Coming Across a Man on Calton Hill.

BBQ!
On Sunday, I was in Nottingham, at The Gladstone pub, for a BBQ in the day and a gig in the evening. It was very lovely. The Gladstone is a great pub, with delicious beer (including Castle Rock’s Harvest Pale, a fantastic ale that is endemic to Nottingham, the way Deuchars is to Edinburgh), and the monthly gig is a really good one – if you’re ever in the area, pop along.

Walking from the station to the gig, I passed by a large, quiet cemetery alongside one of the main roads out of the city centre. A full description of the place, Rock Cemetery, is here.

The design and ‘architecture’ of the site was incredible, with the natural rock formations incorporated into the layout, graves perched all about the place, and monuments rising out of stone hollows. Beautiful in the day, terrifying at night. Perhaps five years ago in Edinburgh, I ended up in Greyfriars Kirkyard after a Ghost Tour that was slightly more spooky than we had expected (we had pretty much keeled over from fright at one point). Again, a place that in the daytime was morbidly elegant, but come nightfall became a dark mass of tombs and bones, the silhouettes of angels bearing down from pedestals, hands clasped in prayer.

That same year (whichever it was) I had walked up Calton Hill with a friend at night, to look down on the City – the views were great in the daytime, but the lights made an after-dark view even more spectacular.

This beast is at the top of the Hill. It’s rather cool.

On our way up, we saw a man lying on the steps that led one way up the hill – he seemed fine, and wasn’t injured, so we walked onwards up another path. Calton Hill has a reputation as a bit of hotspot for underage drinking and rent boys (why else would we be there, eh? EH?!), and so we thought no more of it, assuming he was just a dozy drunk or sleepy prostitute having a nap during his coffee break.

After a while at the top of the hill, mainly sitting on the cannons that were up there, and scrambling onto the National Monument, we walked back down, this time coming down the steps that the drunk/prostitute/homeless man had been sleeping on. He had disappeared, but in his place was a Sony Ericsson W600, quite a new phone at the time, and we assumed it was a trap – the phone was the bait, and as soon as we picked it up we’d be snared with fishing line and hauled off to be mugged/raped/force-fed haggis. After several minutes of looking for, and then utilising a big stick to poke the phone with, we were satisfied with the safety of the situation and picked up the phone. At this point it was about 4am in the morning, so we returned to our flat, leaving the task of reuniting phone and owner until the morning.

The next day, we went through the phone and found a contact named Brother, so we called it, and got a message passed on to the phone’s owner to meet us that day so we could give him back his mobile. While we waited to meet up with the man, we looked through his texts and were amazed at the sheer number of women that he had on the go – almost 100% of the texts were from girls, and all contained copious amounts of kisses and affectionate terms. This guy was one hell of a ‘playa’. Impressed, we looked through his photos. This was the exact opposite. Almost 100% of the photos were of men, and all contained copious amounts of willy and balls. Nevertheless, this guy was still one hell of a ‘playa’.

We met him later that day; he thanked us gingerly, before giving us £10 of Scotland’s toy money and a sheepish, hungover grin. Wherever you are, sleepy man from Calton Hill, may your days be many, your troubles be few and your phone always brimming with cocks.

Entertaining children

In July, I’m doing a couple of shows at a childrens’ festival in Wales.

It’s a slight departure from gigging to unruly crowds who are prone to shouting; to unruly crowds who are prone to shouting but aren’t incapacitated with booze, and instead hyped up with sugar. I imagine that the regulation of certain E numbers has made dealing with kids easier, but the stage times of 10am and noon certainly make these shows interesting – who’s even up and about that early, and moreover, who wants to laugh at that time? Kids, clearly (or at least their parents, who use it as excuse to take an eye off the children for 40 minutes [who can blame them?]).

I’ve done a few shows for kids, and they’re good fun, but also distinct from regular shows that have kids in the audience.

