One day a law will be passed that bans anyone from interviewing or talking to a comedian before 12pm on any given day. The exception to this rule would if the comedian had been up all night and was still awake, which might marr the interview somewhat, or if the said comedian is in a different time zone. I had a phone interview this morning at 10am. It was a nice interview, by a nice journalist all about Twitter comedy stuff, but this does not make up for me feeling really bloody knackered. The problem is, there is no time for napping in Edinburgh. I have a succession of three shows to do today just between 1pm and 7pm and what I need for someone to eek in a tony siesta somewhere in the middle. What I think is that we need to relocate the Edinburgh Festival to Spain. Sure the heat inside the venues will be much hotter, but this will be compensated for by the 2-6 break for sleeping and the replacement of greasy fried grub with fresh tapas. Sure the audience won’t understand half the shows but this will be made up for with beaches and the fact that they also wouldn’t be able to type up their own reviews on edfringe.com. All I’m saying is maybe I should suggest this to the board. Any maybe they will tell me to piss off.
Went to see Daniel Kitson yesterday. Its that time of the festival where that’s what I do. He’s the only act I ever book up for in advance, and then generally get to Edinburgh and wish I’d booked for others in advance too. Such is my naivety. Still Kitson was the little bit of the festival I was really looking forward to. Like most people who’ve ever heard of him, I only found out about Kitson through a friend that told me I really should go see him, way back at the Fringe in 2005. I went and sat by myself and watched his two hour stand-up show at the Stand and was completely blown away. It was heart warming, lovely, meaningful and most importantly very very funny. I had only been doing stand-up for a very short amount of time and had no idea that you could do that with it. I left feeling a warm glow and some inspiration. Not that I’ve ever written anything like that or probably ever will, but it got me to realise that there is always the potential to make people do a lot more than laugh just by talking to them. The fact that he was never on the telly or radio, made that performance seem even more special and I set about telling lots of people about it as I wanted them all to see it too. I realise I was fairly late to the bandwagon as he had won the Perrier several years before and was very well known at the Fringe.
I followed this Kitson sighting up by enforcing my family and Layla to come with me to see ‘It’s The Fireworks Talking’ in 2007, which goes down as one of my favourite shows ever and subsequently got all the Douiebs hooked too. Then in the years that followed I’ve made several of his theatre and storytelling shows, worked with him at one big charity gig and sadly also missed some of his shows which have made me kick myself for not being quick enough with tickets. But every year he does something, I look forward to it. Sadly last night was not as impressive as usual. Not that it wasn’t good. No, in fact as he said himself, a not ready Kitson is still brilliant. But the show wasn’t finished. It was evident in several ways, and not just because he repeatedly told us it wasn’t. Firstly, and most importantly, it didn’t have that feel to a show that I want when I go to see him. That warm glow as you leave or that slightly tearful yet mouth hurting from laughing feel. It started late then overran, something I wouldn’t have been too bothered with but it was late, hot and I was sitting on a stool that made my arse numb. Lastly his stuttering was at a high, which meant he wasn’t comfortable with it, and he repeated words more often that normal. Two very small, overly picky points but if you’ve seen him before you will notice them. And I felt that after paying £10 and looking forward to it all year, it wasn’t quite enough. As I said, it’ll still probably be one of the best things I see all fringe, but after seeing Rhys the other night I feel like the few people I look up to in comedy haven’t been bothered this year, which is a shame. Seeing Kitson’s theatre show on Saturday which I hear is great so it’ll probably fix all that.
Some more reviews for me. All very nice. Huzzah!
Chortle – http://www.chortle.co.uk/shows/edinburgh_fringe_2009/t/16958/tiernan_douieb%3A_28_years_later/review
One4Review.com – http://www.one4review.com/Comedy_/comedy2009/tiernan_douieb_.htm
Three Weeks one will be online soon and they also say nice things in their Comedy Club 4 Kids review too. Take that ‘Chris, UK’! (from edfringe.com)
