What I saw in Edinburgh.

[slemslempike]

Previews
John Gordillo
A preview in Hammersmith rather than in Edinburgh, actually, with nerdcakes. I'd suggested it because I liked his show last year, which was mostly Marxism and Daddy issues, so thought of Nerdcakes. His show this year was a highly "original" look at sex as an economic transaction, and though he occasionally threw in a pretence at equality, mostly he talked about his girlfriend as a product he was consuming rather than a consumer in his own right, and never once mentioned women as actually enjoying sex for themselves. He seemed not to think that it was misogynistic. Also I was distracted by the fact that last year he'd talked about his son a lot, and when I saw this he said "I'd never wanted to be a father" and then talked only about his pseudo-stepdaughter, which also made me uncomfortable. He needed to be fairly nasty about her in order for the "and I love her" [not in that way] reveal at the end, but I think he overdid it substantially.

Stephen Carlin
I'd liked him when I saw him support Stewart Lee with Jen a few years ago, and wanted to see what he was like on his own. I remember very little about him, other than a joke about foiling a paedophile by asking if he was a paedophile to which the answer was no. (Also I saw Mark Thomas outside.)

Eleanor Tiernan
Her delivery made me nervous.

Jon Richardson
I like Jon Richardson a lot, and this was lovely, but I was quite surprised that it was nominated for the comedy award. It was in previews though, so perhaps it was more something later on.

Stewart Lee
*happy sigh*

Three Women
A production of Sylvia Plath's poem, which I liked.

Paul Sinha
He likes quizzes! And there was a quiz to take away with you (labelled with the date, so probably a different one every day), only it was too difficult specialised for me to know the answers.

The Hotel
Mark Watson's thing, which won awards and things. I did not like it very much, though I saw one of the first previews, so maybe it was different. As you arrived you were shepherded into different rooms, like a bedroom, a restaurant or the cabaret, and then mini things unfolded around you. I had been directed to the cabaret, which was downstairs, and it wasn't clear to me for a while whether you wandered off on your own, or waited to be redirected, and just where you were allowed to go. I didn't see most of the rooms because I didn't realise that there was another bit upstairs. It made me tense, mostly, which is not their fault.

Tiffany Stevenson
Mentions Malory Towers. Yay.

Hannah Gadsby
I was sitting at the front, and throughout the show I could hear people walking out quite noisily, which might account for her being a bit patchy. But even with this, I liked it a lot, though I think for an hour show it could have been somewhat denser with jokes.

Neil Delamere
I enjoyed it, though I can't now remember anything he said.

The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church
I could not make myself remember it was not real, and kept wanting to know more about the other letters, and how things had unfolded. I was moved (mostly against my will) and loved it.

Then a break for the whole wedding thing, and a few weeks at home, before returning for actual non-preview shows.

Richard Sandling's Perfect Movie
Like the Book Club but with films. The day I went Robin Ince talked about films I didn't know (but it didn't matter) and another man impersonated Sylvester Stallone. I had the opportunity to say that my favourite film was Solarbabies, which Richard Sandling had not heard of, and when other people were explaining it to him not ONE of them mentioned Peter Deluise.

Bec Hill
I was absolutely in love with her until she decided that her perfectly cool show about wanting to be a superhero needed a trite ending. It didn't. (Though perhaps less sniping at geeks would have been nice.) About wanting to be a superhero, with little cartoons and video clips. And a lovely joke about being bitten by a radio.

Mike Wozniak
I have tried to explain to several people how a show that involved him leaning uncomfortably close to people's faces, grasping their shoulders and getting a man to mime being a dog having a plastic bag pulled out of his arse could be so unthreatening, but it was. It was very funny too.

Sarah Millican
In which Dara O'Briain was sitting behind me. Good. Very binary, and "the difference between men and women", but then that was the point of the show, and she handled the more nonsensical biologically deterministic statements well. (Audience Member: "the best thing about being a woman is flirting and getting men to do stuff" SM: "..." AM: "not socially! Just at work." SM: "I'll put that down as "manipulative", shall I?")

Jamie Kilstein
I was a bit grumpy at the start because I felt very much like it was the same old material from an American political comedian, but then realised that actually I had heard his material specifically on one of Daniel Kitson's radio shows, and felt rather guilty. But since he kicked off the show by talking about seeing women walking around in short skirts and heels and wanting to "save them", thinking that they were better than that "and then they open their mouths... and you realise that they're not", I was not predisposed to like him anyway (and he used "we" meaning the people in the room synonymously with straight at one point). I did like the stuff about realising that his dad had shouted a lot because he (JK) was an asshole.

