Crowds are back, but what about the comedy?
Last Friday afternoon I flew up from London to the Edinburgh Fringe and last Saturday evening I flew back. It was the cheapest way except for a National Express coach and I had buggered my back a few days before so did not fancy spending hour upon hour in one position in a cramped seat.
I went up to see Janey Godley’s Not Dead Yet comedy show because she is the single most multi-talented creative person I have ever met. And she didn’t disappoint. She gets better and even better.
After the show, I talked to another member of the audience – someone not in any way connected to the comedy industry but a regular Fringe-goer for years and years. In other words, an ‘ordinary’ audience member who goes up to Edinburgh just to see the comedy shows.
I asked her what she thought of the post-Covid Fringe. It was certainly crowded on Friday/Saturday; it felt back to normal as far as the crowds went.
Janey, as is normal for her, had a 100% sell-out show.
My ‘ordinary’ audience member, who prefers to remain anonymous, had gone to comic Phil Kay’s show the previous night in which he roamed round the streets of Edinburgh with his audience. That was his show. She was impressed:
He had about 20 or 30 people in his audience. He stopped at various places and told us about various experiences he had had in each place. Very funny experiences. Uniquely eccentric. The eccentricity hit a very high level.
I had seen him a couple of times before. Once I was trapped on a bus with him. I used my friend as a human shield. I thought I would go and see him again this year because I thought it would be an experience and I thought, as it was a walk, I would be able to run away if I needed to.
Where has Phil Kay not been? He’ll suddenly say: “Oh, I know a man who sells Morris Marina parts in Sri Lanka.” He’s had his fingers in so many pies. I’ve never known anybody who goes so fast from one mad experience to the next. He seems to end up naked a lot in his stories.
He was great.
But there seems to be more anger at the Fringe shows this year – Anger on stage from the comedians.
I saw three other shows yesterday, back-to-back, from people I had previously enjoyed. And there was anger from the stage in all three. It was one show after the next. Anger anger anger. Three in a row. It felt like it was a genuine anger aimed at the audience.
Covid has messed things up so much. People not having been on stage for a while. People not being able to earn money and then having life experiences that were horrific and then also things like TikTok.
People were going viral with ridiculous, nasty TikTok things.
People on TikTok and other sites were getting all this money and all the attention when the comedy performers, chipping away at their craft, couldn’t work.
Has comedy come back to its full pre-Covid state? I don’t think so. I think people are still upset a bit.
One of the well-known acts I had seen before – very experienced – he’s done quite a lot of telly – was, this year, really just practising his show. It wasn’t billed as a ‘Work in Progress’.
He told the audience he would have it down pat in the future. He said he didn’t want to look at his notes. He would just recall things and then say things but…
It wasn’t really ready as a show.
And, this year, I feel a definite hatred of the English.
I was at a show performed by an Irish comedian yesterday and she called me out because I was English. She picked on me and said there was a certain English smile that denoted something and I’d just smiled at something. Big distaste for the English. I understand those things, but not everyone’s that English stereotype. She didn’t know I’m half Irish. Just because you speak with an English accent, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re English. I understand she’s in a very bad place in life – her husband had a huge stroke and now he’s in a wheelchair.
In the next show I saw, a black male comedian was angry about English women and the way they react. I’m a white English woman who has lived in the States, has been in a bikers’ gang, lived with a black retired cop. I’m highly sensitive to racism against black people, but at what point am I myself having racism used against me because I’m white or because I’m English?
The black comic, like the Irish woman, had gone through bad experiences – his dad had died.
I suppose you have to perform comedy assuming people have not travelled; but you don’t know their experiences. I think what some comedians should remember is that, if you insult people enough, they’re not going to come back to your show. If it’s constant abuse towards the members of the audience in a show, it’s going to put you off.
The third show I saw was a British-born Indian. He was just constantly talking about white people, the way they are and kind of dumbing them down. I understand that too but, if it goes on through the whole show like that and you in the audience are the dumb person – if the audience are constantly the butt of his jokes – it’s not really that funny and you’re not going to bother seeing his next show.
Again, like the other two comics, bad things had happened to him – His dad had died from cancer – his treatment was delayed because of Covid – AND his mum had died from Covid – they would not give her the jab at that time.
I do understand the anger and I do understand they’re all in bad places but I sat there after the third show and thought… Well, when people start to have a go at you for being English repeatedly or being white – three shows in a row – you’re like WHAT THE HELL??
At what point do you start to think: This is a kind of racism and it’s kind of intense.
I go to different ethnicities of comedy because there ARE so many now, which is great and I like that. But at what point do you think the acts are being over-sensitive? When it’s three in a row, you start to think…
A few years back, there was another comedian rolling about on the floor. I think he had mental health problems at the time and couldn’t cope. He was rolling about on the floor saying how difficult it was to get up and do these shows night after night and the audience had no understanding of the pressure he was under. When somebody got up to leave, he said: “Do you think my show’s shit?” and the guy said: “Well, I don’t want to sit through this.”
It was horrible, really, because the comic was mentally in a bad place and to see the way people treated him was…
I thought it was terrible what the ‘fans’ did to Janey Godley tonight.
She has cancer. She said she wasn’t meeting people afterwards because she’s on chemotherapy but someone got her off the stage to sign a jumper. Someone should have passed that jumper to her. But, because Janey seems a kind person, it set off a whole wave. To get pictures taken with her. Not one of those people thought: We could kill her by touching her and being round her.
There was a woman in the row in front of me wearing a (health) mask and she went to have her picture taken with Janey and pulled her mask down and tried to put her arm round her and Janey said No about the arm-round.
But the woman shouldn’t have been standing next to her.
Janey’s immune system’s completely compromised. The reason you wear a mask is to stop you infecting other people. The woman wore the mask when she was sitting in the audience but pulled it down when she stood next to Janey for the photo. I thought it was an outstanding display of selfishness. People were taking advantage of her. Her kindness.
There’s anger from a lot of comedians – not Janey – but the audiences are a bit unsettled too.
With Phil Kay, there was none of that. It was an escape into a mad world which makes you laugh and makes you happy.
You go to see a comedian to escape, to be taken out of your world. There’s nothing better than a good laugh.
But things have not got back to normal.
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