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I am up to my eyes in doing last minute stuff, Ashley is home and that’s great. Dad is basically breaking things in his house and needs me to go up and look at the broken things he has broke, which is always fun. It really is cool getting to spend time with him though, he has stopped swearing too much, he was swearing a lot after mum died and I think he had one big sweary week and got it all out, so its all over. I love my dad. I will miss him when I go to Edinburgh and am slightly worried he will befriend the squirrels in his garden and start buying them Brazil nuts. Ashley had fun in London and thanks to Sue she had a great place to stay. I adore Sue for looking after her, also my mates Angela and David who gave her heaps of support. Ashley had been helping out with some filming with Dodgy Dave Courtney and decided to back out of the last day, just as well as Dave got raided by the police and got put in prison. The last thing I needed was my daughter being caught up in a gun raid, again! The last time she was involved in a gun raid she was 8 years old and it was me and her dad, being dragged out in cuffs. She doesn’t need to go through that again. So, it is good to have Ashley home, she is holed up in her room listening to some geeky Star Trek podcast. That’s what she does. I have to get my hair done, I have to get a radio show done, I have to get packed and I have to make sure everything is sorted for my opening show on Wednesday. The house basically looks like Paddy’s Market, with heaps of clothes everywhere. I love the opening week of The Fringe, I have about six opening parties to go to, and probably won’t make any of them. I have an acute ear infection AGAIN…and am convinced the big dull pain that sits on the side of my head is a big evil brain tumour waiting to burst and kill me! If I die like that you can all say “She knew that was going to happen” and then I will be right after all. (I like being right). The show is all set to go and I am as happy as punch, and I love getting to see all the comics I know in one small city, then after about a week I get bored as hell and end up watching too much telly and being boring. Looking forward to meeting some of you at the Fringe! |
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Monday I was at STV doing The Hour show which was live! Apparently I did very well and managed to catch up with the Chippendales who are performing at Gilded Balloon! I loved the live TV interview, good pre press for my fringe show. On Tuesday we moved through to Edinburgh, Ashley managed to bag the big double room with balcony and en suite bathroom, I don’t understand how she gets the best room and I am the performer! Anyway we managed to put together an amazing flyer team, they are just a great bunch of enthusiastic bunch and they are working their asses off. If you see one of my flyerers please tell them I love them! Ashley decided to buy a tartan Hurley trolley; you know the kind, the wee tartan shopping trolley! She puts all the flyers in it and heads off to replenish their stock. My first night went great, I didn’t really have a show, I just put together a bunch of stories and hope for the best. It went good…people liked it! It was also cool catching up with comics that I haven’t seen in a while. The second day I took my friends wee boy to the park, he is such a delight to be around and really is well behaved. There were some annoying posh looking lanky teenagers (one was wearing a dinner jacket and jeans, with side combed emotional hair, he needed punched for that alone) on the roundabout and they were making it go extremely fast and scaring all the kids around them. It was such a hot day and the park was crowded, so I walked over and said to my wee charge “Shall I throw them off?” He nodded and smiled, other wee kids watched and started to gather as they could smell adult trouble happening. A gaggle of chubby faced toddlers gathered around me, silently chanting me on with eager cheery faces, how could I let them down? “Get off now” I screamed and pulled the roundabout to a stop and the wannabe crew of skinny jeaned fuck wits who looked like bad extras from Skins all stared at me and clambered off and skulked off the play ground. One big lanky boy with his jeans hanging off his ass waited till he was far enough away and gave me the finger and shouted “Bitch” I stared at him and a big daddy who had two kids near him stood up and booted his skinny bony ass. We all cheered and clapped, even the kids joined in. The skinny assed kids ran away and you could tell they were all about to become Emos or Goths but didn’t have the staying power to learn the shite music and show commitment to the dyed hair cause. A few things bother me about the fringe and the big thing is – people who give away FREE TICKETS to shows. It means that people coming up to Pleasance Dome and are about to buy tickets then get swayed into taking a free ticket. I disagree with the FREE ticket scenario, people don’t value the show, they sit with other people who have paid and that’s not nice and it creates a culture of people expecting a FREE show. I don’t mind the Free Fringe etc…but in venues where the tickets do cost it really