Edinburgh: critic Copstick ejected from Gilded Balloon; Freestival venue burned

Papa CJ with two passing strangers in Edinburgh’s Cowgate

On Sunday, I thought Papa CJ was going back to India on Monday.

Then he announced an extra show in Edinburgh tonight (Tuesday). I had no idea how or why.

I didn’t ask him until last night.

“I had 18 back-to-back full-houses,” he told me. “Then, during a coffee chat with (comedy critic) Kate Copstick, she mentioned it would be great to be able to say ‘extra shows added’. Also a few people who wanted to see me weren’t able to. So I found out what rooms might be available, changed my return flight to India and added one show. The only catch is that there is no publicity about it out there. So I’m hoping people come in on the back of flyering and social media. Also, in all honesty, I’m really enjoying the response the show is getting from audiences… so subconsciously I probably just got greedy for one more gig.”

So do I know what is happening in Edinburgh?

Well, to be honest, I have never claimed to.

Arthur Smith on Royal Mile tour

This was proved yet again yesterday when this blog’s South Coast correspondent Sandra Smith (who is not in the comedy business but seems to know everybody at the Fringe) told me that, this year, Arthur Smith is probably not doing his famous – some might say infamous – last-weekend-of-the-Fringe tour of the Royal Mile.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he’s not here at the weekends.”

“Ah,” I said.

“He will be doing it next year,” Sandra told me.

“Ah,” I said, as if this was no surprise to me.

Last night, critic Kate Copstick was ejected from the Gilded Balloon venue for falling asleep in the Wine Bar. Thankfully not during a show.

The Edinburgh Fringe can be tiring even for people who are not performing.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been seeing around seven shows each day (each show = one hour) and, last night, I went to bed at 04.30am and got up at 08.30am.

But that’s my choice.

My highlights yesterday were Mathilda Gregory’s hour-long show on How To Be Fat – just the right balance of comedy and serious fascination. I could say comedy is often better with some meat to get your teeth into but, of course, would never dream of being so shallow.

An even more quirky show was Accident Avoidance Training For Cutlery Users in which Jimmy Frinton (performing as character Ian Crawford) … erm … well, he does what it says in the title. He gives a lecture on how to avoid getting injured by your own cutlery.

Safety can be comic or not.

Earlier today, I blogged about the eccentricities of the PBH Free Fringe.

There has been drama too at the Freestival, who were ejected from their presumed Cowgatehead venue by PBH and belatedly found homes in the New Waverley Arches.

The Freestival Arches: site of a weekend break-in and burning

In the early hours of Saturday morning – around 4.00am to 5.30am – a person or persons unknown broke into one of their arches and their chairs got burned.

“Somebody broke in,” Dan Adams of Freestival told me today,”and appears to have known enough about how we work to get the generator going and plugged in the bar power to the generator. But the lights are on a different power ring which they appear to have been too pissed to realise. So they went into the venue proper and plugged our lights into the bar circuits with an extension causing overload to build.

“They stole one of our PA units and about three cases of booze and left stuff running which caused a fire because it wasn’t set up correctly. The venue’s 40 chairs are covered in burned particulate. Part of the bar burned where the fire started melted cables etc and pump beer coolers. On Sunday it was all hands to the pump and yesterday and we got it all turned around and ready by about 12.30pm. No damage to the other arches at all.”

In Edinburgh, that counts as a happy ending.

The Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards shortlist etc etc at the Edinburgh Fringe

Papa CJ with publicity for his extra Edinburgh Fringe show

At the Edinburgh Fringe, time moves simultaneously fast and slow. It seems interminably long but we are already a week away from it ending. They say a week is a long time in politics. At the Fringe, in a few brief hours things can change dramatically.

At about 6.30pm last night, I had a chat for a future blog with Indian comedian Papa  CJ. He was flying home today. Then, this morning, I got a message that he was going to do an extra show tomorrow night at 5.15pm.

No idea what happened there and haven’t had time to ask.

