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I don't know how I forgot this, but thanks to the brilliant Ben Moor for the reminder (
if you're in Edinburgh go and see his beautiful show) - the pie shop next to the Masonic Lodge we stayed at for our first couple of Edinburghs was called "Gobble and Go". Goodness knows why they felt the need to change that.
Another full and fun day. I walked the kids up to the Pleasance this morning as there's a fun tent there where you can make T-shirts and other fun things. On the way we passed the Scott Monument which I've seen so many times and joked about for years (in an early 90s radio show we claimed that it was dedicated to Jason Donovan's character in Neighbours).
What I'd never noticed before was the size of Scott's forehead. It isn't even a five head. It's at least a six head. It's fucking huge. To begin with I thought it was like the scary alien from the Star Trek credits, but he's actually a dead ringer for these even bigger foreheaded Star Trek characters.
Was his head really that big? If not why would they make it so big on the statue?
Looking at other pictures of him it looks more normal, which makes me wonder if he was being subtly mocked by the sculptor. They didn't want to turn down the job, but also resented this huge monument dedicated to intellectual lightweight Walter Scott, so they made his brain sarcastically big. Ooh look at my massive nut. Aren't I the fucking bee's knees.
I don't think Scott would have been capable of standing up without falling over if he really had this cranium.
Ernie told the ladies at the kids' tent that a banana was a berry, which sounded like one of his insane flights of fancy, but it turns out it's true. He is full of nuggets like this. He's the Walter Scott of his generation.
I had a funny chat with American stand up Zainab Johnson, with another smallish crowd (though numbers pick up a lot from tomorrow - I'd say the last five shows are all likely to sell out, and maybe Saturday too. I booked Joe Kent-Walters aka Frankie Munroe, last year's comedy award winner for that show and he's sold out across the festival already.
Afterwards Catie and the kids leafletted the crowd for Catie's first show. The children are excellent leafletters (we'd done some up at the Pleasance earlier) and it's good for them to start earning their keep. We then went off to play mini golf and arcade games in the shopping centre (that's what the Fringe is all about).
Later we went to a restaurant for dinner. Catie had done her first show and it had gone well, but we were both knackered. We had been waiting much too long for our food and were hungry and getting a little bit tetchy, mainly with the service, rather than each other.
A smartly dressed, rather posh woman from a nearby table came over to ask me who I was as she was sure she recognised me. I told her my name and she seemed none the wiser. "I'm a comedian." I told her, but still nothing.
"Have we seen you on TV?" she asked and I said I'd been in Taskmaster and she pretended to remember me.
I don't have a problem with chatting to strangers, though we were in the middle of a family meal and this lady hardly classified as a fan. But she didn't feel much shame in staying to talk to us, "Do you hate this?" she asked Catie. "No," said Catie without much conviction, too tired to hide her mild annoyance.
"Oh you do!" said the woman, yet still didn't take that as a cue to leave.
The lady was wearing a nautical blazer with ships or anchor designs on the buttons.
Ernie piped up, "Do you own a yacht?"
It was a fucking awesome takedown and we had to laugh, as to be fair, did the woman. Ernie didn't actually mean it as a joke - she did look like she was dressed to captain the Titanic. She took it in good heart and said how delightful the kids were. But wow, this boy is going to be great at crowd work.
She asked us all questions and we told her Catie had a show too and to be fair she was very friendly and polite (apart from interrupting our dinner and not going away again). Ernie then chipped in again, "You say brilliant a lot," he told her. Which she did.
He was amazing.
Later, when I really wanted to go to bed, I went to watch
the new Frankie Munroe show and it was really excellent and very funny. It was reminiscent of loads of other acts, whilst still being entirely its own thing. I've seen early shows by acts like Harry Hill, Johnny Vegas and Nick Helm and this had the same spark of something special and ground-breaking. And despite Joe's protests that this was a preview with some kinks to iron out, it seemed very slick to me, working on all kinds of levels, with excellent crowd work. Silly and smart and just very confident in itself and it's internal logic and illogic. Very much looking forward to meeting Joe properly on Saturday.