does antagonise me. A woman came up to my daughter and asked if my show was free and Ashley said “No” and the woman just said she would wait to get a free ticket. Its called papering a room, I really believe that if you can’t play to 6 people then you should piss off, I played to small audiences and I earned my stripes. The thinking behind papering a room is- they believe people will walk away and then tell people to go buy tickets, or maybe the folk will walk away and think “Why buy tickets if you can get them for free?” I take the free tickets and throw them away, as I believe it undermines everything me and other comics are doing. I know people disagree with me but I get pissed off with it, especially when they are still giving away free tickets into week 3, that’s just wrong. Other than that I am having a great time, I have done two shows already and am getting prepared for my Just a Minute performance which always scared the bejebus out of me. Day three coming up, so do come and see me, it will costs you money but I am sure you will like it! (hopefully). |
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When an audience member asks why I haven’t written a blog in days, you know you are a bad blogger. Things are going great, husband is back in Glasgow and life in Edinburgh ticks on and on. Audience numbers are up on last year and as I am in a 175 seater THAT’S a lot of seats to fill! Everyone had a great first weekend, numbers were great and now we are onto the dip in the midweek section and you can see some comedians walking about looking glum. But it is just the midweek slump, especially if you are in a BIG room that gets filled up at weekends, it can leave you feeling odd. Chins up though! I still haven’t had a review printed yet, though I have had reviewers in. Watched some comedians who got slated by reviewers actually being dragged away from said reviewer in Pleasance Courtyard, now that was a frisson of gossip for you. Nothing happened, they just looked angry and shouty, but reviewer just sat there laughing his head off at them. I had a woman in the Fringe Queue ask me if I swore in my act as she doesn’t like women swearing, I asked her if she asked the male comics that question and she said “I have never spoken to a comedian before” Fair enough, so I asked her had she seen any women comics at the fringe. “Yes, I have seen a few” she answered. “Did they swear?” She went quiet for a moment and reluctantly replied “Yes, but they were very English and middle class, it wasn’t really swearing, they were making a point” The people around her just gawped at her and I burst out laughing. Because basically what she is saying is that my working class Scottish accent makes swearing vulgar! “Well if I swear onstage I will make sure I do my best Queen Elizabeth accent and pretend to have once ridden a pony if that helps” I replied. The folk around her just kept laughing and she kept trying to justify her point of view that swearing is ok for a woman as long as it’s done tastefully and in a nice Home Counties accent. Which brings me onto my next point, every time I see a female comic’s review- I notice that the reviewer spends precious sentences explaining how and in what manner the female comic swore? I have never seen this in male comic reviews and have realised that all these so called liberal journalists and folk who claim to be in the 21st century have a 1950s attitude towards woman using the same language as men onstage! Life is strange at times. Ashley and I are having a good time together, we watched season two of Everwood on her laptop last night, it really is corny but made us giggle. |
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I have been very sleepy lately. This always happens when I am at a festival, I get knackered, and I eat too much or too little and then hunker down in the duvet and snore away my life. Only getting up to perform or go to press things and then slotting my life into units where I can squeeze some more sleep in! I am possibly turning into a hedgehog. Ashley is SO OVER the fringe and spends her nights watching TV on her laptop and making tea for me. She has given up on hanging out with disenchanted malfunctioning comics, that was so exciting when she was 17 years old at 23 she thinks me and my fellow performers are fully functioning freaks. Though I am not one of those! The palpable power of the reviewers makes me feel vomity, I am sick of reading that some of my fav comics are getting slated for either making loads of people laugh (but not the reviewer) or having a hot room that the reviewer feels the need to blame the comic for! I still haven’t yet had a review printed though I did have some TV/radio people in and sealed a few deals and week two isn’t even over, so that’s good news and the reviewers cant stop that from happening nor can they MAKE that happen, that’s all down to my and my show. I love this year’s show more than I have in ages, it’s not about my childhood, my past, my family or anything sad, it’s all about strange things and funny incidents that occurred. I haven’t seen any shows yet either, as my units of sleep would be disturbed if I started to do that stuff! Had a great chat with Anthony who runs the Pleasance and