6085/19014
Not quite as trippy a performance for me today and slightly over twice as many people in the room (184). If my audience doubles every day then I think I will have over 90 million people in for the last show, which will really make a dent in my 2014 Edinburgh debt. As it is I seem to be selling over 100 tickets across the run a day at the moment, putting me on course for the 50% attendance that I think will see me OK.
I foolishly chose to give the true fans of the show a treat by wearing my fluffy black and white jumper from the poster (and the fan club pin badge) assuming that because I was in Edinburgh I’d still be cold (I also took a huge risk by going out in it without a coat, thus risking it being soaked and ruined in the practically inevitable rain). It wasn’t cold though. I was sweating like a famous current personality involved in some kind of scandal (I am too tired at this stage to construct my own jokes and by presenting them in this way, they can still be enjoyable to people reading this blog in years to come).
But I managed to regulate my temperature eventually and was delighted to meet the disarming and kooky and very funny Lucy Beaumont and to spend more time in the company of the Scummy Mummies. Their roadie (and father of at least half of the double act) is the wonderful Jim Barclay, one of the pioneers of alternative comedy, who was Josey in Josey’s Giants and also in the Young Ones and in the short film I did in Weston Super Mare many moons ago.
He was in the front row and I tried to whip up some rivalry betwixt him and the cast of Rentaghost, but he didn’t rise to it.
On the walk down to the venue I had had my annual wobble where I decided that this would be my last Edinburgh Fringe. For once it wasn’t because I felt suicidally depressed, just a bit overwhelmed by the size of the Fringe, my old age and the feeling that maybe it was time to move on. And maybe it is. I have done this thing 25 times now and over those 32 years have got a handle on what this thing is all about and the way it largely crushes hopes and dreams. And the ones who have their hopes and dreams crushed are probably the lucky ones.
But then I remembered that I say this every year and that I was very tired. I don’t have too much to worry about this year as I haven’t wasted money on posters or PR people (and I suddenly realise how relaxing it is not to be getting emails about interviews and radio appearances that I always doubted made any kind of difference) and if I don’t feel like participating in anything outside of my own show (which today I didn’t), I have a lovely bolt hole with my family to play, only having to worry about keeping my children alive…oh God.
On the walk home past the meadows I saw a little girl of maybe 3 or 4 standing outside the playground and a man who clearly wasn’t her dad talking to her. Luckily, on this occasion (as it would be 99% of the time) the man was not evil. A dad himself, he was concerned about where she was going as she was heading away from the playground and towards the road. She said she was looking for her daddy and the man correctly surmised that her daddy was probably looking for her inside the playground and guided her back in. And she went running in to find her parent.
It was a chilling moment of how things can go horribly wrong (as well as a reminder that most people will be there to back you up and act as a safety net when you fuck up your responsibilities.
Who needs to go and see theatre when real life is full of such sickening drama that will make you consider how fragile and breakable everything is?
If you enjoy today’s guests then please see their shows
