Andrew Collins's Blog, page 67

Rest of the fest

Halfway there and still living on a prayer. It seems, objectively speaking, that I have a "solid" three-star show on my hands. Three stars are always prefixed by "solid." I came here with manageable expectations (what a great lost Dickens novel that was), and have been pleasantly surprised. The Scotsman, as I have established, gave me three stars. Fest, the free listings magazine, also gave me three stars, and that review is now online. (It's the one that mentions "the spectre of Herring,"...

A semblance

I don't mind admitting I hit my first dip of the Fringe. It's natural. I'm not used to doing solo stand-up, and – now that the live podcasts are running – I've certainly never done two shows in a day, anywhere, ever. Clearly, there are harder jobs in the world, whatever Jimmy Tarbuck told Richard Herring, but I can only compare it to what I know. Plus, I am away from home and missing it. The flat we're in is reasonably civilised, even though most things in it don't work, or don't work...

Princess street

A full and frank apology: I apologise for having a three-year-old laptop whose GarageBand application inexplicably crashed during the recording of yesterday's live podcast, thus plunging it into audio limbo. I must be held responsible for having the laptop – and who else can be held responsible except for Steve Jobs? – and for optimistically thinking it would work, to the extent that I actually said, "It will work." I also apologise for whatever evil force field keeps interfering with the...

Black watch

Disaster struck twice today. First, just over five minutes before the end of our second GRV Collings & Herrin podcast show – which had, admittedly, been a weird one, and was in the process of being killed by my insistence on relating back the previous night's edition of Celebrity Masterchef – all the lights went out. In fact, the power went out throughout the entire building. Richard and I were lit only by the faint glow of this laptop, and we encouraged the audience to take flash...

Arse market

Yes, sorry about that title. It's a callback to Comedy Countdown, where the letters A, R, S and E came up, randomly, twice, so I asked for them to be pre-selected for the last round so that I, too, could make up a word with ARSE in it. (We'd had ARSEBILGE, for instance.) Up to that point I had been foolishly coming up with words that were real, and didn't have ARSE in them.

A truly superb photo above by Green Gordon, taken at the Green Room Venue yesterday. Rather sad and poignant. Just as it ...

Pubic triangle

This is a photo, taken by Green Gordon, whose Flickr page is here, of Edinburgh's Public Triangle, which Mat told me about yesterday. Apparently you join the dots between three massage parlours or something and it make a triangle of sleaze. He posted this in response to it coming up on today's first Collings & Herrin Podcast Live gig at the GRV. Remember, in 2008, we tested the water by doing one gig, in the morning, at the Underbelly. Last year, we did five, again at the Underbelly. This...

Dome from home

A pleasant Tuesday night out, and not all of it spent at the Pleasance; part pleasure, part work (although the work was unpaid, and pleasurable). At 7.30, having shared fatigue around the kitchen table with Richard Herring, I rolled up at the Three Sisters on Cowgate to see gentleman juggler and AIOTM photographer Mat Ricardo recount his life in street performing and variety, illustrated with some truly astounding feats, many of which I've seen, filmed, but never up close like this.

His show...

Nowgate

Although it is a major Fringe venue, with people like Jim Jeffries, John Bishop and Five Guys Named Moe among its current attractions, I went to McEwan Hall this morning to attend a meeting. I think it might have been an extraordinary one, although for me, to attend a meeting of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society is already out of the ordinary. In a nutshell, the Festival Fringe Society Ltd was founded in 1969 to give performers control over central services. Over the years, this control h...

A stand

Thanks to Paul for these snaps. He was at the front of the queue for yesterday's Secret Dancing, my third show, and third full house. This is hugely pleasing for me, and a relief thus far, as I had no idea who, if anyone, would come, and without ticket sales, it's impossible to know in advance. On three occasions now, I have walked up Cowgate without any foreknowledge of whether or not there would be a queue. I am unable to become blase about this. Everyone through the door of Bannermans is m...

The pleasance

So, one of Richard Herring's Tweets made the Guardian today. Who needs a five-star review, when your sober tappings on Twitter feed directly into a national newspaper? Not only that, the national newspaper all comedians read, grudgingly, when they are not flicking through Esquire to see photos of themselves. Here is the Tweet that made the national news:

@Herring1967 The 2004 me would be appalled to discover I am spending 1st fringe Saturday in my flat alone drinking herbal tea

I came in at...