I originally didn’t want to return to the Kilderkin in 2014. After a tough 2013 and the struggle to get an audience due to it being a fair walk from anywhere, I was planning my next move.
While my show idea was still forming, I’d been looking at other options. This was the same year that Freestival had set itself up as a third free programme of shows in Edinburgh.
I sent them an email and asked if I could do a solo show with them, which at the time was going to be something about trivia and weird facts. I didn’t hear anything back for a while and wanted to start getting things organised, so applied to the Free Fringe. And sure enough, I was offered the same time-slot at the Kilderkin.
By the time I’d accepted the offer and had come up with the concept of How To Win A Pub Quiz, I received an email from Freestival to say that my application had been denied but they would reconsider another application if I applied for a two-hander. And that was fair enough. At the time, I’d not really done enough to justify a solo show for a promotion that really needed their first fringe to be a success. I hold no grudges about it and get on well with all those involved. And everything worked out for the best.
Well, for me that is. The new promotion would only last two Fringes, before vanishing completely after 2015. Fair play to them for giving it a go though; they were like a much more organised and competent version of the Rebel Fringe.
As I’ve no doubt written on here before, the concept of HTWAPQ all came together pretty ‘organically’, so to speak. My giant squid material made me want to do a show about trivia, and a pub quiz would allow me to bring everything together quite nicely.
What helped massively when planning the show was that I knew exactly what the Kilderkin room was like and the technical capabilities.
What also helped me develop the show was living in London. I could try bits out at the numerous open mic gigs, and then also knew the circuit there well enough to book previews. I honestly don’t think I would have been able to develop the show in the same way, if at all, if I’d moved to Manchester a couple of years earlier. London provided me with countless development opportunities that I didn’t have to drive for two hours to try out.
After my first preview I did at the Roadhouse in Birmingham, I knew I had something on my hands. And it wasn’t just my set list. Aah. I thank you.
Not all the material worked and I think I dropped a fair amount of it, but there was definitely something encouraging there.
My main goal of the 2014 Fringe was to just get an audience every day that was in double figures. I hadn’t gone in the Edinburgh Fringe brochure again during this year. Although I’d actually meant to, but hadn’t decided to until quite late; and if I recall correctly, the application system had changed and I didn’t have time to figure it out. This meant that I had to rely on flyering and the Free Fringe booklet for audience.
I was delighted that I achieved my goal of getting at least ten people in to see every show. And at the weekends, I sometimes I even had a full room. Not only that, but having a full room made the show operated on a different level entirely. There was one Sunday when everything seemed to click into place, with the material, the quiz and the riffing off an audience all coming together so amazingly well that it gave me a buzz that lasted for a good few hours afterwards.
But it was the smaller crowds that really gave me a chance to experiment and figure out exactly how everything worked without any pressure.
For accommodation, I was staying on a new build estate about half-way down Leith Walk. The flat was really nice, with two bedrooms with two bathrooms – one was an en suite. I was sharing a flat with Deech for the third year, with Paul Dance maintaining our tradition of having a flatmate called Paul. We were going to take it in turns to spend a week on an inflatable mattress in the living room, only Paul had a back injury; so me and Deech had to split it between us.
The other memory that springs to mind for the 2014 flat, is that Paul had decided to cook an egg after getting back late one night. I was woken up the next day by someone knocking on my door and said there’d been a gas leak in the block of flats. Anyway, it turns out that Paul had left the gas on for a mere seven hours or so. I was feeling a little groggy on my way to the venue, possibly psychologically, with visions of collapsing during my show. But it turned out to be possibly the very best of the run mentioned above.
It was a great Fringe and felt like a significant step in the right direction. I even got a nice review from Copstick at the Scotsman. What did put a dampener on things was in the final HTWAPQ of the run. I’d been battling the lurgy for much of the final week. And in my final show, my brain seemed to fail me, I was a bit all over the place, and it didn’t go so well. But this didn’t take away from all the other positives that the 2014 run had brought.
This was also the year of the seven-hour train delay on the journey home. It still remains one of my favourite train journeys, mainly due to Twitter interactions with all the other comedians also stuck on there.
When I returned to the day job, I received some awful news. My manager told me she was leaving and that I was being promoted to her position. This would consume so much of my time and energy over the next five years. It would also signal the end of this particular care-free era of my life that I’d enjoyed so much. I would be getting more money but with it came more responsibilities that I really could have done without.