Among other shows yesterday, I saw Jordan Brookes’ Adventures in Limited Space. Before the show actually started, he mentioned to his techie (in front of the audience) that he had had six Fosters Comedy judges in and had had a Daily Mirror 5-star review that morning. True or false, it’s a terrible way to start a show. Also, mentioning me being in the audience three times is counter-productive. Jordan – an actor – has a show in there somewhere, but in another three years perhaps.

The always excellent Alexander Bennett is only annoying because of his youth and the amount of hair he has. His show which promised I Can Make You a Moron largely failed to because he attracts and retains non-moronic audiences (myself excluded).

Chris Lynam. New act. New face. Eric The Fred

Then there was Chris Lynam’s Eric the Fred. Chris was, legendarily, one of the Greatest Show on Legs troupe with Martin Soan and Malcolm Hardee. He gained some fame/infamy by sticking a firework (ideally a three-stage Roman Candle) between his buttocks and having it lit to the strains of Ethel Merman singing There’s No Business Like Show Business. Malcolm Hardee had tried this first but, with less buttock control than Chris, had let the incendiary droop and set fire to his own pubic hair. Chris was and is made of sterner stuff.

Chris’ Eric The Fred show is far from this and brings to mind Monte Carlo style mime and clown shows of the 1950s and 1960s and very up-market performance art shows. It would not go amiss in Las Vegas and is astonishingly sophisticated, complex and professional. It demonstrates where a bit of pyrotechnic nudity can take you if you have immense talent.

Which brings us to the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards. We drew up a shortlist this afternoon. There are three categories:

• The Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality
• The Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for best publicity stunt plugging an act or show at the Fringe
• The Malcolm Hardee ‘Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid’ Award

The man it commemorates – Malcolm Hardee

The judges this year are: Marissa Burgess, Kate Copstick, John Fleming, Jay Richardson and Claire Smith.

I reckon there should probably ideally be three nominees in each category.

We started with 13 possibilities for the Comic Originality award and cut them down to 4.

There were 3 for the Cunning Stunt Award.

And 3 (which became 4) for the Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid Award.

The reason we had 4 not 3 nominees for the Comic Originality and Million Quid Awards was that we could not agree on whom to knock out. So it should be an interesting discussion we have at Friday lunchtime when we decide the winners.

The acts we finally agreed on for the shortlist were, in the nearest I can manage to alphabetical order:

COMIC ORIGINALITY

• Michael Brunström
• Richard Gadd
• The Story Beast
• Mr Twonkey

CUNNING STUNT

• Miss Behave – for spreading around town large bits of brown cardboard with odd sayings on them and no show title but the hashtag MBGS (promoting Miss Behave’s Game Show)
• Matt Roper – for getting access to critic Kate Copstick’s Facebook account and posting a message apparently from her praising himself)
• Abigoliah Schamaun – for adding review stars from non-existent publications to her posters

ACT MOST LIKELY TO MAKE A MILLION QUID

• Sarah Callaghan
• Phil Ellis
• Laurence Owen
• Al Porter

Irrelevant but surely not unexpected picture of mentioned Lewis Schaffer

During our lively discussion, the name of Lewis Schaffer – almost inevitably – cropped up.

After Lewis Schaffer’s shocked reaction to his recent 5-star review in The Scotsman, Kate Copstick suggested: “If we really want to devastate Lewis Schaffer and possibly his chances for a future career, we should give him the award for the Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid.”

We decided against this as it might have made him tumble into an even steeper spiral of depressed hopelessness at the possibility of imminent success.

On a more tragic level, my toothache pops up occasionally, though still at a low level, and today, when I phoned up my dentist to make an appointment next week, I found out he was on holiday in India until 14th September.

I can only pray his plans are as fluid as Papa CJ’s.

Comedian and comedy critic in fist fight at the Edinburgh Fringe yesterday

Charmian’s show about early comic days

Comedians and critics tend to have a love-hate relationship. Critics tend to love comedy and comics tend to hate critics.

