And we’re off; my Edinburgh show experience for 2012 has officially started.
We managed to reach double figures with our audience, after two more people walked in half way through my set and took the grand total to 11. And they were a friendly and receptive bunch.
I was up first and managed to get a decent response. I also had to deal with my first heckler of the Fringe, a man known simply as Uncle. He kept chipping in throughout my set, which got quite distracting but I managed to keep on track and keep him relatively at bay. Although his niece didn’t take too kindly to my rebukes on Uncle, which I was well within my rights as a comic to do and were hardly savage. But she was kind of an acquaintance by proxy and no harm was done. I had a drink with them after the show and Uncle was actually a really nice man, even if he wasn’t the easiest audience member to have.
Nevertheless, I am hugely grateful for every audience member. And this is Edinburgh Fringe, where drunken hecklers are as much a part of the experience as fried food, the rain and performing arts students dressed in leaves.
Paul was on second and did pretty well. His set has improved a lot since its first outing. See, I can be nice about him sometimes. As a sign of our show going relatively well, we made £15 in the collection bucket at the end.
But we need to crack on with the flyering, and I will be disappointed if our largest audience of the run is 11 people. It often takes a while to get a promoting method and routine sorted. Our venue is much nicer than last year, but not as in the centre of things and I gather that the person who had out time slot in our current venue in 2011 had to pull a large proportion of their shows because of no audience. So we are going to have to work much harder than we did last year to get in the crowds, but I am confident we can do that.
Following the show, I stayed up far later than I needed to and arrived back at the flat at around 5am. Although I also had a late one on my first night up here, it won’t become a regular thing as tomorrow I will be doing my day job remotely during office hours and this will continue for the first week and a half. This should help spare my liver somewhat and delay getting the notorious Edinburgh Lurgy until at least the second half of the Fringe.
- Love and Langton’s Dirty Laundry is on at 11pm every day until August 25 at the Kilderkin, 67 Canongate, Edinburgh, Lothian, EH8 8BS, as part of the PBH Free Fringe.