David O'Doherty
I'd never seen him do longer than about 10 minutes before and wondered if I would like it for a full hour, and it turns out I very much do.

Fordy's Lock-In
I wanted to go to a late show with my friend K, who is rather nervous about comedy, so we chose a low-key thing where they sit around and chat. Which was quite nice, but would have been better with slightly more energetic guests.

Carl Sagan is My God... (Robin Ince)
Guests were Mike Wozniak doing stuff from his show about a psychology book on finger science which was still hilarious, and a man doing some sort of rap thing about evolution.

Caroline Mabey
Possibly my favourite thing I saw the entire time. Ended with everyone standing up and singing "owl by myself", so that we were handily placed to give her a standing ovation.

Sarah Bennetto
A little dull. Nice though.

Ladygarden
Sketch show that I'd meant to see last year and didn't - okay. I liked their smock tops more than their actual material.

Wil Hodgson
Trying to vary his stage presence, which meant sitting down while talking over the audience's head. Even if I were not going to be seeing Adam Hills later this year I would still have made the right choice to see him - excellent.

Andrew O'Neill
Hot pink tights with fishnets over. And some very very funny jokes.

Girls with Guns
A man came and sat next to me, and while he cannot help the broadness of his shoulders, he most certainly could have helped crossing his legs so that his knee intruded halfway across my chair. He could also have restrained himself from attempting to talk to me before the show started about being "worried" about it being a "woman's show" - both because he thought it was going to be shit, and because he thought it was going to be "shouty". Arse. Zoe Lyons was compering, with Tiffany Stevenson, Nick Doody and Adams and Rea (a musical double act). All good!

Helen Keen
Last year I saw her show "It is rocket science, actually", and this year she was doing "A primitive Method of Arctic Survival". Lots of similar bits - audience not-quite-participation (someone holding up a face-on-a-stick of the expedition leader, people wearing white caps to be icebergs and an audience-wide distribution of fox's glacier mints. Really interesting too.

Pleasance Live
Fascinating Aida hosting, with Lady Carol, Tiger Lilies, and Camille Sullivan. None of which I would have been desperate to see, but I'm awfully glad I did see them here. The people I was supposed to be seeing it with had a large argument at home (it later transpired) that meant they arrived late (and separately), which I was a bit glad about because it meant I could cry at Camille Sullivan without worrying about people seeing.

John Robins
A break-up show that wasn't misogynistic, which was nice.

Bridget Christie
I had assumed somehow that her time at the Daily Mail had been ages ago, not really quite recently, and so I spent a lot of the show wondering how Stewart Lee took this. Luckily she cleared that up - surprisingly well, considering.

Celia Paquola
When she was "in her head" she clicked and had different lighting, but it wasn't really differentiated from the res of it, which puzzled me.

Andrew Maxwell
In shorts, in a church.

Matt Kirshen
Amiable. Free badges!

Daniel Kitson
I thought I was going to be irritated by the people sitting in front of me, because they seemed garrulous and attempted to engage me in conversation about stools, but it turned out that the danger was from the people next to me, who spent a lot of time whispering that I thought was about whether or not they should leave (I was all for them doing so ASAP), but then turned out to be more about how they should leave. Anyway, this seemed to have been tightened up somewhat from the earlier reports of it being all over the place.

Graceless
A... thing. Five women, dressed variously as Audrey Hepburn, Wonder Woman, a ballet dancer, in pyjamas, a wetsuit, doing....stuff for about an hour. The bit I hated was someone talking about Helen Keller while they had a snorkel in their mouth and saliva dripped down. It was about being girls and women, and there was a bit that was a bit forced in about female circumcision, when they poured red wine over some children's knickers on a line, and another bit where they played very creepy Simon Says.

The School for Scandal
Paul Foot could have been left out of this without any problem whatsoever, but it was worth it for Lionel Blair who has a great face. Also Marcus Brigstocke very good.


Tomorrow I am going to see They Only Come Out at Night: Resurrection with notmarcie, which I am very much looking forward to, though I think I may disgrace myself by getting too frightened.