I went to my venue for the first time (although it used to be a cinema and I've seen a couple of films here).
Naturally with a couple of days to go things are unprepared (glad to see I'm not the only one who works like that) and people are dashing around trying to create venues and bars and clean up the toilets and the sticky pop-corn carpets.
It was immediately clear that this could be the most fantastic venue in the city. Not only are the rooms of a good size, they are air conditioned and sound proofed (I'd imagine), so for once the audience and me should not leave the hour bathed in sweat (unless I put the bit in with the bath of sweat) and we shouldn't be interrupted by loud music coming from the room next door.
Simon Streeting was arrogantly sitting around trying to sort out all the stuff so that my show would work.Amazingly everything seemed to be working quite well. I'm playing in DVDs and also some little films of cartoon versions of me and on past form one would assume these would all go tits up and ruin the show for at least the first week or so, but no problems so far. The computer gremlins are probably waiting for show-time. Like me they are not able to perform properly in rehearsal, but once the audience is in they will rise to the occasion.
I have already fallen in love and the fringe hasn't even started. There is a very cute girl selling coffee out of a police box near the venue. And she serves coffess very well. I like her for her coffee skills mainly.
But I expect to fall in love on at least a daily basis during the festival and like the knights of more chivalrous time all my crushes will be from afar in the tradition of courtly love. Edinburgh is a very chivalrous festival, with hidden affections that are never revealed. Everyone acts as if they are in a Jane Austen novel. The Fringe is a time of romance and certainly not of drunken debauchery.
So my secret love will stay secret forever as I'm still too scared to chat women up. And anyway I don't think it's right that I cheat on my fifty girls.
And by tomorrow I will have fallen in love with at least four other girls young enough to be my daughter (if I'd lost my virginity five years before I did).
