Fun in the Sun

Its been a good weekend of sunshine, coffee and catching up with friends.

Caught up with TC for a bit of mountain biking around Manly Dam before he head off to his honeymoon. The old gal (my Giant Reign Mountain bike) held up well. Sure we spent over 20 man hours bleeding those hydraulic brakes and the brake pads replaced but everything else still works great. I have to say I will be selling the bike next time I come back. Manly Dam changed as well with most of the downhill sections now graded so they can get the fire truck through. I think I will really rock Manly Dam next time I comeback because it will progressively get “nerf” as time goes.

Good to see Marky and Brettpei again. The days where we trained together in Budo is now long passed but we still kept in touch with each other via email. It was fun carving pumpkins and hitting pinachette for Halloween. I have never done either of that before. Mark also has a young son of 5 months and is now settling into the routine of a new dad. We are all too “old” to have wild party night but it sure is good to see he had a chance to have catchup drinks with mate.

What visit of Australia will be completed without at least time spent on (or close to) a beach? Sunday was the annual “Sculpture By The Sea” exhibit. Every year the Bondi to Clovelly walk will be converted to a large outdoor “Tate Modern” with sculptures by sculptors from all over the world. I have to say I am no big fan of art or sculptures but it was a really cool concept to combine sunshine, beaches/sea and sculpture.

Stereo Sonic is what he meant. Whats the chance for a sky writing business in London?

The walk between Clovelly and Bondi was pack with people. It was a Idyllic sunny spring day and Sydney and get to spend some good times with friends I haven’t seen from yonks. The best sculpture I like was the flag that was setup overlooking Bondi beach. I dunno how long it took the sculptors to create some of these exhibits and how did they envision the final sculpture and how it combined with the landscape itself.

Yes! I was there at Bondi Beach

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What had changed since last time I was here? Nothing change drastically but everything changes ever subtly as time passed: From friends getting marry, new born kids, people getting new cars, price of things are more expensive than last time I was here, (Starting to be on par with London on something) parents getting older and so is my brother.  Sydney is getting more expensive and buying a house is becoming a pipe dream.

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 What I did notice is there a significant increase in Asian immigrants in Sydney (Especially Epping/Eastwood area) than 2 years ago. I used to be very against concentrate migration into one area producing a middle class racial ghetto. After living in London for the past 2 years my attitude has became mellow: Whether you are Asians, African-Caribbean or British/Australians it is in human nature to gravitate towards people with things in common such as race and language. Poms/Ozzies/Kiwis/Safas to have a similar culture making their integrations more straight forward than other races. One would even argue that these colonies are just “derivatives” of the original colonial master, (the Poms) hence cannot be count as a different culture. (Unlike Chinese/Koreans/Japanese for example)

 My point is this: I used to have a belief that once you migrate to another country you should “assimilate” with the locals. What I did wrong was attempting to discard my original cultures and roots in embracing that of the new country.  Now I learned that there is nothing “wrong” with being born in one culture and adopting another during your life. Most people on this planet never migrate to another country so will never understand what it takes to settle down in a foreign land. Most native population only sees the ills of other countries and ignore the benefits of culture diversity. It is a dangerous hyperbole claiming that Importing people from different cultures with conflicting view will cause culture clashes like the ones we seen in other parts of the world.

If I can go back to my teens and start over I would have done things differently but this will also made me a slightly different person with a different outlook on life. I guess growing up is like walking a complex network of roads: there are many to choose from but as long as you keep moving “forward” you are doing well. I was ignorant of the reality that I am a Chinese person living in Australia with two very distinctive cultures, my children will have a much easier time growing up as they won’t have to deal with dilemmas that I was faced with.

 

Old Habits Die Hard!

When you work full time, you only get around 2-4 weeks of annual leave. Irony is we ended up stressing ourselves try to make the most into the few weeks we going away and totally forgot holiday is meant to be a period of rest and relaxation.

Last few days in Sydney I just taking it quite easy: catching up with various friends, going to some of my favour places in Sydney remember how things used to be and not a rush in the world to do anything. Classic mode when it comes to a quiet holiday

UNLESS…….you are an open mic comedian! Than its your swore duty to get on wherever someone is offering you 5 min spot. It is an occupation disease!  A month ago I booked 4 gigs for the week I am in Sydney with the intention of checking out the local scene.

