Dreadful Nonsense

I’ve been thinking the last few days that it’ll be rubbish when all the comedians in London fuck off up north to the Edinburgh Festival, because there won’t be any decent comedy to watch for a whole month. And then I remembered that since moving to London I haven’t gone to see a single comedy show that didn’t involve my boyfriend. So to put that right, and make the most of the time we’ve got left together, I went to see some comedians doing their final try out show for the Festival.

I’ve always in the past eschewed Edinburgh previews as being below me, since I of course would be up in Scotland for the duration of the Festival instead, lapping up in equal measure the culture and the alcohol. I didn’t need their early hand outs – I’d be there for the revelation of the finished product, the proud achievement of a year’s developmental work. None of that reading-from-scripts, missing-the-cues or falling-over-each-other-on-stage for me.

But this year it is not to be. What with moving to London, having not worked for the year 2004, finding myself burdened with more credit card debt than previously imagined and not being arsed to go, I’m not going to the Edinburgh Festival this year, which will be the first time in eight years. You’d think I’d grab the opportunity to leave London and its gloomy bombers behind for a short while, but no. I’m defying these bombers by staying here because I love London, and because I can’t get any more holiday leave from work.

So last night I dragged He Who Only… out to watch two preview shows, completely forgetting the fact that it was an Evil Thursday, the day of choice for suicide bombers, and gazed out of the window of THREE different tube lines travelling in rush hour as police patrolled stations with guns. He Who Only… guided me through the protocol for the evening, so we were officially “defiant” on the Circle Line to Oxford Circus, officially “stoic” on the Victoria Line to Victoria and officially “going about our normal business” on the District Line to Hammersmith.

The shows were excellent, Stewart Lee’s in particular. Even though I won’t be paying that much attention to the Edinburgh Festival coverage this year, I won’t be able to help myself when it comes to reviews of this show. I’ve always been a dedicated and drooling follower of everything Mr Lee does with his career, and he does seem to be branching off in to fairly new territory with this show. Seeing as how he was almost bankrupted by threats of prosecution under blasphemy laws at the start of this year, through his involvement with Jerry Springer The Opera, the stress of which landed him in hospital, it’s interesting that he is including a 20 minute routine, the culmination of which is the line “and so I vomited in to the gaping anus of Christ”.

Which should bring me some interesting google hits over the next few days.

This entry was posted on 29 July 2005 at 12:50 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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