Happy birthday to me – Memories of Edinburgh Festival 2002 and pre-selfie selfies

Blimey doen't time fly?!
Someone told me recently that they were going to the Edinburgh festival this year and it reminded me of 15 years ago when I was there as a Perrier Awards comedy judge.
Yes folks, you read that right. I won one of the two 'members of the public' London positions (there was also a winner from Scotland) in a Time Out competition – the brief was to write a letter explaining why I was the best candidate for the job. My opening line began with, "my friends say I have an opinion on everything..." and I just knew when I sent it in that I was onto a winner. I had a gut feeling and I was right. I beat thousands of people to the post.

Top centre: me with my VIP awards night ticket and wandering about in Edinburgh. 
Middle row: Daniel Kitson accepting the winner's awards, me with Reg D. Hunter and his friend, and with Trevor and Simon (our pants are swinging just out of shot).
Bottom row: two comedians (oops, I have forgotten their names; a young Canadian and an America) and the lovely, shy and very clever Mr Rich Hall

Us judges were given lovely rented homes for the fortnight with VIP entrance to all the evening dos and backstage bars, travel expenses etc.
Seeing all those comedy shows was hard work though – it involved running back and forth across Edinburgh seeing five or six shows a day, and many of them not in the least bit amusing. At times I started to think I had forgotten how to laugh with my face stuck in rictus.
The thing is though, it was fifteen years ago. Eh? How did that happen? And whilst I was there I turned 40 – what a great way to celebrate – I thought winning that judging gig was one of my best birthday presents ever.
OK... now for the next batch of photos... You'll notice they all have something in common, and I don't just mean how some of the people in them have, er, changed over the years...

Me and... Dave Gorman, Nina Conti, Dara O'Briain, Hal Cruttenden, Jimmy Carr, Phil Nichol, Noel Fielding, Stephen Frost and Brendan Burns. (How did I not get a pic of lovely Sean Lock?!)

... notice that they are all close-ups and I am in every photo – that's because I am taking the photos – in other words, these are selfies before the word was invented.
For decades I have been using regular cameras to take photos of myself alongside friends or places without the need of a viewfinder/screen. Also, note that all the pics above are taken with a film camera – one shot, no deletes, no retakes, no post-production, no editing. Good aren't they?
I will dig out some earlier 'old-school selfies' when I get a mo.
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me....

King Brendon Burns.

Back in August 2002 I was a Perrier judge at the Edinburgh Festival, having won the position through a written competition in Time Out.
It turned out not to be rather hard work – charging back and forth across the city, seeing sometime six shows a day, with many of them not very funny at all, can become rather tedious. Often there were only five people in the audience!
However, I was lucky to see so many great comics before they'd become household names. These included the fabulous Sean Lock (love that man so much!), Rich Hall, Alan Carr, Dara O'Briain and Adam Hills. It was also the year that Jimmy Carr really came to the fore; for some bizarre reason, rather than being the obvious newcomer winner*, he was instead 'promoted' as a front-runner for the main award**.
In the judges' meetings I tried to champion a few of my favourite candidates, but was consistently overruled; often by people who hadn't even seen the shows and weren't even judges. It was rather demeaning; both for me and the acts I was trying to promote.
For instance, they said no to Andrew Maxwell because they thought he talked about football too much. I don't recall it being more that 10% football – I know diddlysquat about football I still found what he had to say really funny. Interesting that two years later he went on to win another major award.
I also liked Reg D. Hunter. But a few of the other narrow-minded 'judges' thought Reg was mysogynistic; something that hadn't crossed my mind at all. I thought he had just been making clever observations about certain types of females. I talked to him at the awards party and he was confused and concerned about this.
And then there was Brendon Burns who put on my second favourite show of the festival**. It was filled with clever, intelligent, side-splitting observations, including one hilarious story about an article in a newspaper that he (and I) had seen involving a man and a goat and a train. Sublime.
During the show he had an assistant tallying up the swear words. He was 'king funny and 'king clever, hence the montage of London king pictures at the top. But, yep, you've guessed it; some of the other judges thought he swore too much. Oh d'uh! It was part of the show!
Brendon is back in London next week with his latest show "Brendon Burns: Hasn't Heard of You Either" at The Soho Theatre, July 8–13th. Be prepared; there will, more than likely, be blaspheming!

