Family Affair

The other members of WMD wondered what it would take to force me out of cyber-hiding and finally write a blog post. It turns out what it took was for a family of three non-native English speakers being the only people who came to watch our show. This left us with few cultural reference points (they hadn't seen Lord Of The Rings) and no familiarity with common British phrases.

There were as many people in the crowd as there were performers on stage, something none of WMD had ever encountered before. A brief chat to our audience before the show made it clear that much of the material in our show wasn't going to work with this lovely, friendly family. There was no doubt about it, these three were definitely all older than the 16+ age rating we'd given ourselves, but that in itself wasn't justification enough to continue with the show as planned. Don't get me wrong, 'How To Be Awesome At Everything' is not a smut-fest, but it does contain some parts which a family could find uncomfortable. We've all been in a situation where we've been enjoying watching a film with our parents, having a laugh, a joke and a chat until suddenly a wild sex scene appears out of the long grass and you're left battling this beast with the moves, 'Stare at the Floor', 'Leave the room', 'Think Happy Thoughts' or 'Feign Death'. Now, I'm not saying that HTBAAE features a sex scene, and if it did I am certain it wouldn't be wild by any definition, but no part of WMD wanted to be held responsible for changing the way a parent thinks about their child forever. If he is caught off guard by a juvenile joke about willies, in his fathers eyes he is no longer the first class honours law graduate he was prior to the show, but is now instead an immature little boy who just backtracked eighteen years. Even though willies are definitely funny.

Perhaps there's an argument for saying that entering a comedy show as a family and expecting the acts to adapt to the situation on-the-fly is a bit like going into a bakery with a gluten allergy and demanding safe bread, but that kind of outlook simply isn't WMD's way.

The hour that followed has to be one of my favourite ever gigs, solo or otherwise, as we were forced to think fast and edit our gags and sketches as we went along. There were two definite highlights of this for me. Firstly, there was no greater joy than being backstage and listening to one of the other lads refer to people in their sets who were once 'mighty dickheads', or that had called them 'cunts', now being labelled as 'idiots' who called them 'trump-brains'. Secondly, due to the reams of material each act had cut completely, the show was going to run short. I'm the second act, and whilst I was on stage the other two guys decided that in order to fill our allotted time, we needed to make up a third sketch entirely on the spot, and that they would give me a leading role in it as soon as they came back on stage. Acting opposite either of the lads is a pleasure at any time, and in this scene about ways to be awesome at dating Ben was on stunning form.

Instructed by Tom playing the role of his unseen advisor, Ben was told to come up with a boast in order to impress the handsome partner on the date I was method acting as. When you work as closely with someone as WMD do with one another, often the ways they might react to certain things are predictable, which is why top improvisation groups are able to bounce off one another so effectively. Allow me to say this, what Ben came up with in order to impress my character was something I would confidently state no one would ever predict, as even Ben himself was laughing so hard prior to speaking the line, that he was unable to do so for around twenty seconds.

The script for the scene would read as follows;

Tom: It's often a good idea on a date to come up with a boast about yourself which you can use to impress your partner

Ben thinks about this briefly. Then laughs for ages.

Ben: (Through tear sodden eyes) I own forty cows.

However hard Ben laughed was nothing like as much as I shrieked with joy at such a ridiculous and brilliant boast. I was practically unable to continue with the scene, and it didn't matter, because in that moment there was nothing that could possibly have beaten such a phrase for sheer comedy value.

I realised two things at this point. One, no matter what Ben did with his life from that moment, I would always be disappointed until the number of cows he owned was exactly and precisely forty, and two, the family watching us didn't find it even slightly as amusing as I did. Maybe they'd have preferred some fart gags after all.

The First Few Days

Well, it’s been 4 nights and 4 performances into our run at the Fringe, and I thought it would be an excellent time to reflect on what we’d been up to and, perhaps more importantly, what we’d learned. Here are our 5 most important things about the start of the Fringe:

1-      Remember that it’s early days

This important to remember as both a performer and an audience member. In terms of performance, everyone is still finding their feet, but it’s also a lot of fun just performing a show a lot to different people. Conversely, as an audience member, I think there is a lot of fun to be had watching shows at their most volatile and unpolished, before they get to the point of being hyper-rehearsed. Also, many shows are cheaper during these few days, which can be used to see acts you know you like for a little less.

2-      Physically have your publicity material before you come (to Edinburgh)

This is something we very stupidly failed to do, primarily due to a hilarious series of postal screw ups that, on reflection, aren’t actually hilarious and are mainly soul crushing. It has, however, caused us to improvise, and rely on charisma and talking to people to get people into our show, which I think is nicer for all concerned. No one likes to be treated like a flyer receptacle, so it’s lovely to be spoken to when someone is selling a show. It may sound biased, but I would really recommend that you get people to talk about their show

Not pictured: our flyers.

3-      Remember that free shows are good

At time of writing, I have only been to see free shows. I used to be cynical of such things, but have quickly learned that need of money is not necessary a demonstration of quality. In fact, when there is not a financial incentive to create a show people are more willing to experiment rather than play it safe and perform what is most marketable. In fact, practically speaking, the only definite difference between a free show and a ticketed one is that the ticketed show cost more to do.

4-      Don’t share a bed with Ryan

Most people won’t encounter this (unless Ryan is aggressively sharing beds during the evening and I don’t know about it), but it can affect you enjoyment of the Fringe. Tom lost a good chunk of sleep the night before our first show due to Ryan waking him up in the middle of the night violently shaking him. Tom asked what was wrong, only to have Ryan say that he “thought he was covered in crabs”, and then reflecting that “at least he was trying to get them off”. Before Tom had time to respond, Ryan was already asleep again, whilst Tom was kept up for another hour.

5-      Have fun

It’s easier than I was certainly led to believe, but it can happen. Our first show had two people in, who both felt very uncomfortable, and yet was one of the most fun gigs I’ve ever done. Most importantly, they genuinely seemed to have a great time as well. Probably because at no point did we pour crabs on them.

Talking About Stereotypes in Comedy

Today's post is about stereotypes in comedy, and because it's posted on a blog, the stereotype would be that it's inflammatory, poorly written and filled with syntactic errors. Which it is 'hurr hurr harr harr'

So, basically I believe, to an extent, stereotypes are necessary in certain types of comedy, often simply as a shorthand for a large group of people that it would otherwise be impossible to address. At this point, the educated and cultured among us believe (as the twillight zone once taught me) 'people are the same all over'. There are good/bad, smart/stupid, friendly/mean personalities in every group, subculture and organisation you can name.

But when it comes to the basic storytelling structure, it's impossible to talk about a group of people without painting them all with one or several similar characteristics. This is so that you can set them up as the fall guy of the joke or the enemy that we're supposed to hate so that we can root for the hero.

A simple example of this could be a left wing comedian arguing and ultimately outsmarting or quipping against a conservative or right wing person/politician/figure of authority in a story they are telling. We ignore the fact that this person could be a fire-fighter or a mother or any number of wonderful respectable things as well because for the purpose of the story they need to be represented as evil.

