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We got an incredible deal on one of Edinburgh’s smarter hotels, which amazingly gave us a 3pm check-out today. Now that’s civilised. Given we were just a short hop away from the next gig in Glasgow this was a most welcome bit of luck. My hotel window looked directly out on to the first venue I ever performed in at the Fringe, when I was in a kids’s show called “Old King Cole” (written by the amazing Ken Campbell). Nearly 29 years have passed. Back then I slept on the floor of a Masonic temple with sex pest Stewart Lee attempting to pleasure me with a ventriloquist dummy, but now I was sleeping in a posh room with a stand alone bath in it, surrounded by Edinburgh’s most expensive escorts, all wanking me off with hand puppets (it’s the only way I can get off for some reason). My wife doesn’t mind. If other people take the strain it means I am not pestering her to dress up as Orville for my perverse gratification (and that’s not vine paedophilia as long as the person dressed as Orville is over the age of consent - it’s just a fantasy thing).
It would have been fun to have found a Gary Sparrow passage back to 1987 to meet up with the confused and over-confident young almost virgin (and I am not sure the one sex he thought he’d had really counted) and find out what he thought of the scruffy middle-aged man, staying in a hotel that was much too nice for him, still playing at being grown-up, whilst formulating plans of how to steal some extra shampoo from the maid’s trolley.
But all I could do was look through my window, trying to remember the adventures and misadventures that had happened in that building and marvel that I was still here and that all I’d achieved in the last three decades was to cross the road. But you know, now I sleep in an actual bed so there’s been a bit of progress.
On to Glasgow and by mid afternoon last night’s whiskeys had left me feeling tired and empty, but I had a brief rest and then sat in my dressing room playing Addams Family Pinball against myself and by show time I was feeling OK. There were over 400 people in tonight, I think the biggest audience I’ve ever had in Glasgow and though the refined Citizens Theatre meant the crowd were not quite as boisterous as usual, it was a cracking gig. Not quite a sell out but still very happy with that. The five little monkeys routine continues to vary quite significantly each night and I came up with some good new bits today. I doubt I will remember them and so far have failed to listen back to any of my recordings and be the diligent comedian who studies and learns from his mistakes and successes.
I then went across town to close the gig at the Stand. There was hardly anyone in in this room, but I did mainly different stuff just in case anyone had come to both gigs. Nice to chat backstage with the other comics though, including RHLSTP favourite Janey Godley. On stage the comedians were funny, Backstage we talked about the horrors of dementia, like we were the Greek masks of drama.
It was probably a mistake to do a small extra gig when I was so tired and could have been in bed instead, but the Stand is such a great club it was hard to resist it.
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