Episode 25 - Edinburgh

Hello and welcome to sitcom geeks, I'm James Terry, I'm Beau Curran and with us at our producer at Katie's Doy and we are going to be talking about Edinburgh, the big £500 gorilla that is the Edinburgh Festival which dominates comedy and we're not going to talk about anything else. Regular listeners will have noticed, we are hopeless at A, responding to emails, we are very grateful for them, thank you very much, you can email us on sitcomgeeksat.com for what good it'll do you and you can also send us the first ten pages of your script for us to read and you'll have noticed that we've failed to do that regularly on air. Our last three shows were from the Land of No, I think we're going on a bit me and James and we use all our energies really I think to do those such landed no shows and so we're just kind of getting back, getting in our lives back and we will read your emails we promise and we will start to respond to them eventually probably around about August. Yes, this is right, it's groveling apology over but also you said we're getting our lives back, Dave Cowan is absolutely shattered because he has been rehearsing and then performing his Edinburgh show.

I did my first show without the script last night and when did you do it? The Poetry Cafe, it's a poem, it's a stand-up poem, it's been called something like Gene Yolanda Musing I think by George Law so there you go and insightful cultural history so that's going to be splashing that all over my publicity and insightful cultural history. And where are you doing that in Edinburgh? That's a very good question, is that a moot point I hope not?

There is and it's a little bit embarrassing because I looked at the various venues that were an offer from Laffy Porsy, Runless, Free Festival, it's just five days, Free Festival and I thought oh that looks really good, that's right, right, right by the old student union, so bang in the middle of the area where there's loads of stuff George Square Theatre and things. I was looking at the map upside down. In fact it turns out I am on the other side of the meadows, it's not in a terrible place but it's a, it's okay, it's called Monkey Cellar or something, anyway, it's called Music was my first love and this preamble is basically to say we are going to be talking about the Edinburgh Festival, I've been kind of going up there man and boy on and off since 35 years now. And therefore it's worth saying that between us, between me, Dave and Katie, who has been producing or helping with various, what have you been doing at Edinburgh for the last few years?

Yeah, but last year you were producing how many different shows? 17. 17 shows, okay, mere 17 between the visitors. So there's a fair amount of Edinburgh, air miles under our melts here, so hopefully we can make some use of this time talking about Edinburgh.

So the thing to be, to start off about is maybe you've not planned to do Edinburgh, anything like that, but our first thing to say to you is well worth your while going to Edinburgh and witnessing this extraordinary comedy festival. Why is that? Why would you say that's worth doing? Because, and the first time I went to 1977 and I went for four days and you just, it's just the most amazing thing, it really was a kind of life-changing moment I think.

You just see comedy, you see all the comedy that is out there and it doesn't matter if you're a writer or a performer or a writer performer, you're seeing performers, you're seeing written comedy and you're seeing it at every level. You're bumping into stuff written by people who are at your level, they've never written anything before, and if you're lucky and you can afford it, you're buying tickets to see Sarah Milliken or somebody who's like a massive star and who, like so many of the British comedy stars have started out like we all did. Somebody who isn't Sarah Milliken yet, this is exactly. It's astonishing how the whole comedy world is sort of pervaded by Edinburgh is sort of in the blood of every comedian and writer I'd say really pretty much.

It's like a comedy patch, isn't it? It's like everybody turning out, it's like a life-threatening as well in some times. It's not quite as dangerous as that can be, but it is certainly impossible to overdo it on the drinking so it's not up there. It's what I was saying before we go any further that Dave's extensive experience in Edinburgh has written about very convincingly and amusingly in his book as we advertise accessibility and comedy.

If you want the full gamut of emotions that you go through in Edinburgh, you've written about them quite a lot in that book. Yeah, yes, it is, you do go through incredible sort of highs and lows. I've imagined actually the catered doing however many shows a day you were doing, maybe you almost sort of didn't have time for that, but did you experience those emotional rumble coasters? Yeah, you had the highs and for example, like, lazy Susan, they were up in the peasants and they were on the free fringe before that, it was the first year in the peasants and they were not struggling for audiences but I remember seeing that show so many times, it was amazing, boomy way in thinking, why are people seeing this?

And they got nominated like word of mouth and they got nominated for the photos and it was such an amazing moment. I remember like crying in the office and having champagne and then you've got your, you know, the underbelly meadows at one in the morning just crying just for another reason, just getting tired. If I didn't get someone to record you crying and then play it back to you. When I said I've got to the French again, I'm going up to the French again.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, the French is almost a mental illness that we all keep going back there and even if you're not there, you feel it should be. Anyway, it was interesting. So, but what we're trying to establish is that Edinburgh is where comedians are, where writers are, where actors are, where producers are, where development producers are, where executives are, they will pile up for the last bank holiday weekend for the TV festival. It's where comedy is happening.