Now, these days I like to think that many of us understand that it's wrong to group people together and to judge their character based on their belonging to that group in any real-life situation. What this means for comedy is that if you want to do offensive or prejudice based material to a multi-cultural world you have to do it with a sense of irony. Often the joke is about how stupid the character is to be a prejudiced. A good example of this is Cartman from Southpark - an openly racist and offensive character. But the inflammatory things he says are acceptable because it is all done under the knowledge that he is unintelligent and ignorant in comparison to Stan and Kyle. His racism is just an extension of his low intelligence, it's a classic idiot clown joke because he doesn't understand the society that he lives in and makes obvious logical fallacies based on prejudice.

But this is not always played out in the correct or safest way and it starts to raise questions about the birth of the joke and its origin. It can usually be easy to see when the origin of the joke was based on prejudice and the author then had to craft and manipulate until it became acceptable. I think I found a good example of this the other day on a comic strip I found online:

The comic strip from what I can tell comes from balderduck.com and this comic as well as the rest of the comics on the site are fairly generic and wouldn't look too out of place in the back of a daily newspaper. However, this one has one important difference that I believe marks out a different period of comedy for the modern day. Now, this strip is about male female stereotypes, the entire humour comes from the characters assuming that women can't park. Just a few years ago, this strip could have existed as it is without the need to add the caption 'stereotypes are bad'. At no point in the 2 panel strip does it imply that stereotypes are bad, the only thing the caption seems to add is to let us know that the author recognises that prejudice is a bad thing. To me it seems to reek of lazy 'ass covering'. The content itself is sexist, the caption might as well just read 'I'm not sexist, gender doesn't actually affect parking ability'.

This comic could potentially say a few things about stereotypes in comedy at the moment. Do we now, as an audience, need to be reassured that the author himself isn't prejudiced before we feel that we can enjoy a sexist joke? I think this removes all type of free thought or scope for different interpretations. An audience member should be allowed to come upon this joke and appreciate it for what it is, whether you agree that the stereotype is true or not. Or is it arguably a joke about stupidity? We're supposed to recognise that applying the assumed gender rules we live by to a cat would be ridiculous. That would align it with my Cartman paradigm and in doing so relieve it of any offensive undertones by my own argument. But my problem with it is that it seeks to leave us with a positive message even though the fact that stereotypes and prejudice are bad is something that everyone already knows. The caption adds absolutely nothing to the joke; it only serves to make us aware of the intent of the author in a very lazy way. In a painfully overly simplified way, it's like ending an episode of 'love thy neighbour' with the post script "don't be racist".

A joke is a joke and should be able to stand by itself without us having to know the intention of the author. This isn't the same as removing a joke from its context and in doing so accuse it of offensiveness like they often do in scandals or campaigns by the media. Offence is often a tool used to tell us things about a certain character like the ignorance of Cartman or the bitterness and nihilistic detachment of the stage persona of Jerry Sadowitz. What is said by the character is not the whole joke, the history of the character and the context at the time all go in to making the joke what it is. But with this comic, as far as I can tell, the entirety of the joke is there contained in the two panels and the caption (I even did some brief research to try find out whether it was part of a series or a recurring character that I was missing (it's not).

An ironic joke or script will carry the message it needs to without needing to tack it onto the end. This is why it is so satisfying to hear an author defend their work against those who misjudge it by pointing out the glaringly obvious subtext or satirical intent. If you write a joke that could be perceived as sexist, it undoubtedly will be, you just have to hope that the joke is well written enough that the intended audience will understand what you were trying to do (assuming that sexism wasn't your intention).

I almost certainly have more to say about this subject but at the moment I feel unable to articulate my argument with sufficient accuracy. When you start talking about offence in comedy it can very quickly become a huge discussion, but this has been a fairly untidy spiel sparked by the sight of that particular comic and I hope that you've found my tired over-analysis of the joke entertaining or at least interesting.

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This is actually a post that I wrote about a year ago somewhere else, but I re-read it recently, and thought it was still interesting and relavent, so I'm reusing it like a rich businessman would reuse a high class escort service [prostitution is bad].

We Were Awarded Some Funding

This week we found out that we've been awarded some funding by Lancaster University, to take our show up to Edinburgh. A wise investment for the fine artistic and cultural output of the university that we represent. This for me is some very exciting news, not just because it will go someway towards making this venture slightly less financially crippling for us, but also because it seems to me to give the whole project an air of legitimacy that I really appreciate. It feels almost as if we belong somewhere in the same vein as the Cambridge footlights or other famous university based comedy troupes, and our journey to Edinburgh this year could mark the start of a long tradition of Lancaster Comedy Society graduates taking a show to the festival; a legacy that I would be very proud of.

"I may not be the fastest, I may not be the best. But I was the first, and first is forever." Wise words of GM Flash

So now, thanks to the wonderful people at LUSU, or project has the official backing of the university. Not that this is by any means a blank check, in fact the regulations on how to acquire financial help with a project like this are quite complicated. Essentially, the system seems to be designed for sports teams to head to tournaments and competitions, so the funding for the arts has to go through a lot of the same hoops whether they're appropriate for the project or not. So we were graciously awarded funding for our entry into the programme, as well as for an A board that we will donate back to the comedy society once we're done, and some of the transport costs of getting there. The basic idea is that the university won't fund promotion, or living expenses (which makes sense seeing as these areas effectively have no price ceiling), so they're happy to pay for anything that can be reused, as well as entry fees and transport.

This extra help has really been a great asset to us, and hopefully will make it easier for future groups from Lancaster to take a show to the fringe in the future. In short, thanks LUSU, it really means a lot to us!

A Meeting of the Minds

So last weekend, upon noticing that the 1st of August (opening night) was drawing nearer and nearer, we finally set about the task of constructing the show. Ben has to travel to us from York in order for us to really set down to writing together, so our writing meetings are shamefully rare and brief. But once we get together, oh boy, you can be sure as sure can be that we get some serious writing done, as well as ample amounts of pissing around.

I go by a simple philosophy. When you remember a joke from the simpsons, tell people,

So we set ourself to a few basic tasks. We met hor half of Friday and all day Saturday. Friday was a difficult but successful day, because we realised that being apart for so long our ideas about the show had taken very different paths, some of it more theatrical, some more basic stand up ideas. Basically, we needed to decide on an overarching structure for the show itself, we had a title, and a few ideas, but now we needed to decide what the show itself should be. Myself, Ryan and Ben, are stand ups with a great backlog of infinitely hilarious material*, but we decided in order to give the show a fresh angle, and to stay true to our theme as closely as possible, it was important to write new material around the stimulus. But how do you get to writing an hour long show?

Well, we decided, if we have to teach the audience how to be awesome at everything, the first step is to define what it is we mean by 'everything'. So we forced some word association or general thinking about anything that anyone could want to learn to be great at, and we came up with a list, THE list, of about 139 different things that we could write about. Then we set to it, picking some topics at random and devoting 5 minutes to the task. Ideally from this, we'll be able to get a comprehensive list of over a hundred different jokes on nearly every subject anyone could hope to mention. The idea then being that at one point in the show, it would be possible to throw the question open to the audience 'what do you want to be awesome at?' and be prepared to answer any response with a well polished high impact bit of funny.

Okay, changing batteries right, you want to be awesome at 'changing batteries', I got this...

Thoroughly happy with our progress, we had some sandwiches, then retired for the day to meet again tomorrow. Saturday, however, got off to a less productive start, whereby we spent about 2 hours as soon as we got together just talking about video games that we all like. We all sort of had this feeling like we were being unproductive, but it was the siren call of procrastination that makes everything so appealing when you know you've got work to be doing.

