This whole King of Edinburgh thing rumbles on. The List
joined in with it today and that gave some anonymous person (who is it who is trying to propagate this?) the ammunition they needed to
provide a reference on my wikipedia page. I never asked for any of this. I can scarcely cope with the pressure. Please other journalists, don't mention that in your reviews - it's not helpful. I am not the King. But if I was the King I would get rid of the trams. I am not trying to court local popularity there. That would be just one of the things I did. Plus I'd end the tattoo and put up all Edinburgh performers for free in my castle. But like I said, I don't want to be King.
I got a good night's sleep last night, which made today a lot more enjoyable. I still had a little nap in the evening, but I managed to get up, do some work on the never ending Radio 4 script, do an interview for Radio 4 Extra,
do my podcast with the always impressive Francesca Martinez and Holly Walsh and an almost full Stand, go to the Pride of Scotland to interview the manager about whether Jimmy Hats should be taking pride of place in his shop (think this will be pretty funny - I told him he should sell books of logarithms in the store as these were created in Scotland and he claimed he had done that, but they never sold - I am pretty sure he didn't understand what I was saying) , do my stand up show (one of my favourite performances yet) and then come back to the flat straight away to eat crisps and Maltesers and try and do more work on the fucking script. Every time I sit down to work I feel like there's only half an hour's work to do on it, but then after another two hours it doesn't seem to have got any further. This may be some kind of purgatory that the God of the Scotch has put me in for all the years of abuse that I have given to his people. I've given up trying again at 12.40am and am going to try for more sleep and hope that the morning will bring some closure to this nightmare!
But I have got an enormous amount done today and felt much brighter and lighter and happier which shows just how important sleep is during this festival (if you're my age). On a day like today with two busy shows and lots of good buzz it feels like a very successful Fringe for me. I am really proud of both shows, especially happy with the high standard of the podcast shows and I really like the way my interviews with Jerry Sadowitz and
Barry Cryer turned out in ThreeWeeks (the Jerry interview is not online, but you can find it if you really search the ThreeWeeks site carefully!
You can download the pdf here (Jerry interview page 9)
And astonishingly I have now done 21 shows (plus assorted extra gigs). More astonishingly I am not even halfway through.
The streets end up being funnier than the shows though. I saw a drunk man trying to persuade a woman he didn't know to jump on his back for a piggy back. She was sober and thought he was asking for some bizarre, behind the back low-ten hand slap. He tried to persuade her to jump up on his back. She sensibly decided not to do that. Who knows where she may have ended up? But it was the attempt at joining in that I enjoyed. Anything is half possible in Edinburgh. But the best shows happen in my dreams. That's where I'm going now. Bye!
