HeadSpill

The Edinburgh festival finishes this week, and I’m starting to put together ideas for next year. Some comics go up every year with a new show, some never go at all. I think I’d quite like to the former, but a new show every year? I feel I’d lack consistancy. Not quality - just consistancy, I get too excited by too many things.

I had a conversation over a curry with comic chum Dan where we banged on about having loads of ideas in different forms (scripts, stand up, character stuff, etc), but then which ones do you ultimately give your time to in order to follow them through and do ‘em justice? The more you spread yourself over multiple disciples, the less time you’d have for each, and at the creative sharp end of comedy you can’t really afford to take you’re eye off one ball, let alone three. I have three balls.

Ahem. There’s Stand Up, Danny Pensive - character comedy, and Comedysportz  and I believe in them all equally, they’re like a comedy triumvirate of disciplines.

Danny Pensive is all about the writing, use of language and lack of compromise. As I am now, locked away in a room, fathoming out what I find funny and presenting it to the world. Simple, beautiful, and I refer to him in the third person, which while I appriciate is quite odd feels perfectly normal.
Comedysportz is all about the moment. No writing, just instinct being bounced around making brief wonderful moments that can’t be recreated.
Then there’s me, a combination of the two. I love stand up and writing, but it’s the hardest part of the whole. Writing is comedy, if it doesn’t jump off the page, it probably won’t dance out your mouth to the sound of laughter, and once written and delivered stand up evolves in the telling, a combination of written word,  improvised flourish and repetition.

I’ve spent most of this year doing repetition. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what promoters pay for when they book you, your best stuff. While at the same time writing new stuff for Danny and on occasion taking Danny tried and tested stuff as my own, which feels like stealing, but really isn’t, though I do feel guilty, which is probably my fault for invoking the third person. It’s more evidence of decent gags, and a very long winded round-the-houses way of not getting bored with a ‘club set’ while cultivating new gags in a parallel dimension.

I’m looking at taking a Danny Pensive show to Edinburgh next year. Wish him luck.

Got up at 5.30am. Drove to Newcastle and picked up an Amp for the free Fringeand after seeing my folks in Sunderland, arrived in Edinburgh at 2pm . I set to work putting up some posters at the free fringe venues (I’m at canons gait). I’d over loaded the pockets of my ill fitting cut off combat pants with flyers and on reaching up to apply the publicity piece, they fell down in full view.

bought a new belt.

The flat is ace, and  I can see carl sagan’s massive face from my window (in a shop front advert).  Went to the free fringe meeting where PBH stated quite literally. ‘If the public come, we will kill them’. He rocks.

Went to see Longleys show. It is late, I am knackered.

People I met:
Kevin Gildea
Paddy Monahan
Don Moses
Paul Kerensa
Gav Webster
Matt Tiller
BethanyBlack
Longleyman

People I saw at a distance:
Mark Watson
Simon Munnery

People who I created an awkward showbiz silence with:
Teddy

First show tomorrow, hurray!

(Submission piece for The Scotsman)
August is fast approaching already I’m packing and racking my brains to make sure I’ve covered everything. clean underwear, check. Digs, check. Multimedia bells & whistles, check. Tightly written hilarious Show, check (I hope).
I’m taking my first full stand up show to the fringe, and to be honest the thing stressing me out the most isn’t submerging my brain into the all encompassing creative din of sound, colour and taste. Or my show, which still needs work, but is robust enough to set sail on the sea of competitive mirth. The cause of my furrowed brow is the multimedia elements that go with the show. Also being the control freak I am it’s all triggered by remote control instead of having a tech on hand.

Comedy and technology aren’t exactly a marriage made in heaven, one is born of sponteneity, adaptability and  tangents that creates humour, the other is about order and numbers, and safe predictability. Arriving at a recent preview show, loaded with AV gear like an powerpoint terminator, one of the others comics, armed with only a handful of written notes made the comment ‘how can I compete with that?’ and as much I as I understood the question, it’s a bit of a moot point.

Multimedia Bells and whistles are exactly that, and shouldn’t be a distraction. If anything he’s far better equiped, and purer to the art form of stand up. Good writing is the core of any show, and if the show can’t be done without multimedia, then arguably it’s not straight stand up.

Increasingly comics at the fringe are using projection and multimedia elements to enhance their shows, and I’m biting off a sizable of in mixing character comedy, stand up and multimedia together in a themed show about eczema. Did I mention my show was about eczema?

The previews I’ve done so far already I’ve pressed the wrong button good few times. Ironically pressing the wrong button is getting a big laugh, which is a result, but not what I’d planned at all. As long as I don’t do it too much, I might just keep it in the show.

‘John Cooper: The 30 Year Itch’ is on at the Canons Gait at 7.15pm from 2nd - 25th August and is free.