HELLO SCOTLAND
Have pitched up in Edinburgh for 8 shows starting tonight at the Pleasance Grand (the slot that Tim Minchin has had) 9.45 to 11pm. I've not been to the festival since 2005 so very excited. Edinburgh has been a creative home for me and many performers, essentially learning our craft by immersing yourself in all the festival has to offer, i.e. good shows bad shows, amazing shows, absolutely ridiculous 'who ever encouraged him he could do this in the first place?!' shows, street theatre, jugglers, loud mouths, egos the size of Alaska, late night comedy, late night bars, late night chats to nervous performers exchanging news of bad reviews (Omid to Dave Fulton: "I got a one star review". Fulton: "Dude. That's one more than me"), pouring out your angst to total strangers - Fulton: "yeah dude, Fest magazine had five stars above my name all blanked out" (to a Somali exchange student in 2005) - worrying about audience figures, deciding to do some flyering, and end up standing on the Royal Mile in the rain begging Somali exchange students to come to my show... who probably would come if they spoke any English and even understood why I was holding their collars pleading with them in a fat needy way, desparate for attention coz no one else was coming to my show. Yes that was me in 1997 - average attendance: 12. But I did sell out the very last weekend due to a great review coming out on the last Saturday in the Scotsman: "he's fat, he's unpolished, he's off beat, but he's very very funny" - whoever you were that was the reason am back now :)
I've already seen a no. of shows including Tim Minchin, Ian Stone, 'Late Live' with some blistering performances from comics such a Ed Byrne, Craig Campbell and the ever mad If.com winner Brendon Burns - and tho we coming to the last week of the festival and traditionally people get run down, depressed and overwhelmed with a 'what's it all about? why am I here?' mind set begining to set in - looks like everyone is on form, all the in-fighting between comedy promoters has evapourated, people seem to be getting on famously and the vibe is chilled and relaxed. Bumped into Bruce Hills (head man at Montreal comedy festival) who looks younger everytime I see him seemingly having cracked the secret to eternal youth, and Shazia Mirza (great teeth) who tells me she's been getting a critical mauling (no change there) but seems totally relaxed and enjoying her sold out shows and was in sparkling form. Ian Stone has had 9 reviewers in and only seen one review come out and is Jewishly soldiering on banging out the funnies (that's not racist, that's what Jews do). Even my old mate Ivor Dembina is doing the Laughing Horse free fringe and is getting an audience every night which, if you know Ivor, is a miracle on the scale of the feeding of the 5,000.
Quote of the week:
"Wanna see a REAL miracle? Seeing my ass up in Edinburgh again" - Dave Fulton