Our main objective for the day was 'design a skeleton structure for the show', and 'put some meat on those bones'. Which, eventually, we did do reasonably successfully, with some different writing exercises as well as long creative thinking about how we want the journey of the show itself to proceed. All in all, it was a reasonably successful meeting for us all, if a little inefficient. And every time that we meet up, the energy that we generate helps the show to come along leaps and bounds at a time and that thought gives me a lot of hope for how the show itself will play out whilst we're up there together. With another writing meeting scheduled in for the weekend after next, a cowardly man would say we're running out of time, but us brave boys of WMD Comedy are more than up to the task of designing the raw hell out of this show. 

I Haven't Watched New Arrested Development Yet and That's Fine

So to start with, let it be known that I love AD. It's ace. No one is saying that it isn't ace, mostly because they'd be met with "Guh!", or just old that they 'haven't gotten into it properly yet'. But the show has recently been building up a huge amount of momentum leading up to the release of the new season on Netflix last week to a level that started to irritate me, mostly because I'm mean spirited. I understand why people are hailing this return, it's a great show, and bringing it back feels sort of like our devoted fandom has won some kind of nerd-victory and undone one of the greatest cultural injustices since firefly. But now that it's back, it's back. My suggestion is just that everyone slow down, take a breath, and enjoy it in your own time, rather than thumbing the pages like we're 13 year olds with the latest Harry Potter book again.

Being a fan of something shouldn't make you temporarily homeless

When I saw the first 3 seasons, I watched it slowly and really enjoyed it. If you binged through all of them fine. But I suppose what irritates me is the pressure, or at least the expectation, as if we all need to get to the end as quickly as possible before somebody tells us Michael Bluth was Bruce Willis all along and ruins the whole ending. I don't really believe that this is a series that particularly can be ruined, it's a number of densely written highly packed jokes, most of which we're familiar with now,  because they revolve around a set of characters and situations that we know and recognise. There can't really be any spoilers. 

But another part of the urgency I believe, is in the necessity to instantly form an opinion on it and judge it. Is it as good as it was? Have they lost it? Then you communicate this opinion to others and interact with the 'I like AD' community. If you haven't seen it, you lose the ability to form opinions on it and your social stake in that community goes down. So having watched the show or not, no longer pertains to your personal enjoyment of it, or your leisure time, it's now just something you have to do in order to wear a badge of pride for having done so. It's important to state at this point, that I don't intend to tell anyone what to do, you want to blitz through it, that's fine, but what I resent is the expectation that anyone who is a fan should and must be doing so. It's a good show, but it really doesn't affect my life that much, I mean it's not sex and the city.

I feel trapped and frustrated by it, but then I would do, I'm a Michael.

Also, whilst we're on the subject, spoilers aren't a big deal. Like, at all. People should chill out about that too. One of the other pitfalls, and this really is no ones fault, is that knowing that I haven't seen it, the people who have are actually very conscientious and try to shield me from any experience or knowledge of what might have happened in the new season, as if I'm a baby bird that needs to be protected from the wind. I wish that the concept of spoilers just did not exist, and that everyone felt happy and liberated enough to speak plainly like an adult about something that they've seen that they think you'd want to know about. 'Michael dies at the end because his butt explodes', is a conversation that naturally won't occur, because it has no value. But 'the journey and development of Michael in this season is really fascinating' is something that can be of interest to anyone regardless of whether they've seen it or not. And just because I've not seen something myself, doesn't mean I'm going to jam my fingers in my ears and run out the room screaming every time it's brought up, or I overhear it in someone else's conversation.

I remember reading at one point, that people shouldn't be so pedantic about the exact way that the experience a new piece of media. You don't need to commit yourself to total sensory deprivation until you experience it, just chill out, remmeber that you're supposed to enjoy it. A lack of knowledge is not supposed to be a precious invisible piece of glass that you carry round with you, worried that it might fall and break before you have the chance to see the show.

I don't know, chill out maybe. Or don't. Do whatever. The only person anyone seems to be irritating is me, so there's a very good chance that I'm just a belligerent arsehole.

A Growing Obsession with Motivational Speeches

It's worth saying, before I start this post, that I knew this was going to happen. I've become obsessed with watching and listening to motivational speeches. They're incredibly addictive. It's easy now to see why so many people attend these seminars, and why it would be so easy to get dragged into something like a cult.

Somebody starts swinging round a phrase like 'personal self fulfiled entitlement action' and the first time you hear it you're like "pfft, that's dumb, what suckers". Then the 5th time you hear it you're like "Well, I mean it just makes sense, if I want something I just need the gogettitude to achieve my dream goals".

The phenomenon of motivational speeches is part of what has inspired, for me at least, the project of 'how to be awesome at everything' and so part of that project and the learning process is to get to know the subject matter inside out. This means reading Paul Mckenna books, listening to tapes, and watching the hours and hours of videoed motivational speeches there are on youtube. My basic plan is just to absorb this language and these ideas, until I can speak the jargon fluently. So I've started watching a lot.

This was one of the first characters that I came across after just starting by searching 'motivational speeches'. This is Tony Robbins.

This isn't exactly the video of his that I was watching, but all of his videos are great. Watching him is like if the simpsons did a send up of motivational speakers (I can't remember if they've done that). And it's exactly the sort of thing that I was planning to come across when I started along this journey. His show is even called 'unleash the power within', a perfect title. In the video that I watched he started using a few different techniques that I wrote down for material, or to influence me. One of the things is making the audience very vocal. He has this bit at first where he's asking the audience questions like 'who's ever been disappointed?' then says 'say AAI!'. Watching it is fascinating he sounds a lot like a gospel preacher particularly at this point, and it shows some of the pseudo-religious aspect that self-motivation has developed.

He also, and I personally thought this was funny, starts defining success according to physical space. Poor effort, and poor results are here, good work is here, excellence is here, but you need to be here, at outstanding. And outstanding is just a tiny little bit further than excellence. I think there's definitely something in that that could be exploited for parody, it almost parodies itself with it's own ridiculous simplicity.

Crucially, one of the first things that I noted down, was how he divides up the show: Health, wealth and relationships. I think that's a great start on the road towards everything. If everything is our mission, this could be a fantastic way to start dividing up different themes. Videos, seminars, tutorials, pamphlets can all address these 3 crucial different issues. Tony Robbins is a gold mine. And thankfully a laboriously hard worker. He's been doing this for years, so he has spools upon spools of footage and material to dissect. He's one of the early contenders for my main focus.

Next up is someone slightly different, with some different style and things to teach us too. This is Eric Thomas.

Here's a link to a better and longer version of that video, but that's probably the best part of it. The fantastic story that he starts to tell about the guru and the business man is very genuinely moving, and it also happens to be hilarious and infinitely open to the possibilities of playing around with some of the elements of it. These stories could end up being a really great recurring part of the show, and could be a lot of fun to riff on and develop as our run in Edinburgh goes on. 'Let me tell you a story' We'll start. 'It's about a man who thought that he could be all he wanted to be' e.t.c. e.t.c. It's a very exciting idea, and I wouldn't have had it without the help of this great piece by Eric Thomas.

Also, worth looking at is the link to the other version, which someone has underscored with some touching and emotional guitar music.  This really amps up the vibe that he is giving off, and makes the whole thing seem so much more inspiring. Recreating something like that in a live setting could present a great opportunity to be a little bit more silly with it, placing in stunts where the music messes up, has been recorded over, or is badly timed. It's like it's another dimension to play around with.