Yesterday morning, I bumped into comic Charmian Hughes. She told me she gets nervous when critic Steve Bennett of the influential Chortle comedy website comes to see her shows, but not for the reason you might think.

“My show (When Comedy Was Alternative) has been going well and getting huge laughs,” she told me, but I’ve always had a phobia about Chortle, because Steve Bennett reminds me of my dead mother. She used to wear a big hat and gatecrash my gigs when I was seven.”

Steve Bennett, owner and editor of Chortle website

“But Steve,” I pointed out, “does not wear a big hat – or any hat.”

“He wears a metaphorical hat,” said Charmian. “It’s a spirituality thing. I would see my mother in the school concert, making her notes. She was a very difficult woman. Steve reminds me of my first boyfriend too – He wore glasses.”

“Wasn’t your first boyfriend disgraced politician Chris Huhne?” I asked.

“You’re going to ruin my life with this blog,” said Charmian. “And everything’s been going so well so far. It’s a new show, but it’s getting better and better… except when I see my dead mother in the audience.”

Joz Norris in his inexplicable freezer last night

According to Alexander Bennett’s highly inventive late-night gameshow Hell To Play, all comedians end up in hell. Alexander – all hail to him – could be a wonderfully effortless, reassuring and self-assured mainstream TV gameshow host, but I suspect might not want to be.

(From left) Eleanor Morton, Joz Norris, Alexander Bennett, Michael Brunstrom

Last night, Joz Norris and Archie Maddocks were competing, with Michael Brunström in a black, backless dress as Countess Elizabeth Báthory aka Countess Dracula. It was a role to rival Mary Quant on a whaling ship.

Inexplicably, when I arrived at the building early (it is the Cowgatehead, so you have to allow extra time to actually find any venue within it) Joz Norris was in what looked like a glass-and-metal coffin. In fact, it turned out to be a freezer. This had nothing whatever to do with the show. And it was not an attempt to win an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award. I have no explanation that seems at all likely.

I had seen Joz earlier when he sat behind me at Michael Brunström’s unique and wonderfully absurdist The Golden Age of Steam. Later, we bumped into each other at the late-night ScotMid grocery store. It seems possible Joz Norris may be stalking me.

Last night, I also saw the Papa CJ: Naked show in which Papa CJ almost stripped physically and did strip psychologically. Voted Asia’s Best Stand-up Comedian last year, he is off back to India tomorrow with no immediate plans to return. Our loss. VERY smoothly professional, great audience control and, with stories of his marriage, divorce and child, very touching.

You may have noticed I have not mentioned yesterday’s Grouchy Club, the daily chat show I am co-hosting with comedy critic Kate Copstick.

Peter Michael Marino in his showbiz romp Late With Lance!

Yesterday, I was not co-hosting it, because Michael Brunström’s Golden Age of Steam, here for a limited run, overlapped. But I turned up to see the show which precedes us – Peter Michael Marino’s Late With Lance, a staggeringly energetic showbizzy romp starring his OTT alter ego Lance. I saw it with my comedy chum Janey Godley.

Janey is not a woman to mess with. She was once arrested when the police found a whole cache of firearms hidden in her family home.

After Peter Michael Marino’s show, she and I went into the lounge bar of the Counting House where Kate Copstick was waiting to go in for The Grouchy Club. The two of them got into conversation and pretty soon a fist fight erupted. I took photographs. It seemed the right thing to do.

Kate Copstick (left) and Janey Godley face off to start the fight in the Counting House bar yesterday

After the fight, Janey looked for solace in the arms of American comedian Bronston Jones

There are two things to be learned from this, both relating to my blog a couple of days ago when I discussed the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award.

One is that, of course, you should never believe the announced context of the pictures you see.

The other is that, as I have said before, during the Edinburgh Fringe, self-publicity is everything.

The Grouchy Club is at The Counting House, 3.45pm daily until next Saturday.

Janey’s show Honest To Godley! is at The Counting House, 7.45pm daily until next Sunday 30th August.

The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show is in the Counting House on Friday 28th, 11.00pm-01.00am.