So if you're thinking about comedy, if you love comedy, if you like writing comedy, go to Edinburgh and watch a bunch of comedy. You'll be able to watch five shows in a day if you really want to. You can probably watch eight in a day. But what's your maximum shows you've ever seen in a day, Katie?

I think maybe seven. Is that too many? No, not really. Yes, maybe maybe.

I think it is. I think it is. If you start early, yeah, and finish late. That's probably one too many, isn't it?

If you pace yourself, if you go up, I'll recommend you sort of try and go out for like three or four days, ideally not at the beginning and not at the end, but not at the end, and kind of just before the middle, it's the perfect time to go out because people are starting to know which are the good word of mouth shows, but they're not selling out yet. So you'll get a chance to see a show that's going to be very successful. But also, there is so much free stuff to go to now, which is great, but doesn't necessarily mean you don't pay any money. It does help keep the costs down.

Try and have a variety of shows to see. But I think that's probably the best time. It's not absolutely heaving packed in that kind of period that say the week before the bank holiday, maybe just before that as well. You've got to kind of window about 10 days of going to see stuff.

So going up as a performer, you want to be booking up a comedy. Sorry, going up as a punter just to watch, you want to be thinking now about accommodation, booking train fairs, if you want it to be vaguely affordable, you want to be thinking now about who you could stay with, if you have a long lost, distant relative, auntie, anything like that, then make full use of them, stay with them, anything other than paying huge amounts of money to stay in an average hotel or in a terrible youth host or anything like that. I mean, find somebody's floor. I suggested them camping actually.

Yes, you mentioned this the other day, my jaw was on the floor. Horrified at the idea. I think you possibly could if you were a punter going to watch stuff or you were doing a very short run. But for me, and again, it's what you need to do when you're thinking about going to Edinburgh for any length of time, especially if you are performing and performing the whole month, you do need to know thyself and what you need to get through that time.

And if you're the sort of person that needs sleep, that is worth spending money on. And therefore, I would do not do camping unless you particularly sleep well under canvas, presumably several miles from Edinburgh. Have you camped? I haven't, but I remember people were camping at a place and it was just a kind of bus ride out down to Nicholson Street and so that's a four miles out.

That was kind of reasonable. It seems to be a reasonable thing to do when we were in our twenties. But if that's even that's fine, lucky you, but that wouldn't be me. The other thing is worth saying as well is don't necessarily sort of go up and plan what you're going to see.

There is a fringe programme which is absolutely heaving packed with ideas of shows to go and see. I mean, you could come and see music was my first love at Monkey Centre 24, so that's why you're able to always if you want one 15. Alternatively, it's a great thing to do is to just sort of sit in a cafe and look around you and you will see other people looking at some diaries and looking at those fringe diaries and say, oh, start conversations with them. Hello?

What have you seen? And what would you recommend? It is amazing. The number of shows where people go along and see something cos a stranger has said to them, oh, we really like that.

So don't over plan, I think. Yeah, I think that's a good thought. So book a couple of things, especially if you have a favourite if there's a comedian you really like and they're on some way, you can book tickets on doing free fringe, you can book that and that would be worth doing. But it's definitely worth factoring in being surprised by something picking up something on word of mouth.

I would definitely do that. So that's in terms of visiting the fringe. Maybe if you're doing a show, you're thinking about doing a show, I think slightly different rules apply. We've talked about budgeting campsites and stuff.

We've also talked about pacing yourself and drinking. I would add to that, don't also maybe drink too much coffee. It would be very easy for you to own coffee if that's your thing. But then I think the next bits of advice very much revolve around getting your mindset right for your show and what to expect because it's so easy to get lost in the literally hundreds of shows.

It just gets bigger and bigger every year. How many different comedy shows are there now? Six, seven, eight hundred different shows running from between two nights to the whole fringe. So every five minutes, every five minutes, probably three shows are starting.

So how do you stand out from those shows? If you are thinking of going, I'm pretty sure if you're interested in writing comedy and you go out of curiosity to see what festival is like, I can pretty well guarantee that you're all right, I'm coming up here next year. I don't know how, I don't know what I'm doing, I will come and do something. Especially because you've just seen a show where you just think, oh, I need, if that's the standard, I can manage that.