On emore serious aspect of the video is when Eric Thomas admits that he has spent some time being homeless, and has built himself up again since then. I think that this could be an interesting avenue to explore, simply pertaining to the history of the speakers. His problems were a great adversity that he overcame, and I think exploring a history of being down and out in perhaps some more asinine ways could be an idea that has some potential.

Here's a final video that compared to some of the longer ones I found quite fun and high-impact.

This video starts by falling into all of the cliches of the classic sports movie motivational speech, but by the end it has a pretty powerful effect. It seems like strange blend of military motivation, and self belief hype, interwoven with a horrible sense of incredible violence. I realise those words almost don't sound like anything, but whilst he sounds like a drill seargant, he's not saying 'you're a maggot', he's saying 'believe in yourself''. The whole thing feels very much like they're going to war and is at times even a little bit scary. I actually at one point felt a little bit sorry for the team that had to face these guys, because it seemed like they were going to not only get beaten, but actually physically and truly annihilated.

I think the stereo behind him might be where the highland music is coming from, which is a very endearing a silly touch, that plays quite well into what I was discussing before about the possibility of live music. He has the entire team chanting 'I'm a champion' and his screams of 'who am I' reach a tremendously enjoyable crescendo at the end. This speech is so aggressive and full on, that it is genuinely almost certainly too much for our nice Edinburgh audiences. But the cheesiness of the whole thing makes me sure that there just has to be something from this that we can learn and take away.

So after all of the detailed analysis is done, I find myself ashamed to admit that you do always end up at least just slightly genuinely motivated and amped up by these sorts of speeches. And as I said at the start, it's a habit that very easily becomes incredibly addictive; I know I'm going to have to be careful to reign it in. One thing that struck me whilst I was watching all of these, is that, yes, if you follow this advice to the letter, and are also quite lucky, you can be successful. but can you imagine what an unbearable asshole you would be to be around at the same time? Someone who was relentlessly persistent, and regularly used phrases like 'be outstanding' would be someone who you could spend abotu 8 minutes with, before you had to leave to go watch a movie or something normal.

The motivators almost certainly would hate me for that, or consider me a 'lazy unsuccesserator', ah well.

The Perfect Shape for Comedy

Comedy is an industry that seems to intrinsically breed prejudice, shallow conceptions and false first impressions. It seems alsmost to come out of the ether. If you speak to comedians, they're always why there aren't more female comedians, and the public seem to express a similar opinion by and large. And yet, somehow, when you gather a large group of people into a room, female comedians, or anything out of the ordinary white male stereotype seems to be met with overwhelming hatred. Witnessing this hatred has an effect on my response when I encounter the ignorant opinion that all female comedians talk about is being a female comedian, or their vaginas. I usually advise these people to go down to their local amateur night, to see all of the shaken legged young nervous comics, and then to listen to the way that the female acts will get berrated with shouts of 'get your tits out' or 'show us your muff'.

This forces the acts into a corner, where the only thing they can do is address their gender and the perceptions of the crowd, particularly it's more vocal members. I've seen great female acts flounder when utitlising the vast comedy pool of the surrealist anthropomorphic animals, and very boring female acts achieve a great amount of success by taking on the sexist heckles with more sexual aggression. 'You couldn't handle it love, my vagina would spit you back out again'.

The case seems to be that if there is something that the audience can pick up on about you, you have to address it first. I think it was actually Jo Brand from whom I first learned this message; she's said something to the effect of 'some members of the audience were going to call me fat or ugly, so I thought I'd beat them to the punch.'

This was one of the first images that happened when I googled Jo Brand, so I honestly don't know what she's talking about.

 So this sort of thinking, has started a huge wave, (I say wave, waves don't last decades) whereby the first few jokes a comedian has to make is to say 'I know what you're thinking, I look like [blank]'. I think Stewart Lee has a long bit about this, I think he's trying to critique the cliche, but he really seems to just use that as a veil to get in jokes about looking like an older fatter version of Morrissey. So at any amateur night then, you can expect to hear 15 versions of the same joke from people who 'look like colnol sanders became an alcoholic' '...like Noddy from slade had a child with Phil Jupitus' 'like the boy from the sixth sense became..well...an adult version of Haley Joel Osment'.

I remember even having one myself that I tried for a little while, where I started by saying I look like a slightly older version of a child from the 1940s. Unfortunately, it was met with a resounding 'huh?' because it turns out the secret to 'I know what you're thinking jokes' is that it has to be an actually fundamentally recognisable thing. The problem for me, I remember thinking, was that I looked far too generic to resemble anything in particular. I remember cursing my distinctly average looks, and lack of noticeable physical deviations from the norm. 

Turns out, my problem wasn't my generic face, but my generic writing. And as a white male stand up, I at the very least had the choice and the freedom to explore whatever topic I wanted. Be it surrealism, social comment, relationships, I belong to a group that isn't given the same immediate prejudice that many other stand ups have to experience. I think it might have been Jack Dee, though I may be wrongly attributing this, who said that being a male white comedian is like having a blank canvas that you can draw whatever you like upon. Meaning conversely that being female or any other ethnicity the outlines are already drawn rigidly for you, in bold, and breaking free of them is an uphill battle that requires a great deal of effort.

Although, this was one of the first images when googling Jack Dee, so I honestly don't know what he's talking about

However, and this was the point that I wanted to get to after what I'd intended to be a short opening paragraph, gender and ethnicity are not the only prejudices that you face as a stand up. Perhaps prejudice is too strong a word, but first impressions are obviously crucial in stand up, because you have only a fraction of a moment in order to win over a crowd. This is certainly exacerbated during amateur nights, when your time on stage, as well as the crowd's expectations are much lower. The actual time you have to win a crowd over is an inexact science, from 10 seconds, to 30, to 60. Often it's said that you just have to have it the minute you walk on stage, the confidence to know that you don't need to win them over, in fact they're already yours. But the fact remains, those first few moments are essential, and there are many different things that can make a person instantly decide that they're not going to like you before you even start talking.

One particular example, that I believe I have witnessed and want to discuss, is actually looking too cool, or attractive. I'd like to point out that I certainly don't believe that this has happened to me because I think I fall into the camp of almost unattractively average looking, but I have definitely seen some beautiful men and women go on stage and die on their arse and I think this happens for a number of reasons. Partly because comedy is a medium for complaining, critiquing and exposing the world around us, in order to do this, I firmly believe that in some capacity you have to exist outside that world. Either you're not from the country, you've got no friends, or you're a bit weird looking. 

When incredibly attractive people come on stage and try to tell us that they exist outside of this world, or that things are hard for them, we just don't believe them. What can they know of difficult relationships? They're gorgeous. Great relationships are probably ten a penny to them. Last month I saw Daniel Simonsen sum up this point quite succinctly by saying that the reason we don't like attractive comics is because all so often it sounds like they might as well be saying "Oh boy, it's so hard. Getting all the pussy".

Although I googled Daniel Simonsen anOKAY I'LL STOP.