On Tuesday, Laugh Garage in Sydney CBD runs an open mic night. Laugh Garage is an established comedy club in Sydney with a dedicated club similar to The Stand at Edinburgh. It started like Comedy Store in London as a Pro comedy night in pubs and only recently moved to a purpose built venue. The night usually consisted of 8 open mic standup and a MC, but tonite was different with an American comedian named Rick Shapiro also on the bill trying some new material.

Trudi from the comedy course in London also turned up to watch and end up doing a 5 min slot as well because someone dropped out.   It was a good gig with around an audience of 7 and around 6 comics and MC.  My 5 min went well:  this is the first time I done my 5 min at home and I am amaze how portable my material was in different country.  Trudi did really well having essentially told that shes going on and given 40 min to ready some of her material. After the first gig it appears that our time on the London circus served us really well.  It is a shame that this is my only gig at the Laugh Garage, I will have to score more stage time before I can play with more accomplished comedians.

On Wednesday I scored a gig at The Roxbury Hotel at Glebe. This is part of the “Quest for The Best” preliminary final open mic competition. The room was filled with around 130 punters with 90% here to support their friends on the bill – the chance of winning the comp is nil. With that in mind I just focused on having a good gig. This gig is the highlight of my Sydney tour.

The room is a split level room (only realised it when I stood on the chair at 2:30 mark) and I got thrown by a heckle from someone upstairs (3:30 mark) and got myself confuse. Problem with split levels is that a heckle from upstairs is not well heard by people on the lower level. In a five min set its not usually worthwhile to address a heckler unless they were persistent. Still – the crowd gave me the biggest laugh of my set when I fluffed up my lines. Can’t get a more supportive audience than that!

This is also the first gig where I performed my set at home in front of my friends, some of them are from my high school days and I have seen them for more than 2 years! Its great to see them again and even greater for them to come out to support me!

Thursday gig was a “variety night” on a stage next to a uni bar. To put it kindly the gig was absolutely RUBBISH!!! I don’t usually slag gigs but this one was badly organised in a shitty venue. The stage is next to the student bar with a bunch of drunken students, they all decided to yell “jukebox” at the jukebox for some reason. There is no separate room for comedy and random drunken students interrupt by giving drunken rants to each other. Most of the acts left the venue as soon as they were on to head across town to catch the “best” open mic gig in the circuit. My friend Zed came along with his flatmates and friends to support me and I have to apologise to them for coming to such a shamble.  One valuable lesson for all is that even free comedy night are not “free”, the time invested by acts and audience involved should be enough to warrant the promoters to put in a bit more thought and effort into their nights.

Friday at Comedy Court at Star Bar: This is my last gig in Sydney and like all my friends show up to this gig! The room is really nice – it was a old small theatre inside Star Bar which used to be the old Planet Hollywood restaurant, a 50 seat room with proper sound and lighting! There were like 19 audience and only 6 of them are genuine punters! I brought like 11 audience to a new act competition, Oops!

It was a 8-10 slot and I ended up doing around 11 minutes. For some reason I was a bit nervous because I am essentially performing to my friends which make the whole gig a bit weird. I seen a few gigs where the audience are mainly friends with one of the acts and it makes the gig less of a “gig” but more like some sort of secret society meetings where jokes are only understood by the privileged few. The other problem is I usually run a 7-8 min set and hardly play a half slot (10 min set) I have to take the “covers” off some of the older gags to get to the 10 min marks.

My friends are great audience members. Donte who runs the night is a good compere and made my friends laugh and kept the night running smoothly. The other acts (Ray, Joey and Joseph) are all competent as new-ish acts and all my friends found them funny. I did ok since the gig is filled mostly by my friends so it was a pretty safe room to play to. Couple of my friends pointed out afterwards that I needed to work on my delivery and the squat toilet “conversation” gone for a sentence too long.  Good to get feedbacks and I agreed with them there are room for improvement. It always good to know you have to do better , it keeps you going for your comedy.