Exactly. But you do need to manage your expectations. There is an element of lottery to it in that you will probably go up there and suddenly somebody who you've never heard of is suddenly the talk of the town and you sort of go up there thinking, maybe, just maybe, this thing that I do might become really successful. It won't.

So just a very unlikely deal. And bear in mind that just for reference, if you're listening and you can hear some studying noises, that's not your iPhone or your listening device. That's some work going on somewhere. Which frankly could be going on during your Edinburgh show because you are in the venue next to another one.

I'm sure you've done numerous venues where you've had overspill in your show. Can you think of any way? Well, my favourite one was Bankelgum. Corky and the Juice Picks, who are Michael Phil Nickel actually, a very successful, very good comic before he did that.

He was in a group a very loud Canadian three-piece band. Corky and the Juice Picks, who were on at the same time as I was doing my kind of meaningful one-man show, which was a play at that point as well. Sorry to hear that. Yeah.

So was I. And you would occasionally get that kind of what we're hearing now. And also you hear the sound of hundreds of people laughing. Somebody else is showing.

Somebody else is showing. You're pouring your heart out to three people, a dog, in a huge church hall somewhere. So overspill is quite normal, so we're going to embrace that, I'm not going to worry about it. So I think in one sense, there are so many things in Edinburgh that you have no control over.

For example, the size of it, the scale of it, what gets noticed and what doesn't as it were. The only things that you have control over is your show. So the best way of having people come and see your show is to actually have a good show. And I think it's, in one sense, it's not particularly good advice because nobody's trying to have a bad show.

But there's a sense in which if your show is really, really, really good, it will get an audience sooner or later. People will start to find out about it and you will start to get a little bit of recognition. If from no one else other than fellow performers or anything like that. I mean, there aren't that many, Katie, I mean, even recently, most recently, there aren't that many truly brilliant shows that have been completely ignored for the whole fringe.

Would you say? No, no, definitely. There are a lot of other factors that's not direct to no, obviously, but definitely if you've got a really good show, people will know that. Yeah, and it may not sell out as well as you totally have something, but it will start to get noted.

So that when you come back the following year, people know that you're the person that showed that was criminally overlooked last year. I think what's probably more realistic if you're starting out, and whether it's a show that you've written or you're a performer or writer performer, is it's really worth thinking about the fact that you're going to be doing the show every day. And that really is a way that you learned to get very good at something. If you accept that you're going up this year, not to win whatever the equivalent of the peri award now is, or you're not going with any of that.

It's peri-year old money, that's what we know. Yeah, so yeah. Edinburgh Comedy Award? Yeah, yeah.

Fast as... You're not going to be nominated for that, so don't even think about that. But think about, okay, I've got this show and I'm not telling the actors or if you are the actor be prepared for the situation. I will see what happens each day and on Monday will do the show.

Obviously, you can't bring massive changes if you've got some actors and only lines and things. But if you can try different ways of doing things, and I think you will find that by the time you get to the end of the run, you could have a show that is actually a pretty good show. You're still not getting audiences and it's depressing and it's miserable and you meet a friend who says, oh, it's amazing. My show's going really well.

I've got a million people came in to see. And you go, yeah, that's good. I'm really happy for you. Gritted teeth.

So, just go with that in mind. That's really... That's how the good stand-ups become the great stand-ups. They go up somebody like Steve Coogan went up and Frank Skinner, they went up with very good shows.

And then they did it every day and it got better. And each day the show got a bit better. They got a bit better as performers. And that's by the end of the run, they were kind of that.

That's it. They were ready to break out. So, it is a real mindset thing and it is very easy to get sucked into the Edinburgh wanting to be discovered, wanting to be famous thing. But actually, you need to approach it in a much more professional way in that it needs to be, how do I improve, how do I get better, how do I use the fact that I'm doing 26 shows in a row in front of people who are not directly related to me or work in my office or don't know me personally.

That's a really big thing for lots of people. This is the first genuine audience they will play to. You know, you might have only 15 or 20 people come and see your show some days if you're doing well. But that's the only upside of a really big cast and you have lots of people giving out flyers.

But you're playing it in front of total strangers. And therefore, it is worth thinking about how your show is going to evolve, how you can improve, because you're now doing the show in front of people who sort of don't care whether you're funny or not. You know, they're not trying to be nice. They're a genuine audience.

So therefore, for example, every day, just changing something a little bit to see if it improves it is a worthwhile thing doing. I mean, it'll take you a week just to get into the rhythm of the thing anyway. After a week in, you'll realize your show really isn't as good as you thought it was and you're not going to win any awards and that a show that you actively dislike is going to do much better than you. And there's nothing you can do about it.