And even in the greatly underrated classic comedy that is Chris Rock's 'Down to Earth' Chris quite rightly says, 'you don't want to laugh at someone who can whoop your ass'. And this is where the comedy scene is even disproportionate towards people who are out of shape. For comedy, fat is in. It's well in. By saying that, I'm absolutely not putting down the work of hard working overweight comedians, of which there are many. However, I have witnessed a man win a comedy competition because he could do a truffle shuffle. I'll be honest, he was funny as well, but it came down to a dead heat between him and another talented performer, and he tipped the scales by performing the truffle shuffle and sending the crowd (and the clapometer) wild. Fat guys, and I say guys because part of me believes this formula works most favourably for men, get a warmer reception the moment that the step on stage. Their is an ingrained cultural perception that fat guys are funnier, and so the crowd get ready to laugh more, and then do. Maybe the difference isn't huge, but because of that crucial first impression, the difference in results is huge.

So there, most of what I wanted to use this post for was to vent about the cruel punishment I suffer because of my metabolism. Which would be a great example of me absolutely not learning the lesson from before, about cursing my generic face. These things can be overcome, being distinctly not remarkable looking, is far from the biggest hurdle anyone has triumphed in the face of. The bottom line as always is work hard, be exceptional.

The Free Fringe Festival Programme Came Out

So we're now online, our show is official. If you are a person with access to the internet, you can find our show, provided of course, you know exactly where to look, as well as the name of our show.

If you head to the laughing horse free fringe website, you can search for the show and find a brief description of it as well as the time and place. This may seem like a small milestone to pass, and in all honesty, it certainly is, but it's a milestone none the less. Everything is a step towards the reality of us having a show up there. At the moment we're trying to get our little section to look a little bit more flashy, with a picture and a more evocative description of what the show looks like at the moment. Learning what we have recently about promotion, we're making all the more effort to make ourselves look a little bit more slick. Plus, it seems like we've doubled our problems for ourselves by calling our show 'how to be awesome at everything' because for the idea to work the first step is that you have to be at least fairly awesome at marketing and presenting yourself.

Our current marketing looks like this

So if you want to find the current description of our show online, you can find our current listing here, but hopefully that will pale in comparison in some of the other ways that we hope to invade the web with our idea. Which leads me on to some other interesting news, or at least development in the collective comedy project. I, after years of longing to do so, have taken up animating, or at the very least am doggedly trying to do so. Animation is obviously a brilliant medium for comedy, and depending on how successful I am with it, or how much I enjoy it, there could be a lot of animated tie ins to the HTBAAE project. I think that small clips, or animated versions of some of our exploits could make for an interesting experience, whilst also giving me more opportunities to practice my new found hobby. So here is one of my very first animated things... hell, we all start somewhere:

There we go, a simple bird flapping it's crappily drawn and lazily animated wings. And from this seed, will hopefully spring a whole forest of fun animations and little bits and pieces I'll be able to put together. At the moment I'm trying to learn flash for some cartoony bits, but there's also after effects for some more real time video making stuff which is certainly on the cards. Honestly, that bird took a lot longer than you would think, but messing around with this stuff it's remarkable how quickly you can catch on. I've now got a lot ahead of me in terms of learning more about the program and the art of the movement itself, but it seems to be pretty good fun. Watch this space for some how to be awesome animations in the near, or reasonably near future.

'How to Sell Your Show at the Edinburgh Fringe' - An Attentive Listener's Rundown

Today, I attended a roadshow in Brighton, put on by the Fringe society, entitiled 'Sell Your Show at the Fringe'. This is the closest I can manage to a play by play of some of the advice and important information that the talk gave out. But you'll have to forgive my rudimentary notes, because I neglected to record useful segments that weren't relevant to me specifically, as well as often, unfortunately the source that most of these nuggets of information came from - there were 5 speakers and the advice often came thick and fast from all of them.

The set up was a panel of guests with a huge combined wealth of experience at the fringe as well as acclaim for their expertise, and a member of the fringe society acting as mediator fielding them useful questions from the audience as well as from his own arsenal of insights.

The panel included Matt Truman a freelance journalist, Paul Levy who works for the Fringe Review and seemed to have a good deal experience with theatre, Mel Brown who works with an entire team of publicists in Edinburgh, Valerie Potter who braves it alone as a freelance publicist at the fringe, as well as, crucially, Lyn Gardner from the Guardian, who as an extensive theatre critic and writer it would seem is a humble and deserving member of the Edfringe royalty.

If you haven't been able to get to one of these roadshows, or are thinking of going to one (my unwavering advice is to do so), then I hope my notes will be of use to you. Here are some of the bits that I picked up:


Writing A Media Press Release

This was the first topic that was covered extensively by the panel, in the first round of questioning asked by the mediator. Some very interesting and helpful points were made by Mel Brown who briefly described some of the dos and don'ts of a press release for your show.

It's important to have the press release as a one page document, so that it is clear, concise and easy to read. You should fill this document with factual but interesting information, without adding a great deal of flair or taking a creative license with your show. Flowery writing and impressive metaphors are just going to confuse your message and the point of your show, besides, it's a job that is up to the journalists themselves if they go see your show - you don't need to promise them your show will fill the room with raucous laughter like the sound of great heavy crashing waves. Instead focus on the Unique Selling Point, or usp; why is your show different, special and worth witnessing? This is the information you should be able to get across in a short and to the point summary of your basic premise.

In fact, one of the main points that was stressed, and driven home, was just how little time journalists have when trying to sift through the enormous number of emails, letters and press releases they get. So the message from them would appear to be, the quicker, the shorter, the clearer, the better.

Then there is the question of who to send it to, and this came with an important rule, to absolutely avoid what was called blanket bombing all of the journalists. if your show is stand up, and you send your press release to a theatre critic, this will be incredibly irritating for them. Admittedly, it can't hurt, but what can hurt is sending out a bland and uninteresting press release that excites absolutely no one. Think, if your press release sounds like a generic round robin letter that everybody receives it is much less likely to excite the interest of anyone reading it. Find out a little bit about who you are sending it to, so that you know what it is that they are looking for and what they are likely to respond to.

On a related and important note, find out the precise format that the journalists like to recieve their information in; Lyn Gardner for example, told us she likes to receive a press release by post so that she can read it on the train, so this is much more likely to get a response out of her than an email. This information is all available in the media list that all of the participants will receive on May 30th - which is an extensive list of all of the appropriate journalists and media that you can contact along with their details plus a checklist of what they do and do not want to be sent.

The date of the 30th is important, because this, and immediately afterwards is the day that the inbox of these journalists is going to explode with an influx of information from thousands of different shows. They told us today, that they hate the second half of July with a passion because that is precisely when they are beyond inundated with a landslide of information. It's also, never too early to get in there, and start letting the press know who you are, with the month of February thrown around as a good starting point. The advice from this seems to be, once May 30th comes, get something to the people on that list as soon as possible, because the longer you wait, the more they will have to wade through to find yours.

The last word about a press release was simply about images. These don't need to go to the journalists themselves, you send them to the picture desk of the appropriate publication, so that when it comes to print they've got it already to hand. Again, the only thing a journalist is looking for, is a snappy informative description that simply says here's who I am and what I'm doing, and here's why it's worth you coming to see it.

------- Very importantly: do not forget to put the absolutely vital basic information into the press release. Where and when the show is, and your contact details are the absolute most important part, and yet they apparently are often forgotten by shows that get carried away in writing about how great it is. 'Okay, sounds awesome, but how do I see it?'

