Podcast 3/5 was OK I think. Some boring moments, but some good stuff too. I was in a good mood after a relatively sober night and eight hours sleep and my silliness began on the walk up the mound to the Underbelly. I saw Daniel Kitson in a sandwich shop and shouted "Kitson! Gay!" at him through the door. I saw him turning around, confused, but not in time to see me jogging on and away. Ha ha. He'll have thought it was an enemy. Brilliant! You can hear the podcast
at the usual place or iTunes. It's the 77th most popular comedy podcast in Sweden.
And another 20ish people came with us to the Tempting Tattie, though again I went without as I was saving myself up for Tat-Day tomorrow. The proprietor was on his own today and seemed a little stressed having to cope with this late influx of lunch seekers. Collings felt that perhaps he was resenting this intrusion into his world, but later he asked my girlfriend to pass on his thanks for spreading the word. I don't think he knows what might be about to hit him tomorrow. I hope his wife is with him this time!
I headed home to get on with the long and tedious job of sending Hitler Moustache programmes to those kind/vain people who donated money to get their names in the brochure. There's 178 of the idiots this year, and I worked my way through the first 50. I hope to get the lot done by the end of the weekend and hopefully in the post by Monday. But remember you'll need to send me your address if you want your programme. Contact me at herring1967@googlemail.com and let me know which name you donated under.
Tonight's show started really well, but I don't know if it was the heat or me, but it seemed to have dipped a bit by the end. I thought I did it pretty well, but this week I think I have had a large proportion of people coming to see what all the fuss is about and they've been quite hard to please. I think it was OK, but it was the most lacklustre round of applause at the end that this show has had. Just not as many cheers as usual. It's still going well.
I hope.
I had another late night gig at the Pleasance, but things were running late and I was closing, so I hung around backstage for almost two hours, drinking free beer. I was a bit drunk when I went on and even managed to mess up my hand signals in the homosexuality routine that I have done hundreds of time before.
But things took an interesting turn when I tried to close with my ancient "Mars Bar" joke. Suddenly my drunkeness became a positive thing as I started questioning the audience about whether they were aware of the "Mars Bar". "Have you seen those?" I asked, "The Mars Bar? It's like a chocolate bar. Have you seen them? A woman there is nodding. She knows what I'm talking about. The Mars Bar. That's real right? Mars Bar. Do they still have them? Have you seen them?" It went on for some time and I can't exactly remember what I said, but it was funny to construct this artificial confusion about whether a very popular confectionery even exists. I was playing around with the paranoia of the performer, but also the laziness of observational comedy, but it was fun to pretend that I might have made the Mars Bar up and the whole thing seemed to become more amusing the more I said "Mars Bar", especially as I was using slightly unusual inflection, hitting the Bar instead of the Mars. After a long gig with way too many acts and an enthusiastic audience who were now almost at the point where they were burned out, this became a strange moment of theatre, with me playing a comedian who had come to question his material, himself and the world around him. The remarkable thing was that it was an entirely improvised routine, but was coming out almost perfectly in spite of (or perhaps because of) my crapulousness. Some people were confused, others were in hysterics. It was time for me to get off, but I carried on questioning the existence of the Mars Bar and whether people knew what I was referring to.
It was either the best or worst gig I have ever done. Or perhaps a mixture of the two.
As I walked home I started constructing a Beckett-like play in my head in which a stand up comedian gets stuck in the mud in his routine as he wonders if Mars Bar even exist, appealing to the audience to help him, repeating the words "Mars Bar" over and again with little else being said. Finally deciding he needs to go to the local shop to see if such a thing exists, leaving the stage empty for ten minutes, before returning with a Mars Bar, but is now so paranoid and unsure of reality that he wonders if the shop has mocked the Bar up just to trick him. In my drunken state this seemed like a genius idea. And the little version I had done of it tonight was exciting (or boring, I can't work out which). Perhaps it was just a moment in time, one of those gigs where something magical happens which can never be repeated. But I massively enjoyed it.
And then walking home and creating a surrealist masterpiece.
