The first full price night and anticipating a drop in numbers, but was delighted to get over 130 in, which is some 50 more than for the same show last year. This is excellent news and really takes the pressure off, as if the trend continues I should not lose thousands of pounds, which will make everything a happier experience.
And it was a much better show, with pretty much all the kinks ironed out. I didn't really do any proper work on the end during the day, choosing instead to sit around feeling tired and watching part of "Batteries Not Included", but in any case it gelled a lot better tonight. I "skateboard" off at the end. That's in inverted commas because I don't do it in any way well (but would it be funny if I did?). I don't know if anyone saw but I did a marvellous flick up and catch of the board as I left, having done a (deliberately) abysmal one during the show. Everything is developing nicely and it felt good to have a confident and largely well remembered show for the first non-preview show. I think people enjoyed it, so am hopeful that the word of mouth will be good, but with numbers like this at this stage it augurs well for the run. So I will remind you one last time to book ahead if you are coming up to the Fringe.
I will try to write about other things than the show over the rest of the month, though the problem is that I am not really doing a whole lot more than that, except either feeling a bit blue or a bit exhilarated depending pretty much on whether I think I did a good show or not.
Tonight I felt great and drank Guinness with friends, before heading up to the Pleasance Dome to drink more Guinness with other friends. I was drunk and pesky and enjoyed taking the piss out of certain comedians who are in adverts and asking them to reenact moments from the commercial. Like the bloke who exhales with satisfaction when he drinks some cider (the very funny
Tim Key who is in the Slut in the Hut at the Pleasance I believe)./ He played along with my buffoonery, the joke of course being that it is "funny" when a fellow performer behaves like the kind of idiot he must encounter every day in the real world. It is of course in no way funny, which is what makes it slightly funny for me.
I very much hope I stayed on the right side of cheeky and skittish with my fellow "artistes", though in the cold light of day wonder if I maybe took my crapulous banter a little too far. Ah well, I shall do a whole lot worse in the next few weeks.
The worst thing about the Underbelly incidentally is the toilet facilities, which are sparse at best. Occasionally I am naughty and pop into the disabled loo on the ground floor, which I know I shouldn't, but do feel that the disabled owe me this after all the money have raised for SCOPE. Of course I am wrong about this, but it's good to try and justify yourself, which I still fail to do and I feel bad after I have done it.
But I was disappointed to see that when I tried to do this unethical thing this evening, that the toilet was out of order, due to some idiot having gone in there, squirting toilet duck all over the place and I think blocking up the loo with toilet paper. What would possess someone to do such a thing? Unless it was a satirical assault on both the Underbelly's poor disabled access and the fact that the toilet is almost exclusively used by the not-yet-disabled. I don't think it was though. Some drunk person thought it would be fun to stop one of the few toilets in the venue working properly, which was slightly inconvenient for me, meaning I had to walk up another level, but absolutely disastrous for anyone who the toilet had been put there for.
There's some kind of moral in this story and no-one has come out of it well. But if you are the person who vandalised a disabled toilet and have woken up this morning with a hangover and a guilty conscience, please do something to make reparations for your idiocy. I, in turn, promise to do my best to not abuse the facilities with my effluent and go upstairs.
