15th August onwards...
Jump to:15th August - Scrummy Chocolate Fudge Cake
16th August - The Bruntsfield Triangle
17th August - Enormous Psychedelic Marble
18th August - Hello Mum!
15th August - Scrummy Chocolate Fudge Cake
Get up. Start the walk into town. Buy an Evening News, hot off the press, as Noel's review should be in there by now. It is, with the hoped for four stars, and some lovely quotable bits - "a committed exponent of comedy in its purest form", and "With think layers of creamy one-liners, wedged between delightful slices of surreal word play and presented in a gloriously unpretentious style that never takes itself in the least bit seriously, this is a scrummy chocolate fudge cake of a show with icing on top". We were pleased...
Into the city centre. Lunch in EH1 on the High Street. Meet up with Noel and Sandra who are busily putting the review on Noel's posters in the Tron. Noel's off doing busy things so Sandra and I have a shopping day - popping in and out of record shops and silly gift shops. Stop for tea and chat in a cafe I can't remember the name of but it has sunflowers on it. Work our way back up the High Street towards the Tron, flyer for the gig, go to the gig. Quite a respectable crowd queuing outside - must have read the paper.
I wonder why they aren't allowed in yet. I go in, to see Mark and Noel hunting through the props. Turns out that the beard is missing... which is why I'm out shopping for a fake beard at 7.45 in the evening. Joke shop is shut. Damn. Ask passers by if any of them know where I might get a beard at this time of night, which gets some laughs. Gift shop by the Tron are helpful and suggest the hair off a joke Tam O'Shanter but we've got no string to tie it on with. He'll have to do without.
Get back to the venue. Explain the lack of beard to Mark backstage. They do without. Gets a laugh despite lack of beard, but the show has gone well anyway, which is good as there's a reviewer from The List in. I'll have to buy one tomorrow. Beard, that is. Don't think The List comes out for a while.
Noel and Sandra have tickets for a theatre show called Wasted and I tag along. Two black comedies by an Australian company. Great characterisations and interesting subjects - the first, bank robbers looking for a place to hide burst into the hotel room of a wheelchair user, the second, one man at a funeral crying his eyes out while everyone else obviously hated the deceased's guts. The endings were a bit obvious but I loved the characters and they were very well done. I always like a good comedy vicar...
Noel has to go early as he's doing a gig at the Honeycomb. When the plays are finished Sandra and I follow. Ask directions at Bannermans. Man there tells us that it's the Peppermint Lounge that changed it's name. He's right about that, I remembered then that it was called the Honeycomb. We go there. The gig is not there. It's at the new Honeycomb, which is somewhere else.
We find the new Honeycomb. The bouncer won't let us in with our tea, as it's a nightclub. The logic of this defies us, and also amuses Jarred Christmas who is compering, as we tell him why we are late in. He is also unaware that Noel is on next and announces the wrong act. A moment of confusion. Jarred tries to liven up the audience with a dance about bananas, then Noel comes on. Audience comatose.
Noel tries a bit of his act, then his own version of the banana dance. He's starting to look a bit desperate. It's one of those audiences that don't react. The acts hate this as they can't tell if they're doing okay or not. He invites heckles and gets no reaction to that either so assumes they're enjoying it.. The Mongolian throat singing goes down quite well though. He comes out of it with a good round of applause but it looked like he was having a hard time. Sandra and I are feeling a bit sorry for all the acts. Hope they got paid. We all go off home for a well-earned early night.
16th August - The Bruntsfield Triangle
Got a different bus into town today. Down to Holyrood House and then up the Royal Mile - beautiful view of Arthur's Seat in the sun but I don't think we're going to get time to climb it today as I got up quite late and Sandra's train is at 5 pm. So get quite a bit of flyering done. And bought the beard. Eventually settled on "The Lumberjack" style.
Noel helps Sandra and her big bag leave for Waverley Station, leaving me and Jonathan as the "Noel James and Company" PR machine for a bit. Jonathan is flyering I think, and I have been entrusted with the highlighter and a brief to colour in the best bits of the reviews we have stuck around everywhere. Does look much more eye-catching, especially in the twilight, which is when Noel's show is, luckily.
More flyering. Bump into the star of "Ballet Who?" who I have seen before at a Rainer Hersch show so we say hello. Then Noel's show - again. Still makes me laugh though. I'm the lucky one to get my head scratched this evening. Beard is totally the wrong colour but Noel and Mark are enthusiastic that it is "better than the old one". Not sure if they're just being nice. Got a good laugh though. The jester bit is better now as well. We've been discussing where that should go and it keeps moving around. Can't tell you too much in case you are coming to see it. It's nice to see them polishing the show even during the run - Noel is one of those acts who never gets complacent, he's always trying to make the show better.
I'm going to Mark's other show this evening (The Off the Kerb Roadshow) which is at 11 pm so wander off with Noel for a bit as he wants to see a film before he does a gig at The Stand this evening. First cinema is actually a shell of girders ("Well, there used to be one there") but we walk up the street to another one. We are around Tollcross somewhere.
