More Festival Fun
I arrived at the Speigeltent this morning just as Fred MacAulay and Sue Perkins had finished their run-through and before the doors had opened for the audience. The the three Australians - Tripod - who I'd seen last night were waitring at the side of the stage and I got a chance to congratulate them on their sell-out performance. I also asked about the number of fellow Australians who seemed to turn up for their shows.
"So much for travelling across the world to find new audiences, " was all they could say.
Fred and Sue Perkins were in fine form this morning but they didn't really have to work hard to get laughs from veteran funnyman Jin Bowen. The former Bullseye host told a string of stories about his comedy pals, such as the late Bernard Manninng and the hyper-active Frank Carson. You can catch a bit of that on our You Tube site.
Which reminds me about the new ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Scotland Podcasts we've just launched. Among them is a daily comedy-cast which features clips from Fred's shows in Edinburgh. Apparently it's already soaring up the podcast charts, breaking into the top 100 after just a few days.
Funny thing comedy. After Fred's show II had a brief chat with Mary Kalemkerian, the Head of Programmes at ´óÏó´«Ã½ 7 (which is running editited highlights of the Spiegeltent shows). She shared my view that investing in new comedy talent was a long game...but that it was much more fun to take risks than to play safe.
And in the Festival Cafe at lunchtime, there waa at least one example of performers not playing safe as we watched an extract from the finge musical Jihad, including a jaw-dropping song about a man's desire to be "just like Osama."
Think that caused offence? Not as much as a Des Clarke caused when I went to see his very funny evening show at The Pleasance. He made the mistake of slagging Irn Bru and there was an angry mob of Scottish people waiting for him outside.
OK...it wasn't a mob...it was just one woman...but she was very loud.
I had to pretend I wasn't with her.
