So I had to write a bit about my Festival for
the excellent comedy site Chortle. I hope they will forgive me for reproducing it here as a little preview for their publication of the piece on Wednesday, but as you might imagine things are pretty hectic at the moment and this sums up pretty much how I am feeling. And there's no point in writing it twice in different ways. I am loving being here so far and my flat-mates are ace and we've just had a great big chilli that I made for them and two or three bottles of wine. It will be a shame when the Fringe has to start and ruin all this! ha ha.
My Edinburgh
Richard Herring
So itÂ’s the Monday before the Fringe begins and I am experiencing the calm before the no-longer-calm. I am sitting in a tidy flat, still being obsequiously polite and considerate to my new flatmates and have just got back from the gym, which I plan to go to every day for the next month. I can see no possible reason why any of this will change.
Anticipation is nine/tenths of the pleasure in anything good and I feel almost pregnant with hope for this year’s show. On Thursday I will be giving birth and probably discover that as per usual I will be the single parent of nothing but slight disappointment (yet perhaps this is the inevitable fate for any child), but for the moment I can dream that after every performance I will be lifted shoulder high by the audience, carried round Edinburgh for four hours to constant cheering from local citizens who will have gathered to proclaim me their rightful Duke (unlike that Greek pretender with his slitty-eyed gaffes and alleged plots to murder princesses) and then be literally fellated by every critic in the city until I ejaculate simultaneously over their delighted faces. Once that happens I will stop coming up here, but so far none of the twenty-one shows I have done over the last nineteen years have elicited that reaction. So I come to “try again, fail again, fail better”, to quote the bloke off of Quantum Leap.
Indeed, I have remained untroubled by awards or universal approbation in my many years at this city, though last year my Edinburgh show was declared the Daily Telegraph Worst Comedy Experience of 2005 (and in a year that saw the debut broadcasts of Balls of Steel and TittyBangBang that is quite an achievement). I am hoping to get this for an unprecedented second year running, but mustnÂ’t get greedy. The more I want it the less likely they are to give it to me. I am sure that the feckless journalist responsible will give me the Best Comedy Experience next year just to spite me. Being the best comedy experience in the opinion of the Daily Telegraph could be enough to end my career. Imagine the shame.
I probably wouldn’t like it if this city accepted me. I adore it so and yet it rewards me with nothing but a smack in the face, a dent in my bank account and an itch in my pants. Yet I trudge back again and again like the lovelorn fool that I am, unaware that my devotion just makes the place pity and hate me more (you’d think I would have learned from my experiences with the opposite sex, but I am totally incapable of drawing any comparison). Any other city would have rewarded my persistence by knocking down their castle and building a giant statue of my smiling face out of its smashed ruins. But I am glad Edinburgh does not behave so gauchely. I would be embarrassed if the Scotch people got together to do this for my twentieth anniversary next year. It would be too much. Every time I looked at my gigantic face, constructed from the rubble of such an historic palace I would blush. So really don’t do it. I am not saying this because I want you to do it Edinburgh. It would embarrass me. Maybe just put a temporary papier-mâché sculpture of my head on top of the Scott Monument. That would be fine. Or whatever you think is appropriate. Ignoring me and hoping I will go away as usual would be OK too.
In some ways I suppose I owe this city a lot (which is maybe why they insist on charging me so much to rent a flat here for a month) and this is still the best arts festival in the world. Like any old man who remembers the way things used to be, I worry that the event is changing in worrying ways. I don’t like the trend of big name comedians coming up and playing massive venues which literally suck off audiences from the smaller, newer, more experimental projects. I am concerned that escalating costs mean that new performers will lose five figure sums even if they sell every ticket (which they are clearly unlikely to do). I wish the Perrier awards (as they’re still going to be called – bad luck whoever it is who has decided to sponsor them this year, I genuinely can’t remember who you are) would be outlawed as they turn a celebration of comedy into a competition (and also because they have never thought any of my shows worthy of nomination, but that’s only about 97% of my problem with them, the baby-killers).
But mostly at this early stage I am filled with hope and excitement. I think I am looking forward to this year’s Fringe as much as any of the ones I have been involved in – maybe more. And after all this time that’s a wonderful thing to be able to say. Maybe I have to be more like the cynical comedians in the ultra-accurate film Festival to get on. For the moment my cynicism remains hidden behind this cloud of hopeful self-delusion. Hooray for the Fringe.