Flyers and Leafleting

The next big topic that was thrown around, was to do with flyers and the way that you sell directly to the public itself.

On this topic, Paul Levy had some interesting insights when he spoke from experience about a sort of tipping point that can occur for a lot of shows at the fringe. He described a familiar scene in which you leaflet day after day to very little success, then one day it all comes together by chance for whatever reason, and suddenly you have a decently packed venue, you put on a good show, and those people tell their friends and the buzz starts to spread. Suddenly you've got a success on your hands, even though it seemed at the start as if no one was ever going to come. This is in part, he said, to word of mouth, and a quality product, but crucially, he greatly emphasized the incomparable importance of hard graft when it comes to getting people in. Gimmicks, stunts and spending are nothing compared to the crucial step of just really digging your heels into the mud and working at the publicity tirelessly throughout the whole run. Even when it seems like your work on the mile is bringing absolutely no one in, you could be just one day away from that great tipping point that could turn it all around, even as sometimes happens, in the very last week of the run.

Matt Truman, who was a performer himself at the fringe before becoming a journalist, spoke about the importance of once again targeting your show towards the right people. It is not, he explained, simply about getting people through the doors and into seats, but about making sure that it is the right people in the right seats (the right show). This will undoubtedly help your word of mouth as well, an audience member who is suited for the show, and who enjoys it is so much more valuable to you than someone who you might have accidentally deceived into believing it was for them, when you promised them the world whilst selling it on the mile. Again, as was the case with many of the questions and advice, honesty is absolutely the best policy, be clear about what your show is, and trust in your quality product.

Part of this is to do with starting a dialogue with the people that you are flyering to. It's not, the panel told us, simply about shifting a huge volume of flyers; find the people who are receptive to what you are saying and leave them with all of the information that you can about your product. In this dialogue you can find out a little bit more about the person you are actually trying to sell to, connecting with someone on a personal level is much more likely to get them along tot he show than cramming a piece of paper into the hand of someone who is only pushing to get past you. I understand by the way, whilst writing this, that the mile is overwhelmingly busy and noisy, and that having a conversation with someone, whilst certainly the ideal, isn't always going to be possible, but it seems to me that the if you are personable enough, the people who are willing to stop and speak to you, are the people who are actually looking for something to go to, and want to be sold to, rather than the people who are in an incredible rush because they are late for something else they've already got scheduled in.

To do with the flyers themselves, the publicists present said that it's vital to have a strong image that delivers a clear message about what your show is. In an ideal world it's unique, stands out, conveys the message, and is even funny. On top of all this, it's necessary for your defining image to work both as a large picture and a tiny one for the side of a column or the programme. Work, time and investment put into the image itself can not be understated and will definitely not go to waste. It was said that the image for your show is just as, if not more important potentially, than the press release or the description. Get a designer, or someone you know with considerable talent, because this image, along with everything else about your promotion, will wordlessly speak volumes about the quality of your show.

A golden rule that seemed to be implied throughout the whole talk was, 'Professional product? Professional promotion.'

By which I'm not implying they were saying o hire an entire staff, crew and PR team (more on that later). But just to be aware that every single step that you take to do with contacting the media or the public has to be undertaken in a professional and high quality manner, because anything less is bound to make you look like an amateur and not worth the time.

So strong image on the front, grab the attention, all of the information anyone could possibly need on the back. A simple premise for the layout, that could help your flyers to carry so much more value to you.

In the discussion of flyers, an interesting conflict about quotes and reviews was sparked. Unsurprisingly, at the fringe, shows and performers exaggerate their reviews, or borrow quote from other shows they've performed and attribute them to shows where they aren't relevant. It really isn't beyond the realm of imagination to believe that many shows just simply conjure up quotes out of thin air, and attribute them to whoever they like, fictional or otherwise. Once again, as with many of the questions, honesty triumphs. It's a very underhanded, if not simply morally bankrupt thing to do, and it's likely to be picked up on and slated by journalists who might have otherwise been tempted to give you a real positive review you might use. If you don't have any quotes attributed to your show yet, just make sure the product is good, and wait for them to come in and be surprised by it, rather than resorting to lousy tactics that present you as dishonest and untrustworthy. If you've made up a quote this year, why would anyone believe the one next year? Whether it was real or not.

At this point Lyn Gardner told a charming story about her astonishment at being given a flyer outside Waverly station by a leafletter who told her the show in question was reviewed as 'Lyn Gardner, Critics choice', despite the fact that she'd never even heard of the show, let alone been along and highly rated it.

A great piece of advice that was given by Mel Brown, was to staple fresh reviews to your flyer if you get them whilst you're up there. If something comes out about you in the local papers, or the nationals and you're reviewed positively, photocopy it and include it stapled onto the back. This information is 'hot off the presses' and will raise the impact value of your flyer considerably.

3 Additional Nuggets of Advice

One additional suggestion that stayed with me, put forward by Valerie Potter, was to make friends with the people that can help you, and those that are in fact already helping you a great deal. These vital people include the fringe society, the ticket office, as well as the venue managers and their staff. For the venue in particular, you should be able to show them that you are valuable and important to the venues success and work alongside them to achieve the goal of a popular and packed out show. You don't want to appear as a potential problem for them to battle with, but as a friendly face, so introduce yourself and get to know them well, they are already helping you out everyday of your run already. There is also the fringe society and the information desk, during the month of August, these people work immeasurably hard, and according to our panel are sometimes too busy to even eat. So the occasional offering, or kind donation of a box of chocolates, or a snack run to show your gratitude for their work, could make you incredibly valuable to them, and again just presents you as a friendly face. Whilst they may not be allowed to officially endorse your show, every individual helps to be a part of the buzz that you generate as a participant of the Edinburgh scene.

The question rose, and was fairly addressed, as to whether it is necessary to hire a publicist. Considering there were two professional publicists on the panel, this question was directed towards them, who spoke at length about the benefits of a publicist, but quite reasonably ended by concluding that whilst they are a help if you have the budget, they are not by any means essential. Again, it would seem, they are part of these professional steps that could help your show look a lot better, if you know that you would struggle to write a press release, or communicate professionally with the press, it would seem to be almost essential to hire one for some of these purposes. However, one important suggestion that Valerie made, was to make sure, unquestionably, that only one person in your group was in charge of all publicity. The reasons for this are numerous and important. It creates a clear and unpolluted message for your show, unifying it behind the marketing vision of one individual. It also provides journalists and press offices with a single contact for all of their potential needs or questions. She pointed out that it isn't rare for a picture desk to call you, half an hour before printing desperate for you to be able to send them a photograph to accompany some information about you - it's important there's one person to answer the phone and efficiently deal with this emergency, additionally, she keeps a memory stick with all of the photos and information anyone might need on her at all times, which is advisable, perhaps in a data cloud, but vitally somewhere always immediately to hand.

And the final piece of advice, raised by Paul Levy, but supported by the entire team was the question, 'what are you doing in September?' He asked us to look ahead, and past Edinburgh for what it can do for us. It's a big festival, and can be a great platform, yes, but unless it's just part of the course in the continuing upward direction of your work, it's not going to be the day into night, immediate success that it is renowned for. And though it's hard to hear it, this was actually for those who are successful, it's an even harder struggle for those who aren't for whatever reason, and also all the more important. This was a word of warning from him specifically for those who win prestigious awards, and generate a lot of press. Unless you are immediately capitalising on this success and acclaim, it isn't going to be able to do much for you at all, and will rapidly decrease in value as it gets older and further away in your past. So don't leave September free as part of a moment of peace and rest from the tiring work of Edinburgh, he told us, it is the most vital month for you to maintain the momentum and move your work forwards and upwards. And the time to organise that does not start on the 25th August. It cannot. It starts right now, for your plan-making and your organisation.