But actually, you know, winning, getting noticed, all that kind of stuff is not the aim. The aim is to improve as a comedian as a writer. But also, I would say, a very important thing is to get to know other performers and writers and find people who do things that you like that you can learn from, find people that do things that you like that you can work with in the future, will be interested in collaborating in the future, find people that do stuff that you're no good at that you can work with in the future. It's just, in one sense, I think, you know, standups particularly find this, that they associate like school year groups, women's your first Edinburgh.

So, so and so is sort of my era of comedian and we've sort of gone out through and they've gone faster than me, but I've done more of this sort of thing, whatever. Those sort of comedy friendships and alliances and stuff, I think are really important. And they're kind of what sustain you over the next 11 months before the next one. So, it's a question of not just improving yourself but improving your contacts, improving your understanding of the comedy world, getting to know people, and getting people to know you and what you do.

So, I think those are the ways to approach Edinburgh so that it doesn't sort of psychologically drive you mad. Yeah, and I'm listening to James, I'm actually even listening to myself, I'm listening to Katie Ash, I really wish I'd had that advice. Probably there was that advice around at the time, but I really wish I listened to the advice. I do think that a lot of the mistakes that I made in Edinburgh were that I just had the wrong attitude, the wrong approach.

Some years I have shows that didn't go as well as other years. And this advice that I'm giving is that I never took the idea that you can improve a show once you're there. I probably two or three times went up and the show was kind of okay, but not very good. I probably just thought, oh, well, that's it then, I can't really, I've blown it, I'm just going to have to grip my teeth for the next three weeks and do the show.

I didn't have the professional understanding, I didn't have the knowledge and the foresight to think. Well, actually, I was just going out and getting drunk. Why don't I stay in tonight and actually look through the show and work out what to do? Because you'll never get, because it's so hard to get an audience outside of Edinburgh, you want to make the most of it.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I didn't have any sense of perspective when I was doing Edinburgh either. I think I did Edinburgh in 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001, and maybe 2002 or 2003 or something, I can't remember. And then more recently, what year did we do? 2013.

So I saw it done about seven Edinburgh shows, it was only when I did one three years ago with the play, called the God Particle, which I knew full well would be completely ignored by critics. Available from Kickstarter. That's all finished, but go to the God Particle Play.com and you'll find more information. But the point is, I already knew what I was trying to get out of it, and I wanted it to be, you know, there were very things I was trying to get out of it, and actually how famous or well-reviewed the show would be.

I was already fine that that wasn't going to be part of the positive outcomes for me, but I know I'm talking about the consultant, I don't mean to. But unfortunately, if you do let Edinburgh, I mean, it is like this horrendous drug, isn't it? That just sort of sucks you in and then spits you out. Therefore, you've sort of got to work out somewhere mastering it, otherwise it will destroy you.

That's a fair way of explaining it. So we can talk about reviews as well. How do you feel about reviews? Have both of you actually?

Katie, how do you review as a producer? They're really useful that you want the stars and the posters, anything about before, you want to know, you want quotes, you want to put flash on the flyers, and some acts prefer not to read those, and that was fine. But as a producer, you're absolutely reasonable. So reviews are something that you literally are things that you can use to push the show.

On the one hand, yes, good reviews are very useful, bad reviews generally, unless you're lucky enough, as I was a student, and I got what I was told by the then director of the French was the third worst review ever in the history of Scotsman reviews. And that makes me so want to see that show. And it was, well, to be fair, the guy who really didn't really get it, it was a music show, a spoof punk show, and he didn't really know what punk was, so he was the gardening correspondence of the Scotsman. So, I went from this kind of, and we talked about this kind of roller coaster of emotions, I went from 9 o'clock in the morning reading this terrible, terrible review, which I probably almost remembered from that 36 years ago.

And you carried around in your wallet like a Herrick Morgan's age? I did, TV is the box they buried Morgan and Mysean. Oh, right, you never forgot that. No, I should have done really, but probably the reason I didn't was because the show was on lunchtime, and so then I arrived at the theatre to find literally people queuing around the block to come and see the show, because most of the time, there was a lot of people coming and seeing the show.

Most of the Scotsman prints hundreds of reviews every day, and so they go from five stars to one star, so if they print five stars, you sort of think, oh, well, that's probably already sold out, and I can't go to that one now. Two to four star, they're all kind of a much less. And you see a one star, and people love writing one star review, so they get a chance to be really... And people slow down for traffic accidents, so they wanted our scene.

Exactly. And actually, the people who got from this terrible terrible terrible review, that actually, well, this is a comedy show about punk. They actually came to see it, and they loved it, and it was this review that's, you know, what's on earth is this trying to be painted? This is trying to be funny about punk rock music, you know?