Noel gets a ticket for a film called "Sleepy Time Gal" but I'm going to Mark's show and the film won't finish early enough so we have a drink in the cafe at the cinema before Noel goes in for the film. Don't know this part of town all that well so manage to walk back the wrong way and end up in Bruntsfield. I'm sure I got lost here a previous year. Perhaps it's like the Bermuda Triangle.
Re-orientate myself and walk back the right way. Make it to the Pleasance just in time but am starving so buy what food there is here (Pringles and nuts). Show is a ball, great fun. Can now add Jason John Whitehead to the acts I've seen - Canadian "dude" type of guy. Mark's got a few other friends in and they're going to Late and Live. I weigh my tiredness against the attractiveness of the lineup and tiredness wins, so I make my way home via an Alldays for milk and a Pot Noodle. Just really wanted a drink of milk and a Pot Noodle. You get like that sometimes.
17th August - Enormous Psychedelic Marble
After a week or so at the Festival the days just start to merge together and you can't remember what you did when. Lots of today same as the other days. Flyered a bit, shopped a bit. Had an ice cream today though. Ran out of flyers again. Went around the Royal Mile with the flyer I had left showing them the picture and coming out with the old cliché "Have you seen this man?" which is a new gimmick to say I suppose. Found Noel, got more flyers. Got offered a ticket for Charles Fleischer's show (he did the voice of Roger Rabbit). Noel is keen to go so just as well I got him one as well. We hear that there is a rumour going round the comedy people that one of the Newsrevue-type shows have "borrowed" one of Noel's jokes. No real way of finding out short of going to see it though.
Have
a break - go down further towards Holyrood House to shop. Get a nice
crystal ball - am told it is some kind of quartz with something put in it, you
roll it around and the pattern sort of wobbles around. Can't explain it
really. Looks like an enormous psychedelic marble. Or, as in this
picture, a very small blue Jupiter.
Then off to see the Hollow Men. Funny little character sketches. Particularly liked the mocked up flyers at the start, the monk sketch and the Python meets Gilbert and Sullivan bit at the end. Straight back to the Tron my my 7pm flyer. Bought a fish t-shirt from the nice t-shirt lady by the Tron - Japanese style Koi dipping its fin into (under?) the surface of the water.
Noel's show again. Blinder. Noel and Mark are relaxed enough to improvise a bit - shows the audience they are confident and enjoying themselves and I think this makes the audience enjoy the show more. They certainly seemed happy enough, anyway.
Short drinkie then Mark goes off to his other show while Noel, myself and another of Noel's friends called Karen go off for food. Then she's off to a show (can't remember what) and we go to Charles Fleischer, American comic, not really my kind of thing. Not witty enough. Rest of the audience liking it though. Noel has to leave early as he is meeting Karen and they are going to Late & Live, and gets picked on of course, but comes back with a witty line and gets his own laugh out of the audience. Becomes a bit of a running gag after he has gone. Explain to Charles Fleisher after the show that Noel had to go and that he is a comic as well, which explained the laugh as he went...
Late & Live sold out so I'm not going to get in even though everyone else did. Oh well.
Finally
climbed Arthur's Seat today! Mark's off with his parents who are visiting
and Noel is busy with a camera crew for a Welsh cable TV channel or some such
today. I could do with seeing a bit of Edinburgh that isn't Fringe for a
change...
It's a big tor really. I grew up near Dartmoor so have climbed a few extinct volcanoes in my time - quite an easy slope and then a huge knobbly rock at the top (solidified magma chamber you see).
Got
to the top. In the cloud layer so wet and windy. Bizarrely there's a
better mobile signal here than anywhere in Edinburgh so ring my Mum and
Dad! Was going to play my ocarina at the top but it's too wet. Rain
stops play.
The way back down, once you are out if the wind, is wonderfully calm and restful.
Stop
off at the ruin of St Anthony's Chapel on the way down. Have some little
poems I keep on my person for eventualities such as this. Pull one out at
random - a Max Ehrmann poem. "... I am not always on the highway that
leads to this hilltop, but I have seen the lighted road stretching on and
on..."
A bit soggy. Everyone on the Royal Mile flyering is also soggy though, so I fit in. Wander round the shops for a bit, then down to Noel's play to flyer the people coming out. They've overrun so I only get about 15 mins to flyer at the Tron before the show starts unfortunately. There are quite a few people in though.
Me, Noel, Jonathan and Harriet (who I don't think I've mentioned before, old friend of Noel's and another comic) go off to try to find somewhere that isn't packed so we can eat. Long waits for tables everywhere, and because Harriet is off to see a show and Noel is doing Peter Buckley-Hill's show we have to hurry up, so we have chips instead. Noel is buying. I think he must have made a profit today again. Very unusual for a Fringe show to actually make money, and bless Noel, takes his profit and uses it to feed his friends.
Harriet goes off to try and find the Pleasance Dome while the rest of us go to the Three-Quarter Bar. Pretty busy, but seeing as this is one of the only free shows at the Fringe and has acts on from other shows you have to pay for, I'm surprised it's not stuffed full every night, but there you go. Catch the end of Jason John Whitehead again, Rex Carmichael and Noel headlining. Everybody very good, and after the show people are coming up to us to get flyers for Noel's show, which is always a very good sign.