Confessions of an Edinburgh virgin
Guild member Jake Yapp takes on the Festival
As an Edinburgh virgin, it was a daunting prospect to arrive, wading my way through all the other seasoned pros, and hoping to survive.
In my usual working sphere of broadcasting, I like to think of myself as ranking somewhere around sprat in my respective pond. And arriving in Edinburgh, I suddenly was engulfed by dread at the realisation that in this new pond, I was barely a single-cell life form. The best I could hope to become was algae.
19,000 performers (they say) descend on Edinburgh each year, subsidising every ticket they sell by around £30. And a lot of it seems pretty pointless. The Royal Mile becomes a sort of strange, multi-coloured version of the London Stock Exchange, as desperate leafleters swap meaningless pieces of paper with each other in the absence of any real punters.
So how do you make any kind of an impression? People had bigger leaflets than mine. Glossier. Ones they hadn't done on their crappy computer at home on free software they'd downloaded. People had paid, not just for the venue and accommodation, but for design, flyerers, PR, publicity... It was hard not to feel like the kid at school who'd forgotten his PE kit and was having to make do with the stinky old Lost Property shorts.
But. I had a secret weapon. I was part of Peter Buckley-Hill's Free Fringe. This meant that the venue was free for me, and my shows were free for the audience. And, to paraphrase A A Milne, it rained and it rained and it rained. And when you're on holiday and it rains, what you want is an affordable sit down somewhere warm and dry. THERE was my killer selling point.
While others desperately tried to convince bewildered German tourists that they really should drop 20 quid between them on an Important New Play by the writer of “Fuck Me Kill Me Eat Me” or whatever, I could beckon them in, like the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang... “Comedy... Ukuleles... Sofas... And all free today!” And in they came. Heh. Suckers.
My lowest audience was four people. That happened twice. And isn't as bad as many of the paying performers who would have literally not a soul in quite regularly. And my peak audiences packed out the venue. Close to 70 people would squash into the tiny room behind a cocktail bar. Many of them stuck behind pillars, they would have to simply give up when I went into my mime routine (it's better than it sounds, honest).
The only slight backfiring was that my show was at 4.20pm – Nap Time. One rainy Tuesday I was excited to see a man from BBC Radio Comedy in the audience. He slept like a baby. (Which, by the way, is a really stupid expression. Unless you mean you wake up, burst into tears, and throw up every two hours). I regularly slept like a baby in Edinburgh. There was something oddly regressive about the whole experience.
Apart from the odd five-minute open spot here and there, I hadn't really tried stand-up before. And, as I developed exponentially as a performer, so I devolved as a basic human being, until I lost all ability to feed or clothe myself properly, or even maintain basic hygiene.
Pathetic, really. I would wake up, have breakfast, go back to bed, get up again, go and flyer wet Germans, have a shower, do the show, and go back to bed.
In fairness, I was also in a friend's play in the evenings, and in the first week, doing my one-man show twice a day. And with every performance, I would get so much data back from the audience to process - what worked, what didn't... It sounds revoltingly pretentious, but it's true.
And through it all, my parents were there, valiantly hurling themselves at whatever needed to be done. They flyered. I watched my father thrusting flyers at bewildered tourists, leaping forward like he was fencing, thrusting and parrying leaflets into their hands. It bloody worked though. And I watched my mother, sitting bravely in the corner in every performance, hands trembling, finger poised above the PLAY button on my mp3 player, just waiting to play in the two audio cues of the show.
Inexplicably, it worked. I got reviewed! Three times! Even Kate Copstick liked it. Oh, those were highs. Dizzy highs. So I'll be going back. I have made it to minnow. Next year I'll be a flippin' trout. Watch out, algae...
back to top