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My friend Lucy posted a big horde of photos she’d found in her mum’s attic. They are all of Edinburgh Fringe performers socialising after shows around the turn of the millennium. It’s a Who’s Who of future stars with only a very few Who’s That’s. Graham Norton, Noel Fielding, Catherine Tate, Lee Mack, Dara O Briain, Matt Lucas, Chris Addison, Dave Gorman and many more. This is all from the days before camera phones, where most of us were too busy drinking and flirting and networking to think of documenting any of it.
I vaguely remember Lucy walking round with a proper camera, but maybe I am back-projecting.
There is a photo of me, Ben Moor and our friend Jane which I estimate was taken in 1999. Ben looks amazing and goofy in his hat and glasses and I look pudgy and greasy and worn out. The mouth is smiling, but only just. The eyes are dead. A chancer about to get found out.
This would be the year where the Lee and Herring jalopy fell to pieces and around the time that it became clear that there was going to be no more. I was doing my play “It’s Not The End of the World”. I guess it wasn’t. Even if it felt like it.
I worried about the world ending that September (as predicted by Nostradmus). As it was he was 21 years out.
Truth be told I don’t think I had a great time at any of the Fringes in those days. I was always a bit lost and lonely and felt like I wasn’t part of the crowd and just got lost in the oblivion of alcohol. I couldn’t usually afford holidays so the Fringe was my chance to meet people and have fun. But I was too shy to do it without being pissed and usually still too self-conscious.
Maybe I am failing to remember the good times. I look happy enough with Ben and Jane. I feel nauseous looking at these photos though. Like someone has yanked the carpet of time from under my feet and reminded me of what has been lost.
Or maybe it just brings back all the hangovers.
Ben looks like a star. He’s still going now and still doing great stuff, but never got plucked out for the top table. He should have been. Is it all just luck? Or ambition? Why did some of those youngsters become household names and others have slipped from my memory?
No reason probably. Could have been any of them.
And there’s still time. It’s just whooshing by rather too quickly. As always I can't cope with the fact that this blurry photo comes from so long ago, when it feels like months or weeks or yesterdays.