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So what is my assessment of the Sydney scene? Well its no match to New York, London and even Melbourne for sure. There are a few nice room on the circuit but IMHO the audience bases is too small to support a stand-up scene. There are more rooms popping up over the last few years but surely if a city like Melbourne can support a fully fledge comedy scene than the biggest Australian city must be able to do the same! Unfortunately this is not true as the few Sydney based comedy club are struggling with the Sydney Comedy Store (No relation to the UK one) currently run by its second owners.

Its a bit sad that a city of 3 millions can’t support a scene. I do not think this is a fault of the promoters or the acts but more a reflection of the population of Sydney itself. The denizens of Sydney are not very cultured compare with our cousins down south and won’t actively seek out arts related activity like theatre or music. (unless its a festival where the big acts are on.) The laws regulating pubs & bars also play a factor: To put on a live performance the venue must have a live performance license in New South Wales, its free for pubs to put in poker machines. Why would any publicans paid money to put on a how which might or might not lift their drink sales when you can just use that performance base to put in extra poker machines. With a city booming due to effects of increase of Asian immigrants, there is more money in gambling than there is in standup comedy.

Another ones Bite the dust – again….

Well just finished with TC’s wedding this weekend. Sydney weather forecast was 3 days of deluge and it was colder than even London! Go figure!!

It was funny how last time I was on these shores it was for David’s wedding, now it is TC’s turn. I hope no one else going to get marry soon or I will be using up all my annual leave just to fly home to visit friends and the folks. Good to see TC and Sophie are finally settling down. Its been a year and a half since the last time I was here and there are a few things that changed (New railway lines, friend’s lives even my dad’s lifestyle) and there are a few things that never changed. (Well the family home and the traffic for example!) Even more than a year has passed this place still feels like home!

Good to see that all the guys are doing well. (Jim and Richard now driving, Denis building a new house, David and Sue is expecting and Bart now has his own place with a cute daughter.) Not sure what will be in store next time I come back but I am sure it will be good!

The day started with the “Bridal games” in the morning. This is essentially a Chinese traditions for marriage, I am not 100% sure the exact origins of these games but I am guessing this relates back to old days of China where the groom and his party has to travel to the Bride’s village to collect her. Since in those days once a bride left her village she will live with the groom and his family and only coming back to visits, the groom has to proof his love for the bride before he can collect her from her village. Usually the key to these is the red packet that given as fee as dowry to the bride family.

In modern days, these games became less formal and more emphasis on “mocking around” and add a less formal friend times rather than the rest of the day where it is more formal and focus on family and the couple themselves. If you do a “time-movement” study I bet the amount of times you spent with friends and amount spent with family will be at least equal if not more leaning towards friends as you grew older.  The weather was terrible for outdoor photos and ceremonies, luckily there are backup plans: We shot most of the shots indoors around Circular Quay and the Queen Victoria Building and moved the wedding ceremony indoor inside Curzon Hall.

Curzon Hall is a chateau in the Northern part Sydney built since 1900, it used to sit on quite a sizeable block of land but since the area around it started filling up with residential houses many of the land are sold off and all that is left is a small lawn area and the main chateau building. I have to say I love the way the Curzon Hall used to be rather than a specialized wedding hall that it is at the moment. It’s a good place to house TC and Sophie’s wedding and the rain largely held out when it comes to doing the photos.

It is interesting to see why some people wanted to do a comedy course for wedding speeches. Denis done a great job MCing the wedding, he introduced people with wit and humour that you will found in comperes for most comedy or variety night. With a few more “gigs” I am sure he can make some money out of Mcing. Mr Lee (Father of the groom) also injected his own humour into the speech with his jokes about growing old and the animal parallels. He captivated the audience during this time and it was definitely a very accomplished feats. Finally the groom himself TC also called back on a joke that Sophie’s dad mentioned in his speech and used it to great effect.

It appears that comedy is an innate talent amongst all of us. Great number of people did comedy course to prepare for best man speech but these courses is only guide us in exploiting what is already there. It never can artificially implant us with a foreign “power” like a radioactive spider can. These guys prepared their speeches in their own voice as an extension of their personality and this not dissimilar to comics exaggerate their persona on stage. What we do as a comic is not that different to normal person afterall!