While at kids’ shows I’m focusing on entertaining the children, doing things that they can laugh at – a list of which would read:

1. Poo.
2. Wee.
3. Any combination of the above in solid, liquid or gaseous form.

I’m not far off being a kid myself, and I can vaguely remember what else was funny – defiance of authority, talking animals and general rudeness. Hence my onstage companion of a shoe-stealing seal who doesn’t do as he’s told, blows raspberries, and makes up songs about things that the kids shout out (see above list).

He’s called Vyrnwy and that’s him on the left (bottom right is his brother).

While it’s always good to lob in a few jokes for the parents (Vyrnwy’s friend Alfred the well-read red squirrell is constantly “Looking for somewhere to bury his nuts”), the emphasis is always on the kids, and making them laugh. Hence, parents might sit there wondering how a seal in a Wellington boot hopping around the stage, is funny, but as long as the children are giggling and throwing more shoes at him, they’re happy.

Shows with kids in the audience are quite different – shows such as The Oxford Imps‘ Edinburgh runs; Racing Minds’ ‘Aaaand Now For Something Completely Improvised’; and last year’s AAA Batteries (Not Included) with Adam and Liam, were all family friendly, and advertised as such. The Imps’ general audience would be families, a straggle of students, a handful couples, and a bunch of grandparents and children, while the other two shows were quite similar (all these shows were between noon and five o’clock) in their make-up. As such, there’d usually be a few children between around 5 and 8 years old who were probably a bit too young to fully understand a comedy show, but we found that they’d be enjoying it anyway. Laughter is infectious, and while performing a routine based on Roman numerals might not fly with a solely kids’ audience, when performed to a room of adults with a couple of children amongst them, you’d catch the kids chuckling – while some may have been old enough to have learnt all the information needed to get the jokes, they joined in, and found something funny in the tones of voice, expressions, movements or similar – pretty much like a lot of the adults.

This isn’t to say that we ignored children at our non-kids’ shows – we made efforts to involve them, occasionally getting them on stage in the shows (often uninvited, with great fourth-wall-breaking consequences in the improv), and chatting with them in the stand-up. One five year old was most likely the reason for a nice review that we got for AAA Batteries…, as she sat on the stage eating raisins, while cuddling a dinosaur and waving a glowstick, politely answering questions in a bluntly sweet manner, and eventually lending us her toy pterodactyl to rap with, providing a lovely finale. Other notable events were a discussion with a bright young girl called Freya about Norse mythology and the roots of her name, and a particularly precocious boy commandeering the stage to publicise his YouTube channel and describe in great detail his best videos.

Having children in the audience provides something a bit different, a departure from normal stand-up shows, and in my experience, can make them a little more special. Plus, if it weren’t for kids in audiences, we wouldn’t have this:

It’d be interesting to hear of any other comics’ experiences with kids in the audience – in the meantime, I’m going to get ready for my next one.

How not to do a kids’ show.

Preston.

On Saturday I was in Preston, gigging in a tent, in a car park outside the Adelphi pub.

It was part of ‘Bangfest’, a three day music festival with lots of (I’m assuming) local bands and DJs; and a comedy tent was part of the proceedings. One of the organisers was involved in last year’s Preston Tringe (their version of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe), and I had spoken to them about the possibility of doing a show there, in the end, this didn’t happen – I was doing my degree and there wasn’t time to put a show together – but they got in touch to ask if I’d like to do an ‘Edinburgh’ preview as part of the comedy tent at Bangfest.

I’ve been putting together a show for a while, and though it’s not going up to Edinburgh this year (see here for what is), I’m hoping to take it to Leicester Comedy Festival next year, as this year’s show with Adam Hess was really fun, and we managed to sell out 60 seats both days (more down to the promotion of the show by Mike, Shaun and LCF; and the popularity of the festival as a whole, than people coming for our handsome faces), showing that it’s a very good place to try stuff out to really nice audiences.

