The gig tonight was better - still possibly a touch short, but I am actually not too worried about that. I usually go to Edinburgh with much too much material and then try and shoehorn it into the 60 minute slot, so it will be a nice change to be able to take my time and not be scared to ad-lib for fear of over-running. I think it's definitely a show that will develop significantly over the Fringe. Which is what I think the Fringe should be about, though not sure the reviewers will see it that way!
Anyway, it was looking OK tonight, though my favourite bit was a new thing I am doing with the skateboard. I admit I can't actually skatboard, but then say I can do one trick and then I attempt to flick the skateboard up and catch it. I am supposed to fail, preferrably having the skateboard hit me in the gonads, but today I stamped on the end, it flew up and landed right in my hand first time. I had caught it when that was the last thing I was trying to do. How is that possible? How did I manage not to drop it? It just flew right up there, making me look genuinely cool, rather than like an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing! Ah well. I can't not only do anything right, I can't do anything wrong either.
I was also looking for some intro music for the show, so typed Happy Birthday into iTunes. There were lots of different versions of songs with those words, such as the ones by Stevie Wonder and Altered Images, but further down there were some regular versions of the actual Happy Birthday song - I don't know who would be buying these off of iTunes, but there they were. The first one I came across was "Happy Birthday Grandad" which I thought would be quite apt, apart from the fact I have failed to reproduce, let alone have someone I have produced reproduce as well, but you know it might work as a comment on how old I am.
But the second version of Happy Birthday on the list was "Happy Birthday Richard" which I thought was a weird coincidence. Out of all the names it could have been. There were by no means every name in the world on the list, maybe only ten or so, but Richard was first. What are the chances? It was surely a sign from God that I must use this song. It's quite a cutesy version of the song, sung by some American women. They were the same ones singing all the other versions. I wonder how many of these they sell at 79p a pop. I can't think of many other times when you would need a recorded version of Happy Birthday, unless maybe you were having a party for yourself and had no friends to sing it to you. Anyway I have added to their coffers. I imagine when those women check their account today they will be screaming with delight "Someone has bought one! Maybe we should do this for more than ten names."
It's nice to have helped. It seems unfair though to be charged the same price as I would for a proper song by a famous band that have written something new and that lasted more than 58 seconds. Anyway, that's one thing sorted out. Five more minutes of jokes and we'll be off. Maybe I'll just play happy birthday five times.
