactory, and with quite a few extra Underbelly staff and performers in there was enough to play to, even if it took a little adjustment to play to a half full room after it being pretty much full for the rest of the time (which in itself is a cause for celebration). "Congratulations on discovering my secret gig," I told them. It went fine. Much better to have done it than had the day off.
After more leafletting in the early afternoon I headed down to Leith to do an actual job to help pay for some of my Edinburgh expenses. Luckily I wasn't having to work in a shop or a factory, but had got a spot on one of those talking head style programmes. This one was for the Dave channel and was about gadgets. It's called "Batteries Not Included" and I am not sure when it will be on. I turn down quite a few of these kind of shows, but this one not only came at a good time, when I could really do with earning some extra pennies, but also didn't seem too rubbish. I just had to talk about what gadgets I like and don't like. I like my sat nav and my running watch. I don't like my fax machine or my rubbish Sony Vaios. If someone wants to pay me to tell them that then that is excellent. You already know that I will happily bang on about this for nothing.
They had a few gadgets that I was meant to try and identify or guess the function of. One of them turned out to be an
electronic spot remover, which applies heat to a zit and magically evaporates it. I was a bit dismissive of this at the time, but the website seems to claim some kind of proof of its unlikely claims. So good luck to the inventor of this spot warming device, which I found a bit creepy. If you're young and have mild acne, try not to worry about it too much. I would say it's not worth a hundred pounds to buy one of these things even if it is effective. Just buy a balaclava and use the change to impress potential lovers with gifts or nice shoes.
After the gig I went to my management Avalon's party for 20th anniversary of their first Edinburgh. I was there a whole year before them. The idiots.
Still I quaffed champagne and chatted with some of my fellow comics as we wound down to the end of the festival. But as I have been pretty much all festival I wasn't up for getting too wrecked or staying up too late and soon wound my way home. Only four shows to go. My ribs still ache. Will be glad to be back in Shepherd's Bush.