So on Saturday, I gave the show – my pretentious blurb/poster can be seen here – its first ever run through, and it turned out just fine. There’s a lot that can be lost, and there’s a lot that needs to be added to make the show hang together more, but the general thread worked and listening back to the recording, there were laughs all along the way, and a nice finale that capped it off. Some kind words about the show’s profundity from a philosophy and ethics tutor were also very helpful in allaying fears of any glaring inaccuracy and pseudo-intellectual/philosophical bullshit in there. Hopefully it’ll stay that way, and I can continue to improve it until its next outing.I’ll keep the page updated with details of any further previews, although I don’t expect any for a while, what with Edinburgh fast approaching. 

Thanks to the organisers for having me, and to the audience, the sound tech and to the comics who performed and watched.

The day before Valentine’s Day.

Still alive, I’ve spent the last 6 weeks at University, attempting to learn.

It’s strange, having been in education from the age of four until twenty-one, that’s 18 years of my life learning (if you count the first year we all spent playing in the sandpit as education…I learnt that sand was actually tiny bits of glass, so in an attempt to make some at home, dropped wine bottles into the bath and turned on the hot tap to melt them – after that didn’t work, I just filled the tub with Mum’s bath salts and played in that, until I turned a tap on and ended up choking in thick, gloopy, aromatherapeutic Radoxian gas). 18 years out of 22 years seems like a long time – that’s a scary percentage of almost 82% of my life spent learning; and as a fraction, 18/22 that, even more scarily, cancels to 9/11. Hopefully my education fraction doesn’t ironically correlate to a tremendous waste of life.

I take my exams at the start of June, and as soon as I finish, I’m hot-footing it straight out of Oxford back to Manchester for gigs and a nutrients and vitamins based diet that always seems to be sorely lacking from my college life. It seems strange to have spent almost 3 years studying a degree that doesn’t lead to any particular job that appeals to me – I may be an archaeologist but I really hate digging – but I suppose it teaches you more important things like how to work independently, to think critically, and how to bullshit 1500 word essays twice a week. Term has died down – no more essays, 4 more classes, just a dissertation to write over 4 weeks. That makes it sound almost easy.

I have my 3rd full-length sketch show with Little Dark coming up from the 22nd February – it’s not really getting in the way of anything as it’s my main focus at the moment, I enjoy writing and performing with the guys and each show seems to be better received by the audience. For this one, we’re trying to once again, walk the narrow, frayed tightrope of funny above the pit of dire and offence, and hopefully we won’t fall off along the way.

In other news, I bought myself a lovely little netbook which I’m typing on now – I’m tired of lugging my big, heavy, 30-min battery laptop around, so this tiny, light, 10-hour battery thing seems sensible. It makes me want to write more in any case, so that can only be a good thing. I like writing longer bits, and I don’t do enough of it, having only to focus on short jokes for my stand-up, so I’ll see what happens.

In stand-up news, I’ve got a show lined up for the Edinburgh Fringe with the lovely boys Matt Richardson and Alex Clissold Jones – we’re on the Laughing Horse Free Festival at The Newsroom, every day at 7.45pm – a lovely time in a nice venue, so I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll be doing 20 mins for that show, and have a spate of 20 spots coming up in Oxford which I’m using to figure out what I’m doing for Edinburgh – there’s some lovely new jokes in a routine about poetry which I’m very happy with, and i’ve got a fair few jokes that I’m testing to see if any can make it in – it’s all very exciting for me. March and April (my holidays) are shaping up to be reasonably busy months gig-wise (well, as busy as I’ve ever experienced) so that’s something to look forward to, and I’m very excited to be able to get more experience and hopefully become funnier.

That’s all the self-indulgent rubbish I can write for now, other than to mention www.stereomood.com as a brilliant site if you want music to suit your emotion/mood – right now I’ve got ‘Relaxing’ music on, and it’s very pleasant.

 

Feudal Wythenshawe

While walking down a dusky street

I found it rather pleasant;

Until I had my HTC

Stolen by a peasant.

How dare this rascal ambush me

When I am knight and sire;

And now he’s gone, O I can see

He’s stolen my Desire.