It was good to see Bhautik and Jacqui came back to Sydney from San Francisco and Adelaide to catchup. Even though it only lasted for a day before everyone has to head home. Now that the weekend of festivity is over we all depart and resume our lives, but not before a week of catching up, relaxing bit of Mountainbiking and a bit of standup comedy.

Home sweet home – Again

Back in Sydney yesterday morning. Its been a long day: Did a full day of work in the office and went to the airport straight afterwards. It was a long day indeed. Managed to get some cat-nap while on the plane so wasn’t 100% knacked when I arrived.

Do you guys know that this “no liquid” aboard policy really put a dent on buying dutyfree booze? I can’t buy any while in London because the security will take it off me in Bangkok, than I can’t buy any in Bangkok because Australian security forbids it in the plane. Only place you can buy it is back in Sydney airport and this REALLY is annoying. More planning is needed for next trip me think.

Sydney changed a little bit since I came back a year and half ago. New buildings gone in, some stuff moved but the town essentially remained the same. Maybe the biggest bit of change is they predicting a deluge over the next few days. There goes the sunshine!!

There is also a sense of anitcipation as well. Catching up with friends who I haven’t seen for over a year. Running my set in front of a Sydney audience which has a large Asian population (thats Chinese not Indians) will be challenge. Of course, its always good to see the family again and eat one of mum’s home cooked meal.

Final bit of news is that Jongulers went into administration with closed of 5 of the clubs. This surely not a good thing for comedy even though Jongulers have a rep with Stag and Hens party, they are also one of biggest and most regular payer for comedians. Not really affecting me at my part of the comedy pond but I am sure quite a few of the circuit comedians will be feeling the sting. Looks like nothing is immune from this recession afterall!!

Its getting close….

A week and a half than I will be on a plane heading back to Australia. Not sure what to think but I hate flying!! But 12,000 km journey and the end are where friends and family lives makes it all worthwhile.

Didn’t do much in terms of comedy: quiet week this week with just one gig and the new and old material went really well. I think this is the first time I am getting multiple applauses for my material in front of a room of 50 ppl. New material still needs a bit of work but with a bit of work they can go in the regular set, will have to play a few more gigs.

Its also an interesting execrise to see if my material will go well in Sydney. People from different countries find different things hilarious so what work in London might not 100% translate over.  Hope some of my friends are alright to come but looking at some of the tickets they all looked pretty expensive. $10-$15 just to see some new acts nights? London is definitely cheaper when it comes to comedy?

ALso lots of movement in the house: old flatmates moving out and new faltmates moving in next week. Always needed new people to see my comedy! Of course I also enjoyed new ppl’s company as well!

Cause deep inside we are a pack of c*&ts

*I am going to start another blog where the private stuff will go. Right now I will double post to both blogs but in time there might be a split between the 2 blogs*

Well, the week and pass and NO, I did not get on the gong show. I did show up at the Store on Monday night and I have to say the night gone even harsher than last time I was there. It seens to me that with its low entrance fee (£5) and happy hour of the whole night it attracted quite a bit of following. Many of the audiences are regulars and some are more than experienced with Heckling than comedians with their routine. Some of the curveballs thrown on the night inclued…

“… We seen you twice, do some new stuff…..”

“Stick with you day job!!!” (Which is just pure nasty!!)

Not to mentioned the regular heckles like “you Shit” or “tell us a joke”. I can’t help to think that these are paid £5 and think that they runs the night. Must be the best £5 anyone can spend!

To be fair, what the crowd after is someone that can “knock their socks off” so to speak. They wanted someone that can take charge, that can establish themselves as hilarious and have this person be confident where he/she can exert authority over the crowd of 100+. Put it this way: In Gong Show Bullshits don’t fly and the crowd will let you know if your material is crap or not tight enough. They are usually fair and they not afraid to let you know if its not working!

So here I am, thinking that I will be have 5 mins of material ready for the Gong and now got a set with holes big enough to drive a truck through. Its back to square one of rewriting and tightening the material again.