And so I got the best of all. This is a rock star moment. Yeah. You're low and slow at the highest time.

Exactly. You were true to yourself. We're doing about three hours, I managed to go from really from feeling absolutely despairing up to kind of total elation, really. And sold out for the rest of the run, and that was down to that one star review.

So the next question to a five star review is a one star review. In fact, you can also make all these things work for you. I think it was, I want to say, Andrew Watts, he did it on his poster, he put, or at least on one bit, obviously, he put five stars, four stars, two stars, two stars, two stars, two stars. And he just showed that, you know, in one sense, he used the variety of stars to say, you're going to really have to come and make up your own mind, which is another good way of doing it.

So there are lots of creative ways. The only thing to add to it really is, I think, not to take these reviews personally, which I think is very easy to do. Yeah. There's not least because the standard of Edinburgh reviews are consistently awful.

So incredibly unprofessional. Lots of people who have no experience, and they mistake critiquing a show for saying whether they liked it or not. And that experience you have of a gardening correspondent writing a review about a show about punk and not understanding it, that still happens, where people are completely clueless. I think it's slightly changing.

Liam Malone has been doing a thing with Fringe Peak, which is sort of slightly holding reviewers to higher standards of accounting, and I believe this year will actually be a physical publication, which will be sort of lampooning, terrible reviewing. So I think reviewers have to slightly raise their game, because now they are as much as they are. Yes, exactly. Okay.

So I think there is some sort of sense of karma in all this. Right. So I just go back to what you're saying about not taking it personally. And it is very hard because they're saying, for instance, if you are a performer as well, I watched Dave Cohen and he was a load of shit or whatever.

And he sort of thing, oh, okay. But I mustn't take this personally. This guy has just basically destroyed everything that I believe in and think about myself. But it is not personal.

And that is one person's opinion of you. In fact, the best of my favourite review that I thought was one year when I was getting some very, very good reviews, which says, you always remember the one bad review. And this, the bad review said, you know, everyone else in the room was laughing and I couldn't understand why. Why were they laughing at this?

I didn't find it funny at all. And so it was actually, even by being a bad review, it was like, it was sort of quite a nice review. A couple of other things. Before we wrap this up, one is to say that, except that there will also be many miserable hours spent publicising your show.

There are 23 hours in the day when you are not doing your show, when you could realistically be promoting it. And in one sense, there's no way around that. If you've got no credits and no reviews, no nothing, you are just going to have to hit the streets for as long as you can manage. Two, three, four, five hours.

And give out flyers. Try and think of some imaginative ways to do that as well, because most people are unimaginative when they are handing out leaflets. So you can either be one of the unimaginative ones or you can try something slightly different. And you will get noticed.

In fact, I used to get a lot of people coming to my shows because I had a sort of empty leaflet way of giving out leaflets for my show. And that personal connection will account for really large amounts of your audience. If you have a conversation with someone, they are really 100% more likely to come than they would be if you just handed them a flyer, which is why I paint your book. And that flyers for you.

I don't think it's a terribly effective amount of money. Unless you are so famous and stuff that the flyer sells itself. I have also do take breaks. And you are lucky, I guess one of the reasons why the festival is so successful.

It is a stunning place. And you can go out and do nice things and go for interesting walks and climb up other seats. All these sorts of things you can do to get away from the festival and get a little bit healthy and just see really amazing things. And you need to schedule that.

You need to make sure that is in your diary to do that. And maybe one day not to do your flyer but go to the botanical gardens instead or go to the beach or go to the beach or go to the beach or go to the beach or go to the beach or go to the beach or go to the beach or something. Would you say that, Katie, you have not been there most recently. You have to make yourself...

Have you ever managed to get there? No, I have been up. No. I don't think that would be...

It takes time off. But also, I was in church. But yeah, it would be wonderful. But yeah, you need to factor that in.

So that is the fickle and cruel mistress that is the end of the fringe. There is much more hours to be said, I'm sure. I really do recommend Dave's book on this because I think it really does capture the experience of that. Obviously it's a different comedy.

There are bits and pieces on my blog on the sitcom geek blog as well that you can look after too. Also, I mentioned Dave's book, My Book is called Writing That Sitcom and all the usual things apply. What would be nice if you liked this podcast is to go onto iTunes and leave us a review. That would be nice.

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But we're trying to earn a living here and believe it or not, this podcast is not part of us earning a living. Great. Any other notes? We're all done here.

Great. All the reason why I say is to say thank you for listening and speak next time. Bye-bye.