Fringing onwards and upwards

WE LAUGHED

So, how to approach three weeks at the Fringe on a tight budget and still have fun?  One part of the answer is, and I say this utterly shamefaced, to deploy some of the old project management skills.  Enjoying yourself can be a serious business.

We have a few events booked well in advance.  A couple of big names just so we're not totally missing out on the glamour of it all, and some interesting stuff we've not seen before. And if you take on the seen-on-TV faces early on there are two-for-one deals to be had. Then there's the BBC.  We entered the lottery for free tickets to a variety of radio broadcast and recording events and got lucky with four of them.  Put those two approaches together and we have a succession of fixed points spread across the month.

Now to fill in the gaps.  Of course there are a lot of street acts and you could spend hours taking in the entertainment they offer. If it stays dry.  But there are only so many fire-eating, unicycling jugglers one person can watch.  Believe me.  It doesn't take long for "Is that all you've got" syndrome to develop.  This is a world in which seeing a gorilla, two pandas, a Viking and a multi coloured train of Japanese drummers, all in the space of ten minutes, isn't even worthy of discussion. They’re just what you'll see.  And they'll all stuff fliers into your mitts.

There are always half price and two for one offers.  The former depends on your fondness for queuing, the latter on being sharp to what's hitting the internet.  Better to get on with enjoying yourself.  Then there are the Free Festivals.  Free to get in that is, pay what you think it's worth on the way out. These suffer from accusations of poor quality, may have very small audiences (with accompanying embarrassment factor for all concerned), and are stuck away in many tiny and obscure venues.  Which, if my memories of the seventies have any validity, is exactly what the Fringe is all about.  It's almost the whole point.  That you go to see something based on a brief description and a lot of hope and just see what happens. You'll see some s**t, some mediocre stuff, and a few performances of high quality and sometimes near-genius.  A bit like life really.  (I can't believe I just wrote that.)

So the last three days have seen a mix of these approaches. And bloody good it's been too. On Monday there was a Free Festival offering from Tricity Vogue. One woman, a ukelele, and eyelashes that threatened to lift marshmallows out of the hands of the back row of the audience.  Original songs based on her calamitous love life, complete with sexual shennanigans and bitterest venom directed at exes.  We laughed, we cringed, we drank alcohol.  We found an hour had passed and we had had a good time.  Which was kind of the point really.

Then one of those TV faces, albeit not for the hip crowd.  Unless contemplating hip replacement.  A decidedly middle aged audience watched the emphatically middle aged Jenny Eclair.  Fart gags and a whole lot more.  The perils of middle agedom for women covering the full range of sagging, aching and unwanted pissing.  It was hilarious throughout and Ms Eclair demonstrated surprising mobility for one with knees like those she insisted on displaying to us, her paying public.  Go see her, even if you're not a MAW.  I'm not, and yet I knew all the signs.  No comments required thank you.

Want hip?  Want a TV face?  We did Ed Byrne last night.  Actually he's a forty one year old, happily married father of two.  But he is on the telly and, unlike some similar I've seen in the past, didn't disappoint.  He reckons that now he's supposed to be a respectable family man he keeps being overcome with the urge to act like the dick he was in his teens and early twenties.  And, since that offers a pretty good source of comic material, he does.  So we heard about his incessant need to play air guitar (and drums, and sax, and.... you get the idea) despite it's high irritation factor for his wife.  And his intolerance of people he knows he's never going to like and can't be bothered being polite to.  There were some decent rants.  Politicians received some ire, with the best diatribe of the evening was reserved, deservedly, for the odious and oleaginous Gideon.  When he digressed to the Olympics I'm surprised he left out the greatest highlight of that triumph - 80,000 people spontaneously booing the obnoxious Osborne.  So I'll mention it for him.  But Ed did a great job of keeping a big audience on his side and if you get the chance to see him then take it.

Today was all about Free Festival gigs for us so you'd expect it would fail to burn laid in the shadow of Mr Byrne strutting his stuff.  Not so, this was about as diverting a day as I could wish for. Three shows, all unlike not only each other but so much else that's around.  First up was Gusset Grippers, a comedy lecture on how to stave off incontinence using pelvic floor exercises.  Yes, you did read that right.  It featured real science, a model of a pelvis, sex toys and a knitted vagina with a Swarovski clitoris.  And, believe it or not, genuinely useful health advice, for men too.  Since it turns out that following the proffered tips can not only prevent you pishing yourself but also improve your sex life (although I'd have thought the latter would automatically follow on from the former?) this show should really be selling itself.  I think I'm not risking much to say that there probably isn't another show like it this year....

10 Films With My Dad was another step into the unknown.  I'd never heard of Aidan Goatley, but I do want to see him again.  With a mix of audiovisual and stand-up material (plus, on screen, the cutest, smartest dog since The Artist, especially when equipped with a shark's fin) Mr G outlined the way his relationship with his father was largely determined by shared visits to the cinema. Funny, sad, touching and, best of all, often genuinely stupid. He's got a great way of interacting with his audience and I am now a fan.

Finally, a Free Festival TV Face. In disguise. Porky the Poet, aka Phil Jupitus. Fat, scruffy bugger. Fat, funny bugger, with some decent poems and a fine delivering voice. All for fun. Shared with two lovely Welsh ladies who both had an amazing way with words and some pointed observations on the world, especially the beauty "industry". Might go back another time.

On to a bus heading home. Only to catch a glimpse of street-band Spinning Blowfish, a favourite of ours since we saw them last year.  Who could resist a bagpiper who plays whilst pogoing?  Or an international line-up from Madrid, Milan and, em, Musselburgh? We dismounted, caught the last half of their set, and rebussed ourselves. Happy homecoming.

Only nineteen days to go.