Edinburgh Fringe

This August was my first trip to the Edinburgh festival and wooaah I can’t believe how long I’ve gone in my life (28 years at time of festivaling) without experiencing it.  I’m going every year from now on. I am lucky to have many friends who live in the 'Burgh who are happy to grant me free floor space so I can spend all my money on tickets, and this year my hosts were my best friend’s lovely older sister, brother-in-law and nephew Henry who is an absolute prince among babies. This also meant I got to experience the whole other festival realm that is baby shows, including:

Bach to Baby, a classical concert held in St John’s church – beautiful live cello and pianist music with a rippling undercurrent of screaming infants. Peace and chaos smashed together amongst the pews. Henry’s feedback is limited as he mainly napped through it.

Baby Loves Disco, hosted in a proper bar at Electric Circus – DJ, disco lighting, Twitter shout-outs, banging tunes plus free juice and rusks = my ideal night out. Complete with chillout rooms, dressing up rooms, dad dancing competitions and a constant sense of anxiety that you might trample on a toddler whilst vigorously joining in with the YMCA. Henry’s favourite aspects featured the corridor and a door he enjoyed opening and closing.

Anonymouse at the Botanic Gardens – a very cute show featuring the seasons and one tiny mouse’s agenda to impose his poetry on a field-dwelling hippie. Babies were engaged with knitted fruits, hot stones, exciting actions, storytelling and sensory experiences (best of all was the real snow created by a grated block of ice). Henry’s feedback seemed to be positive as he was reluctant to leave.

Back in the adult world I was on a comedy agenda and made some banging choices:

Massive Dad 2.0: Step Up 2 Massive Dad – feat. my mate Stevie. Three hilarious women nailing sketches in light-up sportswear. What’s not to enjoy. Go see them they’re on at the Pleasance RIGHT NOW, you won’t be doing anything better with your life. Don’t wear a brooch.

Max and Ivan, The End – dark and silly scenes between a massive cast of doomed townspeople all played by Max, Ivan and an audience member who in the show I saw was an absolute dick (expertly handled and eventually booed off). Big fan.

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets: Minging Detectives – urgh we went rogue on an un-recommended sponta-show. The title promised excellence, in reality we ended up with a sweaty man in a Punch and Judy box performing dated and occasionally slightly racist jokes about TV detectives. Upsetting.

Funz and Gamez Tooz – looooooved iiiiiiiiiit. Recommended by my mate Bex who does kids radio and is an all-round legend, this show equally delighted kids and adults and resembled Shooting Stars in its rebellious and ridiculous nature. Reckless sweet throwing to hype up the kids, inappropriate games of hide and seek, sparkly platform shoes, dark undercurrents of ex-girlfriend related pain and some satisfying egg-smashing, water-pistol fighting went down a treat.

Jessie Cave, I Loved Her – so much social media resonance within this show, particularly the audience’s collective gasp of horror on accidentally hitting ‘like’ on a boyfriend’s ex’s photo from three years ago, and the Instagram filter recitation. Wacky and disarmingly honest observations about relationships featuring shadow puppetry, what’s not to love.

The Pin, Ten Seconds with the Pin – really informative workshop on how to write sketches feat. helpful examples and technological wizardry. The vertical bed sketch made me weep with joy.

James McKay, Boy with the Moomin Tattoo – my old teacher and classics summer school mate performed a greatest hits session of his poetry, interweaved with themes and readings from the Moomins, as if he had personally designed the show for me. Beaut.

Just an excellent couple of days soaking up beer and atmosphere in the delight of a city that is Edinburgh. See ya next year.

Brixpig x

Miranda: My, what I call, live show

When: Wednesday 19th March

 

Where: Newcastle Metro Radio Arena

 

Why: SUCH FUN

 

My darling brother bought my mum and I tickets to see Miranda for our Christmas present in 2012. The most forward-planned gift of all time, at 15 months in advance. I was so proud.

