Warming Up

I strode through the rain to go up to the Old Town for a meeting and an interview. I have joined the gym here for a month, but if I don’t make it too often I am hoping the walking will help me back towards fitness. And my pacy stroll took me past many familiar old haunts. My meeting was opposite the Abbey Laird, where I did my first ever Edinburgh show and after a stop off at the Pleasance I passed St Mary’s Hall (or what is left of it) where we did our lunchtime revue show for the middle week back in 1987. Behind it is Boyd’s Entry where we’d get in and out of the venue, whilst laughing at the name of the passageway. Three decades ago, but memories so fresh that I could still smell the stairwell up to the theatre. The next year, Rupert, the technical manager of the Oxford Theatre Group would burn all the costumes we’d worn in the Oxford Revue, I think because we’d done something to upset him. It was inconvenient though as we had more shows to do. The ashes still swirl around in Boyd’s Entry and legend has it that one certain nights the costumes appear and perform “The Wandering Barber” sketch.

Later I would take the back route up to the Pleasance, coming up New Street. I couldn’t believe it was three years since I’d last walked up here every day and marvelled at the work of the graffiti artists. It felt like yesterday.

Then I realised that it wasn’t three years. It was four years since I’d been at the Pleasance and lived down in New Town. Jesus. The Old Sailors Ark has gone and there’s a new building there, where hipsters were congregating, listening to someone playing a guitar and indulging in the Edinburgh Cocktail Festival. The old sailors would be turning in their watery grave. There was still building going on in the next lot and the graffiti on the boards covering the site seemed rather dull by comparison to the work of four years ago. 

All the Edinburghs blur together like I am in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. But once some of the memories would depress me, now I kind of like it. I felt happy today. Glad to be back. Glad that I’d had some time away. Caught up in my own world and not getting sucked too much into the madness of the Fringe.

I finished off signing and bagging up the limited edition programmes. I have an address or email for everyone apart from Andrew Wood. If you are him and want your sure to be super valuable programme (once I am dead) then do get in touch. Loads of people hadn’t sent me their addresses, but I tracked them down via email or addresses they’d given me before. It was a bit like having a job, but I liked the mild detective work. I took all the envelopes to the post office and made sure to give them to the man behind the desk and not fill up any of the post boxes. Though these envelopes are a bit more post box friendly.

I was told I had a few more people in the audience than last night, 110. But when I asked for last minute figures that had jumped to 208. Which was an amazing jump and settled my nerves (checking warming up records that is 50 more than 2013 (gave no figure for 2014, but my memory is it was under 100). And I gave a much crisper and assured performance and had fun, though the audience were perhaps a little tougher to crack. I had fewer diehard fans in, I would guess. And given most of the show is about John McClane and obscure plot points of Die Hard 4.0, that was probably the reason.

And I’ve already been reviewed. And it’s a good one (both positive and written by someone who has journalistic ability- and great taste). So let’s just accept that it is correct and leave it at that (and that’s from the slightly more stuttery first performance!)

Ahead of my first RHEFP in four years, I went to see tomorrow’s guests, The Doug Anthony Allstars in action. It was a pretty amazing show: hilarious, tragic, terrifying, awesome, offensive and sweetly beautiful. Tim, (who has MS and is in a wheelchair) and Paul (with the greater disability of a huge gnome-like beard) bickered and took the piss out of each other, and yet the subtext of the love between the two was amazing. It was like Laurel and Hardy in a Beckett play. It very much continued the themes of ageing and the transitory nature of youth. The end of the show juxtaposed the Dougs then and now in a moving and fascinating, joyous and depressing finale. But the show embraces tragedy and turns it into comedy. Do catch them if you get the chance. You can start by seeing them at 1.50 at the New Town Theatre in RHEFP. 

There are enough tickets left that you’ll be able to turn up just beforehand, but the next two look like they might sell out and I provisionally have a couple of the Fringe’s big sell-out acts for next Friday. I think these should be a lot of fun.

I had a couple of pints with some people I bumped into. It feels like the pressure if off this year. I think I am going to have fun. Check in in three weeks time to see if that turns out to be an accurate prediction.