Another good show tonight and over 150 sold, though tomorrow should bring me down with a bump as tickets go up to full price, but everyone seems to be enjoying it, so hopefully the buzz is spreading. No reviews yet (as far as I know), which is a shame as a couple of positive crits are really needed early on to keep the audiences coming. I bumped into Malcom Hay from Time Out yesterday and he said that he had been instructed to see new acts this year so he wouldn't be coming to the show. Whilst I can see the fairness of this, I think this might be the curse of the older, more established act. The journos are out looking for the next big thing and not interested in reviewing a Fringe fixture. Maybe if I'd taken a few years off and this was a triumphant return then that would garner more interest, but because I keep plodding away year in, year out I think I am not much of a story, even if I personally think I have taken an exciting leap forwards this year. So I may be relying on you the people to make sure that news of the show spreads. You seem to be doing a good job so far.
Before my show I appeared in an interesting 15 minute show called
"The Phone Book Live". The idea is to get a Fringe performer or journalist to read from a telephone directory for five minutes to see if they can make it interesting or amusing. I was a little bit nervous about this and unsure for most of the day about what I would do. I knew I would be OK in the pre-read interview, because of course I did genuinely write the phone-book back in 1989 and as I have mentioned before
had some stories to tell on the subject.
Other performers have chosen to read the book in a certain manner, like it's an erotic novel, or like it's a comedian reading a bad review, but I decided that to do the task properly I would have to let the text speak for itself. I wanted to experiment with the idea that tedious information repeated over and over again with small variations will be funny enough in its own right. And the main challenge was to actually just read the phone book and get laughs. So I decided I would read the Smith section of the work, which of course meant merely repeating "Smith, A" over and over again, with a different address and number each time. The phone book I had at my flat had the occasional "Smith, Alan" or "Smith, Alistair" dotted between the "Smith, A"s and I correctly surmised that once people were bored by "Smith A" any variance would get a cheer and a good reaction, but the York directory that I read from had very few actual first names printed and eventually I had to leap ahead to "Smith, Ant" to get this response. It was then back to the tedium of "Smith A". But just essentially saying the same thing over and over again did work and it was interesting that in the middle of this banality a slightly interesting address (one Smith A lived on a caravan site with a long address) would get a big reaction. The five minute reading did seem to take a lot longer to me and at points it started to drag, but as I had hoped what started as funny, became a bit boring and then became funny again. At different points for different people. Not unlike the yoghurt routine. I was able to experiment with pace and with my level of exasperation and this was enough. I almost felt that an hour long reading might be even more interesting (and tedious), but the five minute version was a fun and audacious piece of theatre. I then auctioned a signed copy of the book I had read from and amazingly a young woman paid £60 (thank you so much if you're reading - all the money goes to Childline), more than doubling the Edinburgh record set by feisty Scotsman journalist Kate Copstick (who was indignant when she heard, venting her fury in a single expletive texted to the show's producer). She writes about her own experience of the happening
here.
It's a fun, short, cheap show (as long as you don't spend £60 on a phone book) and a fascinating experiment. It's also in the spooky Underbelly, Babybelly caves, which are worth visiting in their own right.
It's this kind of show that makes Edinburgh what it is, so do support this endeavour if you can. It was very satisfying to entertain people by literally reading the phone book. If only I wasn't already over running I might do it in my show!