This is my extensive report of the event and the information that they gave us, I understand it might be a little dry, but hopefully it will be helpful to anyone reading who is planning a different show and didn't have the chance to catch this helpful talk themselves. The advice or opinions, unless otherwise stated, are not my own necessarily, and come instead from the significant experience of the panel. I hope to follow up this post very shortly with a post that discusses some of my thoughts about the event, and the discussion it started in my head about thinking through the marketing of our own show. Thanks for reading

'The Whitest Kids You Know' is Probably the Best Sketch Show That Currently Exists

So, as I said at the start, only about 4 posts ago, this blog will occasionally be a bit of a collection of different reviews, opinions and ideas about comedy, rather than just a straight journal of our experience in Edinburgh. We've decided this mostly to avoid boredom, for us and you readers, so that the blog itself doesn't become too dry; but also to make sure that we keep up with posts on days when the news might just be something like 'we started having a discussion about a general idea we might think about putting on our flyers today'. So even though it isn't stand up related, WKUK is in my (and I think Ben's) opinion, just an all round fantastic show, and I would still hold it up as an important influence in my comedy make-up.

By the way, the alternative idea for this post was going to be 'you guys, Saturday Night Live is actually really good', because I've only really just started getting heavily into it now that a lot of it is on Netflix. I realise that post would be a bit like writing a post that says 'hey, have you heard of white bread, cause it's tasty guys'. But I probably will end up writing about it at one point.

So Whitest Kids then, is an extremely blue sketch show that runs on IFC - the Independent Film Channel, which you'd pretty much never find, because as they say, it's a channel that only exists in 'deep cable'. But the thing is, the show is incredibly widely available on Youtube; honestly I'm pretty sure every sketch from all 5 seasons is up there, they seem to not be too careful about clamping down on this - which is awesome! The idea of the show seems to be that absolutely nothing is off limits, and in the field of comedy in particular, this can be a difficult point to prove. What the show manages, I think, is to take ideas that should carry an incredible amount of gravitas, and offset them by placing them into a ridiculous childlike fantasy world. This can be seen quite well in this sketch about a genie doing horrible things at the request of a ten year old.

High energy performances, cartoon-like caricatures and unconvincing gender swaps undercut the dark nature of some of the sketches. In this way, as in many others, the show clearly takes it's influences from Monty Python; admittedly, it would be impossible to name a show that doesn't, but I think the anarchy and the format experiments within the show, display more of the python structure than I've seen in much else. I could honestly sit here and link WKUK videos all day long, so I'll only do two more, but this next one shows the way that the show experiments with form really well.

If you couldn't watch the sketch, it follows a long drawn out conversation, then the last line of the sketch tells us the title, which is completely unrelated to any of the rest of the content - even adding, that when we look for the sketch online, we should look for it under that title 'The Popcorn Factory Sketch'. This shows a really fantastic understanding of how their audience absorb their show. They realise that they have a great presence online, acknowledge it and encompass it into the show, rather than trying to battle with internet piracy.

The popcorn factory sketch also manages to display one of their other impressive talents, which is the ability to successfully end a sketch. This is undoubtedly the hardest part of sketch writing, a good premise, and funny dialogue seems to come fairly naturally, but how do you bring all that to a conclusion, or if you can't conclude it, how do you still surprise the audience or end on a high? You only have to watch a show like the previously mentioned SNL to see just how many sketches end with an unfunny, or simply functional last line. Their talk show sketches for example, will often end with a line reading something like 'Thanks for watching, join us again next week'. Yes, this is how talk shows actually end, but it leaves the viewer completely flat, feeling like we've somehow missed the punchline. Even 'the mighty' python employed several techniques for avoiding the end of a sketch; a sketch could bleed into the next one, they would resort the trope of a knight slapping a character with what I think was a dead rabbit, or sometimes they would just start self-referencing and tear down the walls from the inside. But with the whitest kids, I feel like I am consistently impressed with the way that they deliver when it comes to bringing something to a close, or at the very least, suddenly and manically curving the ball. It's worth mentioning, I sometimes think they are aided greatly by the punchy title sting that they have between sketches, acting like a click of the fingers that can bring a number of sketches really snapping together.

I can't realistically name a favourite sketch of theirs,. But I think this next sketch, if nothing else, taught me an important lesson about comedy, and so for that reason exists as a bit of a lasting influence for me.

It's so simple. Sudden, unwarrented anger, is one of the funniest cornerstones of all comedy. Once you realise that, you notice it all over the place, in films, TV and stand up as well. Adam Sandler practically has an entire career based around the idea. And this sketch has it in the shortest and most refined form I've ever seen it in. Sam Brown is fantastic at doing this and seems to be their first choice every time somebody needs to go ballistic (like Cleese in Python). It can be at the very least a useful technique if you're trying to write something, to simply think, 'what if one of the characters just goes nuts at this point'. It's a very easy way to instantly raise the stakes and get to the very heart of what you wanted to get across incredibly quickly without the tedious set-up dialogue.

The performances, the writing and even just the real flair of the show seem to me to be that fantastic combination of being both unique and exceptional. If you've never seen it before, you can learn a lot about sketches from watching it. And if you have seen the show before, watch it all again, because that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Designing A Banner for WMD

When this blog first started, the header just read WMD Comedy, in black boring letters, on a white background, aligned to the left at the top of the page. So one of the first things that I wanted to do with the blog was make it look a bit more interesting and unique even at a first glance. I'm still tempted to change the whole theme, or colour of the blog page itself, but something boring in me quite likes the crisp, clean white look.

It's worth mentioning, that before I started anything, I found out the precise and exact dimensions of the header I needed to create. I've tried to design a banner for a different blog in the past, and found that if I did the work first, and the measuring second, I always ended up having to crush, squash or otherwise brutalise my hard earned artwork. As always google is your best friend, even for the most simple and basic questions. So I searched 'how to find out the size of your blogspot banner' and found this helpful blogger, who seems to have simple banner design pretty well sorted.

So, once that was done, I set to work about coming up with some ideas for it. Obviously, it has to say WMD and comedy, to get the message across immediately, and these really have to be the focus of the thing itself. But at this point I ran into a bit of a problem. The obvious choice it seemed to me, was a bomb that reads WMD, but it worries me what an awful concept WMDs really are. For us it's a harmless and fairly meaningless acronym of our names, but there's no escaping the fact that the subject itself is pretty grim. So for me, this ruled out the idea of using photoshop, as I thought this would ground the image with too much realism. A real picture of a real weapon capable of incredible devastation didn't really strike me as an obvious pairing for comedy.