 

Miranda was a riot; a friendly stage-presence and gloriously wacky, as expected. Her stand-up was slightly more in line with the sitcom Miranda, and took a similar format of silly jokes and asides to camera, plenty of slapstick and singing. It was like the filming of an episode but with much more audience involvement. The front rows were treated to gins in tins and packets of crisps (“Take one and pass it along”) as this show was intended to be a party. We sang along to disco classics (I will survive), took part in some en masse posh party chit chat and did plenty of dancing. Highlights included:

 

- the incredibly awkward interval date, which left a 20 year old female audience member tolerating the brilliantly uncomfortable advances of a 17 year old boy in a ‘Parental Advisory’ t-shirt
- Miranda’s predatory lunge, resulting in her accidentally flirting with a 15 year old
- readings from her teenage diaries
- the football warm-up move (“These… are MY balls”)
- MOIST PLINTH
- “What have you done today to make you feel PROUD?”

 

The whole thing wrapped up with a delightful video encore and an epic Beyoncé inspired performance featuring hotpants and glitterball.

 

SUCH FUN.

 

Brixpig x

Frisky and Mannish - again

When: Thursday 11^th July

Where: Spiegel Tent, Southbank

Why: Bit o’ summer fun

This was the third time I’d seen Frisky and Mannish,  so I pretty much knew what to expect and I wasn’t disappointed. They’re completely nuts, incredibly talented, and a cracking comedy night out. New parodies of Lana Del Rey and Made in Chelsea made  me snort into my cider, and the evening ended with an anarchic (and frankly terrifying) conga through the audience. As always, totally recommended if they’re ever back in town.

On a side note - I really like the Spiegeltent. It’s like a circus tent with merry-go-round poles and cosy booths, a cracking bar at the back and a great atmosphere. Definitely prefer it to the Udderbelly, which although housed inside an upside down purple cow (which I love), is pretty basic inside. So full marks for Spiegel.

Brixpig x

Vikki Stone

When: Wednesday 19th

Where: Udderbelly!

Why: She’s reet funny and talented

I love the Udderbelly and I love a singing comedian who turns her dress inside out after the opening number, tries to roll in on a camel which then falls over, and maintains an impressive fringe throughout. She’s a great singer and musician which does help (in Frisky and Mannish style, you can be genuinely impressed with her vocal skills while you’re rolling around on the floor).

Audience participation took the form of a cheese-based form of Deal or No Deal (a nice brie: red, Dairylea triangle: blue) and a camel-rolling volunteer (definitely picked the wrong audience member). The Clare Balding song was probably my new favourite of the celeb-worshipping tunes, but you can't beat the Brian Cox song (see below) for pure filthy hilarity. 

The show ended with boxes of Cadbury’s Crispellos being wheeled in and distributed to the crowd, so it was pretty much a perfect evening of comedy. Cheers luv. 

Brixpig x

Live at the Apollo

When: Tuesday 25^th September

Where: Hammersmith Apollo

Why: It was free

Thanks to a little heads-up from the British Comedy Guide on Twitter (@UKComedyNews), I followed a link to get audience tickets to Live at the Apollo and that was basically that. Print out the thing, show up at the place, queue for about 45 mins, just scrape in and score four seats in the second back row. They were filming two shows that evening and although we got a stern talking to at the start about not getting up and wandering around, I think this was pretty much limited just to the few important people down at the front, as upstairs we had a very cavalier attitude to getting up a strolling around the aisles. Very restless bunch.

SHOW ONE featured Lee Nelson as the host (cockneyish, annoying at first but you sort of get used to it), Stewart Francis (one liners can be so exhausting after a while, but some of them were mildly entertaining), and Paul Chowdhry (off of “What’s happening white people?” - very entertaining).

SHOW TWO featured Omid Djalili as the host (I love him but every time a joke failed he shouted “This is funny shit!” then scuffled about hoping they’d cut it out), Julian Clary (oh my actual god, came on in inexplicable stilts, weird joke about breaking up with Rolf Harris, insulted an Olympian, totally bombed and left the stage early. Is he having a nervous breakdown?), and Reginald D. Hunter (thank GOD, a really good, professional, funny one. Hilarious).

Ahh, the view from row Y

There were a few general themes to the evening which made us wonder if all the acts had been copying each other’s notes, including lots and lots of stuff on racism and how it’s actually really funny, and Omid Djalili doing exactly the same joke that Paul Chowdhry had done on doing the same accent back to people (it’s a disease, I do it all the time and my brother used to do it to our Irish priest although that might not have been by mistake).

I’ve just realised I completely forgot to even look out for our episodes on telly. Not sure I’m that bothered about seeing them again to be honest. Though it would be interesting to see how they manage to edit the Julian Clary fiasco…

Brixpig x