Having A Laugh In Edinburgh
I finally got to fulfil an ambition of mine this weekend. Admittedly it wasn’t a big ambition like hand feed orang-utans (been there) or swim with dolphins (done it twice) but it was one I’ve wanted to do for a long time…visit the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
I’m a big fan of comedy and regularly go to stand up gigs at home and in London, but recently there’s a tendency for a comic, when going on tour, to do a stadium or arena gig. I’m a firm believer that arenas kill comedy, it just doesn’t feel the same as a proper comedy venue.
Anyway, rant aside, The Wife and I were up in Edinburgh for a friend’s wedding and so we went up a couple of days earlier to take in some shows and to take in the festival spirit. We pre-booked all the shows we wanted to see (or at least, ones we could get to!) before we went just to make sure we got in.
The first show we saw on the Friday night was Rhod Gilbert‘s The Man With The Flaming Battenberg Tattoo, and then we were joined by other people from the wedding party for Jimmy Carr’s show at the same venue.
Of the two, Rhod Gilbert was by far the funnier delivering his tattoo-related spiel in his trademark ranting whiny Welsh tone and although Jimmy Carr was funny, some of his act has become a bit too predictable, relying on shock more than funny.
On Saturday we spend the morning and early afternoon wandering around the Royal Mile area, watching a number of street performers and stopping to see some acts do small parts of their set on small stages set up on the street. Everywhere you turned flyers were thrust into your hands from acts touting their shows.
After grabbing a bit of late lunch, we headed to our first show of the day, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, an hour of on-the-spot, made-up nonsense taken from audience suggestions. Merton’s chums were Mike McShane, Richard Vranch, Lee Simpson and Suki Webster.
Next up was an hour in the company of Northern Irish comic Jimeoin and although not as constantly funny as Rhod Gilbert the night before we laughed a lot louder and The Wife even cried with laughter at one point during one of his songs.
The third and final show was Andrew Maxwell who has been a relative unknown outside of the comedy circuit for many years and hasn’t made the crossover into the mainstream like Mickey Flanagan and Sarah Millican have in recent years.
Nevertheless, he’s been a favourite of mine and his was yet another hilarious show with which we ended the night.
With only a couple of hours to kill on Sunday morning before the wedding, we headed down to The Mound to watch another couple of street performers, more juggling, some unicycle riding and daredevil tricks. It was a nice way to round off our Edinburgh experience.
I was glad that we’d been able to see 5 very funny shows and if I had to put them in some type of list order then Rhod Gilbert would just top it, ever so slightly ahead of Jimoein and Andrew Maxwell.
Hopefully we’ll get to go again soon, and maybe go to see some young up-and-coming star or free shows…