Did an audition and heat of a new act competition last sunday and friday. I didn’t go through to the semi-finals but I do definitely felt I am more confident with my material. Competition can be a bitch and sometimes I feel sorry for the judge that have to pick 2 person out of 6 good comics all with their own style. The words apples and oranges comes into mind.

 

Anyway other news, I will be back in OZ on 23rd Oct for a week. Oh I can’t wait!!

Tomorrow just another Monday

Well not quite: Supposely work will be alot busier tomorrow which will mean I have to do some work. Oh well…..

But than tomorrow is also the Monthly Gong Show fo comedy store. I am not on the list for this month but I like to drop in and see if I can get on. Its supposed to be one of the most daunting show any new acts can do because they can get pretty harsh: but than again a gig is just another gig no matter what, only until you do it do you know what it feels like. Anyway its not a guarentee that I get on, will have to turn up early at 6:00p.m. to put my name down and see if they can put me on the bill.

Also went for an “audition” of a comedy competition today. I think I went well and  maybe even have a detail writeup on it later on. 

Enough on comedy. Its bedtime.

How often do you think about comedy in a day?

On any given day, my social conversation would resemble the following:

Me: “Blah Blah….*COMEDY*….Blah Blah…..*COMEDY COMEDY*….

Someone Else: “….*COMEDY*….*COMEDY* ….Blah Blah”

Me: “….*COMEDY*…..”

Its sad: It felt like I haven’t got a life. Just like the days when I like counter-strike, D&D and Warhammer; except back than the other guy would probably be fat, smelly and have sex just as often as me. No comedy is not a bad thing at all; It gets me out of the house, meet people and chance to talk shit with justification. It is however a thin line between hobby and an obession: I am toying with the idea of flying into Hong Kong and going straight from the airport to an Open Mic gig!

Anyway, 3 Sydney gigs are now lined up. Most of my standup friends will never gig at their hometowns, but than I am hardly a normal person.

Zero to a fraction more than zero

I enter this competition and did my 5 mins at one of the big UK comedy club . (I won’t refer to it here by name just in case google has a hit) More on the experience later.

This week was a big week in terms of comedy gig. Wednesday I was booked for a 5 min spot for the new act night at the Comedy Cafe and my flatmate was there as well. Comedy Cafe is probably loveliest gig one will ever play to as a new comic: Its a proper comedy night in a proper comedy club with an accomplished compere. The night is dedicated to new acts like me and audiences are usually very receptive.  

On the night the room was packed with 100+ people and there were a few leaving do parties, it usually quite odd for the comedy night to begin with audience already drunk and starting to get a bit rowdy. I am on spot number one of the night and not quite a storming but done great! I have to say that drunk audiences is quite challenging to play: They do laugh easier but than again they also tended to heckle you, well……drunk and makes not much sense sometimes.

Now with the standup comp, I was given a 5 min at the “J” comedy club at Watford as part of the qualifier of the competition. It was part of their normal friday night lineup and I get to meet some of the regular comics on the  ”J” comedy club. The place runs a really “tight” ship. The night has to finish 10:30p.m. on the dot because the night club downstair pumps out their tune at the same time and the audiences of the comedy club was made up of people from the area who wants a bit of laugh before getting blind drunk and dancing the night away.

I was sloted after the openning act and did my 5 mins set in front of a room of 270 people. They laughed at parts of my set but the Stewart Lee joke of mine fell flat. One of the other comics pointed out that most of the audience of the night  are just your average friday night party crowd and comedy just incidental to them. Overall they been a good audience and gave me their full attention for the 5 mins. I heard stories where fights can broke out other times but none of that happened on the night.

I am not worried whether I made it to the next round or not, it was a great experience to play to a different type of room/audience than the one I used to. The more experience acts on the night really shows how different a “Pro” is to an “amaetur” like me. The other acts all did great to whip up the audience.  One observation I made is to a non “comedy” audience the simpler gags works better than say a story, surreal material is hard to pull off but physical comedy goes really well here along with anything thats loud and outrageous. I had fun playing in front of such a large crowd but I have to say that these people are not really “my” audience and my material will  needed to be re-written in order to play here again.