* Newcomer winner 2002 – Flight of The Conchords (I preferred Hal Cruttenden, but have since fallen in love with the NZers)
** Main award 2002 – Daniel Kitson – it was almost a unanimous decision.

Ha ha ha... the Udderbelly is back on the South Bank

The purple upsidedown plastic cow is back on the Southbank for 12 weeks bringing comedy and fun and laughter to us, prior to a lot of the performers taking their shows to the Edinburgh Festival. 

I am going to see The Joy of Sketch this Thursday 19th... perhaps I'll see you there.

Did I ever mention that I was a Perrier judge in 2002? Well, I was. I entered a competition in Time Out and beat thousands of others to be one of the two London-based Joe Public judges on the panel. It was a lot of hard work racing from gig to gig, especially when some of the acts turned out be less than disappointing, but there were also some real gems which made the whole experience worthwhile. It was the year Jimmy Carr was 'discovered'. Amazingly it was decided that he shouldn't be entered for the newcomer award because he was too good! Eh? He didn't win that year, but he's won in other ways ever since. 

You might see someone at the Udderbelly this year who goes on to be the next big thing... And there's won't just be comedy on offer in the purple tent... there'll be magic, kid's events, music, and lots more.

I've got a kazoo and I'm not afraid to use it

Last night I went to the Royal Albert Hall to watch the recording of Radio 3's Big Red Nose Show which will be aired this Friday eve from 7pm as part of Comic Relief. It was really good.

Everyone was given a red kazoo on the way in. I'd never played (if that's the right word) one before and, at first, I was convinced that the thing didn't work. But there's a knack to it that doesn't involve blowing. Led by the Masters of the Kazooniverse, almost 4,000 of us took part in a Guinness World Record -breaking attempt to get the most people playing a kazoo for five minutes. We had two goes at it; first to Flight of the Valkyries and then to The Dambusters theme. What a row! The players were counted and adjudicated and all that. Find out on Friday if we broke the record.

It was a good night all round. Presented by Katie Derham and Basil Brush (a hand-puppet on radio, boom-boom!), we were treated to some really lovely classical music especially from Nicole Bendetti, and Sue Perkins conducting pieces by Elgar and Bernstein. Plus genius comedy from Tim Vine and not-so-genius stuff from Marcus Brigstocke (he'd agree!).

Top: Royal Albert Hall, Pimlico, Walthamstow, Highbury

Middle: Covent Garden Camberwell, Holloway, Edmonton

Bottom: Hammersmith, Dalston, Highbury, EC4

Jerry Sadowitz is painful

And that's a bloody compliment!

I went to see his stand-up show last Friday night at the Leicester Square Theatre.

He was relentless... clever and ironic and offensive and intelligent and blasphemous and very funny indeed. I ached... I was exhausted from all the laughing and the concentration needed to keep up with him.

I think it was Billy Connolly who said that the only type of person who it's safe to offend these days is a white heterosexual man. I pretty sure Jerry doesn't agree with that!

He's playing again soon.

Here are just some of the subjects he covers:

Top row: Cockspur Street, Haggerston, Holloway Road, South Tottenham

Middle row: Upper Street, Westminster, Rivington Street, Goswell Road

Bottom row: Crouch End, Holloway Road, Stamford Hill, West Smithfield

Aerial photography in Not Going Out

Lee Mack's enjoyable sit-com Not Going Out is back on TV for it's 3rd series. I was chuckling away to it the other night, trying to ignore that he's depicted living in a HUGE central London warehouse conversion that would cost a bloody fortune, when I happened to notice that one of the aerial shots of London that are used to punctuate the scenes must be at least 2.5 years old.

It quite clearly shows Centrepoint with the fountains below it and, dare I mention this again, my favourite old gig venue, The Astoria, plus all the shops and other outlets on that stretch all of which have bulldozed to make way for this glass monstrostity masquerading as a tube entrance (see pic bottom left in that link... as I have said before, what a waste of space... There are horrible holes all through London in the name of Crossrail... a future post is in the making).

Oops, I am ranting again...!

So I paused the programme and took some snaps of the aerial shots just to see if the other shots had some architectural ghosts in them too. I would assume that these shots were accurate when the first series went out in 2006.

And then I recalled all the photos I took from my plane seat coming back into Heathrow last year:

See some of them larger here.