he is such a good dude to hang out with, he did nothing but praise me up and make me feel welcome and lovely, what a nice bloke! He enjoys the fact that he and I always make cash at the fringe, and we share that common bond! The other thing I love about my Edinburgh run is the sheer amount of regulars who come to see my year after year, that actually makes me cry a wee bit when I see folk make a huge effort to get to Edinburgh come see me and then go home! Many just come to see me! That is touching! I am also having great fun with Ashley as I missed her terribly when she was in London and its good hanging out with her. I have had a few late nights up at the Gilded balloon loft bar and met loads of kind folk, nice people who aren’t creepy or too sycophantic. My mate Monica is coming up next weekend and I can’t wait to spend time with her, she is just a big fucking bag of love and fun for me. When we are in London she is always too busy as she owns her own PR Company and looks after famous chef’s like Heston Blumenthal and other giants of cooking, so we never get a minute to ourselves, now we can PARTY in Edinburgh. We can eat burgers and giggle, that’s what we do…yes I know it sounds exciting doesn’t it? Well to us IT IS! Had a laugh the other day when I jumped in a taxi to get to Nicholas Parsons show where I was a guest, the cab managed to mount the pavement and almost kill a man. That man was Steve Bennett from The Chortle website, he is a big reviewer and it made me laugh. When Steve jumped out of the way of the cab, I hung out the window and shouted “Next time Bennett!” I am sure he got a fright and that made me laugh yet again! I am still well into Spotify though now that it is very popular the irritating adverts on it are getting more frequent and longer than ever, so I have developed new finger skills to automatically mute the sound when the incessant Paulo Nautini music advert comes on and especially when that awful Amy McDonald advert appears, am so glad my mute button is handy and I switch to ITunes library when the fucking long adverts kick in….that was tip for people like me who hate adverts! Just put your ITunes library on a new tab and switch! So, things are going well my big giant 175 seater venue with aircon and disabled access and are selling well and that is good. The show is going great guns and do come and see me? Pleasance Dome 7pm (it’s just beside the big upside down cow) come say hi. By the way if you feel like voting for your favourite comic go to this link register and do so! http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/447325 |
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Edinburgh loves its rain and it likes to mix it with wind. The weather has been a bit iffy but we are storming through it. I am past half way through the fringe and I have only had one review. It was a five star review but one nonetheless. PR companies are good at getting reviews in for comics, they meet the reviewer for a drink, chat with them afterwards, explain parts of the show that deserve five stars in case the reviewer didn’t get it and then let the reviewer go as soon as they have secured a date for it going to press, preferably early on as it helps numbers. Well, I don’t have PR and am relying on the reviewers coming to my show, not drinking my cash but enjoying what I do and then heading off without so much as a by your leave from me, but hopefully happy with my work! My audiences have been just wonderful and the numbers have been great. Some people are still doming 2 for 1s and/or cancelling their show on the night due to low numbers. The fringe is screaming ‘best ticket sales ever’ but that includes all the free tickets printed and there are more shows across the board this year, so it does appear to be more ticket sales but there are just more shows! I am lucky that despite practically no reviews and no pr I have a core audience that come to see me, I love chatting outside on the wee wall after my gig, come down for a natter! I did an episode of Just a Minute and it really is funny and scary at the same time. Sue Perkins is a genius at the game as well as Paul Merton; I was just constantly repeating myself over and over again, as if repeating was the real object of the game. Ashley and I are having good fun, I love having quality time and a good old nattering with her. Her love of all things geeky astounds me; she is obsessed with William Shatner, Podcasts about sci-fi and listens to some ancient station podcast about Sherlock Holmes which is constantly interrupted with adverts for tonic wine! Its proper old and makes me giggle when I hear Basil Rathbone’s plumy tones. The late night gigs have been fun as well, Girls with Guns at Gilded Balloon are just awesome and if you have time in the afternoon go see King of Everything at GRV, just some recommends from me! Edinburgh is cold but my best mate Monica is coming up from London and spending the weekend with me! Hurrah! Am missing husband and Ashley is off to Amsterdam this week, so all things are go. Come see the show, if nothing else just to be astounded at my interpretation of a church name in Maryhill, Glasgow. It even makes me snort out of my nose. Pleasance Dome 7pm every night till 31st August. |