After the gig I did walked past 2 girls and they whisper and giggle to each other. When I do my routines usually 50% of the time will be laughing with me and 50% of the time audience will be laughing at me. I am sure tonight the ratio of people laughing at me probably was a bit higher. Does it matter if you are being laugh at? I dunno….. they are laughing aren’t they? Isn’t it part of my job to make them laugh? Might be painful if you found out the audience was laughing at you when you are expecting otherwise, but at the moment of my career I dun mind being the jester.

Met up with Phil and Anthea on saturday for Trudi’s leaving drink, its nice to catchup with my fellow comedians when I didn’t have a gig on.  We did tried to not talk about comedy and we succeed 40% of the time I think. Like Phil most of my friends I regularly see in London are comedians.  I am still running around booking gigs for my return trip back to Sydney! I really needed to spent sometime outside comedy!

The Edinburgh hangover

  

  Sitting here alone in the Edinburgh rental flat. All the other guys took the morning coach and heading back to London, I am taking a train in the afternoon. Went to bed at like 5:00a.m. but only managed to sleep 3 hours. If anything I think I am feeling the hangover of Edinburgh.

  
 View overlooking our Edinburgh Flat 

 

The past 10 days went really really quickly, I think I spent in excess of £200 seeing anything from Stand-up to sketch show. All the shows I caught are only a fraction of whats on offer in Edinburgh, unless those shows have a year long run its hard to see everything in Edinburgh. In between I also done 9 gigs in the space of 10 days and learnt alot during those time.

I think the biggest pitfall for new comics is the mentality that to “make it” they needed to take a show to Edinburgh and things like fame and fortune will follow. This is far from the truth if anything anyone with such high expectations will most likely walked away disappointed.

Edinburgh is kind of like a “trade conference” for arts and comedy. Every artist/performers/comedians travel north every year to demo their wares to their potential audience. Problem is with such a large pool of talent to choose from its hard anyone to stood out from the rest of the crowd. Most performers will walk away from Edinburgh in the same place professionally as they first arrive (alas with alot less money) and only a few lucky ones will walk away from Edinburgh’s with potential deals.

  

What the Fringe has to offer is opportunity to sharpen us up as performers. Its the only time of the calendar year where you can perform 30+ shows in front of an international audiences who are not acts like most normal open mics. This is the time you found out whether theres any clout behind the material, your stage craft and ability to improvise and deal with different situations as they arises. The Fringe is like a comedy pressure cooker: either you come out ruined or survived and become a better comedian.

I made it a point that this Fringe for me is more about learning comedy via watching and less about performing in front of audience. I seen more comedy in the last 10 days than my life: I was oblivious to the comedy circus before Edinburgh but luckily Anthony was at Edinburgh same time as I was and I ended up going to see alot of shows with him. See Anthony’s been in the comedy business for over 10 years and knows numerous acts and promoters alike. Its like having your very own personal comedy tour guide!!!

During the past 10 days I seen loads of stand-up/sketch acts/musical comedy. My favour by far is Brendon Burns, Terry Alderton, Pappy’s fun club and Adams and Rea. Especially Brendon Burns, my favour gag of the festival was watching Brendon Burns read from the back of a can and turning it into a “black cock”. Than he proceed to used that gag as a reply to his critics in the Times and Guardian and other media outlet. Many people will find Brendon’s material crass and offensive but to me hes an intellect wrapped in your ideal Australian “bloke”: never uptight, always say things the way they are and never afraid to give it to people straight.

I would like to see more acts that considered as alternative like Jim Jefferies and Kim Noble but its hard to find time between doing gigs and rest to see all the comedians you like to see.

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As for new comics like me and all my comedy circus friends, this Edinburgh is a big learning experience for all of them. Anthea, Alex, Milly and Tom teamed up to do an hour standup show during the festival. It was part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival which means that audiences “contribute” as much or as little as they like at the end of the show. I dun wanted to start a spill of Free  show vs paid show here on this blog, there are pitfalls associated with both format however this post is about my experience of Edinburgh.