So my idea was to try to make the image as far removed from the idea of really destruction as I possibly could. Which is when I thought it would be a good idea to frame it almost as if it were a comic book, even explosions are less extreme or hard hitting when we see them in comic books. Elmer Fudd or Tom and Jerry can be blown to kingdom come and the idea in your head is humour, not death and misery. So if realism was out of the question, it was up to my very meager drawing talents. Here is what was my first immediate attempt:

"Tom's work had an inescapable renaissance quality to it" - 5 stars, The Guardian

As you can see, it has practically no artistic merit, but the general outline is there. I was really keen both to make sure that the bomb looked like it was flying and that the word comedy really popped out of the explosion. I was sort of going for that effect that 60s batman has when he punches a bad guy, pow! So I googled some pop art, and some cartoon explosion and nicked some of the colours from what I wanted.

Making it look reasonably decent, took a much much longer time than I was anticipating, but there was still something relaxing about toiling away at it, making incremental progress. So now we've ended up with something that I'm reasonably happy with. In fact, as often happens to me with this sort of thing, I genuinely cannot stop staring at it. I'm a little bit ashamed to admit that I've occasionally been opening up the blog just to admire the banner again, check I still like it. One of these days, I might actually go outside, but until then, 'awesome banner skillz' are my gift as well as my curse.

How to Find Edinburgh Fringe Accommodation

One of our first and most pressing worries immediately after finding out that we had a show, was to do with accommodation. Where do we stay? How much do we pay? What 'luxuries' do we afford ourselves? It was a lot to think of right off the bat, and it's something that every performer or even visitor to the Fringe has to think about. Needless to say, the prices for fringe-time accommodation are notoriously exuberant, from hostels to apartments, to some of the nicer yurts, everything gets jacked up in price and without looking around it's easy to get practically robbed and still end up sharing a military cot between 7 of you.

But even at this stage I think it's fair to say that we've been reasonably successful with finding some decent accommodation, so I thought we'd share our house hunting experiences with you; in no particular order, here are some of the options we looked at and considered.

"It's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it."

Hostels - A Reasonable Choice

Hostels, seem, on the surface to be the ideal go to option for the 'roughing it' comedian or visitor eager to spend some time at the festival without totally breaking the bank. Hostels are the home away from home for young people on the road from what I can gather both from my experiences and stories from anyone my age who has done any extensive traveling. Hostels come with all of the basics you would need, for what can often be quite a reasonable price, at least comparatively with everywhere else.

There is this useful list of Fringe endorsed hostels, helping you find a place you know will be legit. However, as with almost all of the accommodation in Edinburgh over August, the prices of these places can absolutely skyrocket, and huge costs make 10 bedroom rooms seem all the less appealing and thrifty. From our searches, the best prices we could find were between £800-£1300 a head for the full run of the festival.

From looking around, this is a pretty decent price - we found some places that were sold out at £100 a night, so you have to consider that this is the lower end, as well as quite far out from the strip meaning bus rides or crushingly long walks after a full day of flyering and performing. If you're only visiting for a few nights, a hostel could be a good option, but keep an eye out for the lower priced options, make sure you're not paying hotel prices for the same cot I mentioned before. Also worth mentioning, several of the places we looked at didn't have storage for valuable or lockers. If you're out all day, this seems to us to be pretty much essential.

Camping - Very Unattractive

This, I must admit, was an unpopular option, but by far the cheapest. At it's cheapest, a lot for a small tent would be about £30 a night, meaning between us it would be £10 a day, or roughly £300 for the full run. It's worth mentioning at this point that this cheap price is effectively the only advantage among a long list of serious potential problems with the idea.

• It's likely to be far out from the mile, wherever you go. Edinburgh is a city like any other, there are few places to pitch up a tent that are also a short walk from a bustling town centre.
• Security again could be a big problem. You don't particularly want to leave anything at all in a tent all day whilst you're out. Even if you take your valuables, anything you leave is effectively up for grabs.
• Tensions will fray, and you will become sick of it/each other. Going it alone you might be able to be miserable but drudge through it, but between three of you, enough time spent in the discomfort could stir up drama like lord of the flies.
• There is no comfort. After a long day of promotion and performing, lying on the the ground in the cold could be the world's biggest downer.
• Every little thing becomes a much bigger chore. Washing your clothes, yourself, cooking food, all of these things will require much more effort, to the point some days I imagine when you could not muster the energy.

These are some of the problems that just immediately spring to mind, but I don't doubt that there are many more. If anyone has survived performing at Edinburgh whilst camping for the full run, I have a lot of respect for that, even a small amount of envy, but I'm glad we avoided this choice. It really doesn't seem like an attractive long term solution, but again, if you're up for a few days, you could very definitely find that it saves you a few quid and if the weather's kind to you, it could be a fantastic and enjoyable decision.

The only other advantage I didn't mention

A University Room - A Great Option, But Pricey

This is an interesting idea that we came across, and it seems to make a lot of sense. The one group of people, likely to have vacant apartments during the summer in Edinburgh, are students who don't live or stay up there outside of term time. There are several websites for finding halls to stay in during the Fringe and the prices as well as the quality seem to be fairly reasonable - it stands to reason that the uni really would have a lot of beds going spare. From looking it seems like you could be looking at around £1500 per person, making the more expensive end of the types of places we found, but considering this is your own place, under lock and key, porters, a desk, a kitchen and possibly even an ensuite, this could be a really great way to stay up there reasonably cheaply. In comparison with some of the other places you can find, the price really isn't astronomical, and seems to effectively be the only downside.

Gumtree and Private Lets - Absolutely the Best Choice in Our Experience

This, is undoubtedly the best option we could find, the one we chose, and my absolute resounding advice to anyone who is considering staying in Edinburgh for the full month of August. I went onto the internet directory gumtree, narrowed it down to Edinburgh, and posted an ad in the houses for rent wanted section. We posted everything we wanted, adding that we weren't afraid to rough it on floors or sofas, and even added in a ballpark figure for what we would want to pay. Just as an experiment, I took about what we would have been paying individually for some of the cheaper end of some of the earlier options, and made that the price between us. In less than a week, my emails were inundated with very generous people offering us wonderful apartments and set ups, often for less than our asking price. We honestly had all the choice in the world, some were flats to ourselves, others were a few beds to share in someone elses flat, and even offers to put us up as part of the family - one very memorable choice that we almost went for offered to cook us dinner each night.

In the end, we've chosen a one bedroom flat to ourselves with the decision that we would set up some air beds, and presumably rotate in some measure. We've gone with this option mostly for the location, being a very comfortable 10 minutes walk out from where we are performing, the flat allows us the most freedom we could imagine, and for a fantastic price.

Another measure we took, that I think would be advisable, was to go up to Edinburgh for a day to look around at a few places as well as to meet the potential landlords. Meeting and saying hello really allows both parties to feel much more comfortable with the situation, and despite how far out you might be from Edinburgh itself, the time and travel costs for the day are well worth the trip, to advise your decision. When we went up we really saw some wonderful apartments, it was staggering that they were being offered for such prices; plus we also got a good grasp of what it is like to get around Edinburgh on the bus (hellish), and so it really helped us make up our minds to go for a place that was very nearby to everything.



So there you have it. My main advice would be not to believe all of the rumours about all Fringe accommodation being extortionate, there are certainly some expensive places out there, in fact, there are a hell of a lot of them, but if you go to the individuals rather than the companies, you can really find a bargain. As has been my experience with most real estate markets, there is always a great panic whipped up that all the places are disappearing and that if you don't act immediately you're going to be left out in the cold. But this simply isn't true. Take your time, do your research extensively and don't worry about desperately trying to find a place before they all disappear, there are always places out there to find.