Hi, I had a great time in Dublin, thanks for asking.
I arrived back in Edinburgh at 4.30 this afternoon just in time to get away with not flyering for Slappers but to do my spot. The cab driver on the way to Dublin airport had said, "I suppose you'll be slagging me off on the stage tonight." A lot of people say this to me, suggesting that somehow they are that interesting that they might be worth talking about. To be fair to the bloke, the journey went quite quickly as he was telling me about the professional poker tournaments that he goes on. Fascinating stuff.
In my absence, both Gagstro and Slappers have been going well. This does nothing for my self-esteem of course. The Slappers audience looked the same as all the others I'd performed in front of except that they were warm and friendly. I did quite well there. However, my standards are low these days so historically, that would have been a shit gig.
After Slappers I went home to hang out. I read some reviews of other comedy shows online and was tutting through a lot of them. A good friend of mine received a really shit review the other day and received 1 star (out of 5). Not only is it horrible to slagged off like that but to have it there on the internet for all of your peers to see is soul-destroying. Gagstronomic is not listed in the Fringe Guide so, chances are, we won't get anyone turning up to review us. I got a good review from Chortle and I'm happy to leave that there thank you very much.
I headed out to Gagstro, optimistic following a great weekend. When I got to the venue, I saw that we were competing with Barcelona vs Real Madrid - I'm guessing one of the biggest games possible in football. The bar was busy and noisy. I think the whole Spanish population of Edinburgh were there.
That said, we had a half-full room. I opened the show as the MC and bantered with the audience. I explained about the noise and joked about the venue thinking that a black curtain would be able to block out noise. I was trying to get the audience on side, making jokes about cupping our ears so that we could hear properly. I did what I do at the Cavendish, requested a lot of love for the acts.
There was a guy who said that he travelled for a living, I asked him if he was a traveller, that got a laugh. I felt dirty. I'm VERY anti-traveller jokes and I hate the word "pikey". I wish I'd been able to follow that up with something smart but I couldn't. Him travelling though gave an opportunity for me to rant about Ryanair, a common hatred among all folks. It wasn't particularly funny but it brought the audience together.
There was a drunk woman at the front who had, apparently, been in every single show today. She was hammered. I thought about ignoring her but it became apparent that she wasn't going to shut up. She wasn't being aggressive so I didn't want to take the piss out of her, I was just repeating to the rest of the audience what she was saying which was funny in a sort of look-at-the-crazy-drunk-lady way.
The drunk lady didn't like our guest and I think she was being quite vocal about it (I couldn't hear her natch). She walked out and started hugging me and telling me that I was "fab" but she was "shite." I took her outside in the end because she was disturbing the night. She stayed out until pretty much the end. The good news is that she took some flyers to give to her guests staying at the B+B she runs - a personal recommendation from the land-lady who was probably in black-out. Fuck it, I'll take the publicity.
I headed over to Late Night Slappers reluctantly even though I had had a good gig there last week. It went ok. The front row were three very disinterested boys. I spoke with them a bit and took the piss out of their disinterest. My pre-cum stuff still doesn't fly as well as I think it can, I might try and re-write it. It's too much information at once.
I made £15 out of three buckets today. Not bad going, that's fags and dinner paid for.
On my walk home, I saw Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee. It was an opportunity to speak to him about Wizbit though not really the adventure I had hoped for. This is how it went:
Gem: Excuse me Paul, sorry to disturb you. Can I ask, did YOU create Wizbit?
Paul: Well, so-and-so wanted links for an existing programme and he wanted blah blah blah. So I thought that it should be an alien and he should *puts on ACTUAL Wizbit voice* sound like this. Look on wizbit.tv on the internet.
Gem: Thanks Paul, good night.
So there you have it, there was my Paul Daniels Edinburgh adventure. It was cool to hear Wizbit's voice live just for me though. Wish he'd sung the song.
Following my elation from meeting Paul Daniels, I started tweeting my news, while I was tweeting, I saw a couple of drunk blokes come towards me. Before I knew it, one of them had PISSED ON MY LEG. It didn't occur to me what had happened immediately. I realised that the guy had actually been walking down the road with his cock out, pissing and waving it from side to side which therefore, caught me. I stopped, turned round and shouted, "You absolute fucking animal. That is fucking disgusting." I wanted to cry a little bit. Being pissed on shortly after meeting Paul Daniels is not what I got sober for. I walked home saying, "yyyyyyuuuuukkkk" to myself and wanting to walk back with a brick and kill the disgusting drunk cunt. I didn't. I took my jeans off, cleaned my leg with a face wipe and cursed the whole of Scotland. Is anyone sober in this city? No stereotypes here then?
I have day off tomorrow although I have annoying booked myself in for a gig as a token women at the Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year launch.
Also, little sister Maz is joining me for a couple of nights on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are going to go to shows and hang out. I could really do with the company and am especially pleased that she's making the effort to come up.
Apart from being urinated on by a man walking down the road holding his cock, today has been a good one. Hopefully, the MC at Gagtro will turn it around and we can go home knowing that we've achieved something.
The singing crowd across the road are singing It's Raining Men unaccompanied tonight. Oh. Good.
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