   

L to R: Tom, Anthea, ALex and Milly

The four of them only been doing standup for 9-12 months at best and for Edinburgh shows audiences can be some of the toughest audience you can play to. They were part of the Free Festival and in a relative convenient location the turn out for their show was quite good, they only have to pull one show due to poor attendance. The flipside is being “free” show means people from all walks of live can turn up to the show and generally have no idea of what to expect. Very much like the crowd Comedy Brewhouse gets: They like to see comedy but not 100% sure what the night is like because they never heard of the acts on the bill.

Gigs like this usually goes up and down : If you succeed in winning the audience than you will have a good gig. If you failed to win them than the whole night will be an uphill battle. In Tom/Anthea/Alex/Milly case it is complicated by the incompatibility of 5:25p.m. timeslots and Alex’s and Milly’s dark and ironic material. Let just say jokes of sex/self-harm/peedos usually not a feature of your average afternoon tea conversation.

Its good to see both Alex and Milly took the experience in strides and persevere. There is a niche for all style of comedy and it will be a shame to see them blunting their “edge” for the sake of winning over audiences. I remember someone told me once if they don’t like your material they not your audience anyway, fuck them!

Contrast to Anthea & Co, Shane and Denis been running their 2 men paid show at the Caves at a 9:30p.m. slot and going through a very similar experience: Shows gos up and down and some people loves the show while others walk out in disgust. Shane and Denis angle is fairly similar to Jim Jefferies: Denis is the mad Russian firebrand who like to rant and yell at his audience while. Shane is the smartass Australian who loved to call his audience “cunts”. Let just say if you like your comedy warm and fuzzy than look elsewhere.

Their comedy is very different to mine: either the audience loved their style of comedy or they will do their best to walk them out of their gigs. They will rather play to a small audience who loves them rather than seeing their show sold out on a regular basis. It takes “balls” to be an alternative standup comedian especially if you choose to do comedy as a full time job.

The point I am trying to make is whether you are edgy comedian with crass material like Jim Jefferies or the garden variety standup like Michael McIntyre or an ethnic comedian like Chris Rock or as surreal as someone like Harry Hill theres room for all style of comedy and we should embrace it all with open arms.

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So whats mine Edinburgh experience like? I am tired but have the best time! I learnt alot playing my 9 gigs and have alot of fun doing it! I also had one of the best gig since the Exhibit 8 months ago. It also felt good to die in my last gig in Edinburgh to give myself a reminder that I still have alot of work to do.

 
Phil - Setting the room ablaze with fire with his high energy act!

Yes, it is STAND UP!

Looking at my friends whos been doing show it also educated me about what it takes to run an Edinburgh show: The ability to flyer and promote yourself and your own show, ability to be dynamic and “read” the audience and ability to cop with the ups and downs of a month in Edinburgh and ability to manage to balance the number of your gigs so you dun become overloaded with gigs and have no downtime. It will be interesting to see who will still be in the comedy business after Edinburgh – I have a feeling that there will be a few familiar faces next year.

  
Arthur’s on Saturday – Checkout Phil’s Reception!

     
Coo Comedy and the Beta Males Picnic – I never stormed a night as hard as Coo!!

 
Marc from comedy course who put on an hour show in Edinburgh as part of a £1 bet!!

         
Sometimes you do forget theres more to Edinburgh than comedy!!

For me, I would love to take a 30 min show up to Edinburgh next year and make it to the “So you think you funny” final in 2010. I would also make sure to allow some downtime to catch a few shows and some down time. I will also have to make it a point to work on my diction so the audience can understand me alot better.

Have to make it part of my Edinburgh ritual to climb Arthur’s Seat whenever I am up in Edinburgh whether its rain, hail or shine. I took my last day out from seeing shows and climbed up Arthur’s Seat and enjoyed the view of the city. Awesome place to chill out!! *Pun intended* You felt like as if you were King of Scotland’s comedy if only for a day.

     

 

 

Panoramic spot for lunch - I am at the pinanncle of capital of Comedy!!

*Sigh* I will be sad round come Tuesday when all this finished, back to work I go!!!