Day 24 - Derbyite Theory of Shakespeare Authorship

So the end draws near.

3 Man Roast had its last performance. A triumphant barnstormer for all concerned. All we were missing was pyro and dancing girls to make the show complete.

What was even nicer was a number of the audience were current members of Lip Theatre Company, my old university drama group. It is wonderful to see that the old flame is still burning bright no matter how much alcohol they attempt to douse it with. Though it did put into perspective that the current president of Lip was 6 years old when I joined. But she had a pet sheep so nothing changes.

I then went to watch Nick Helm's Dare to Dream. A combination comedy show and exercise in ennui. Utterly inspiring in one sense and interesting how similar he is to Paul Foot though with an entirely different tone.

LOTWAA had the potential to be awful as there were drunken locals about being annoying.

One complained that Kevin Shepherds show CARonicle, a car themed show, was themed about cars. In her opinion some of the show should have been about lesbian sex and not just cars. I won’t try and contemplate such cast iron logic.

When doing comedy the worst thing in the world is the unknowing punter who wants to chat about what its like. Normally they begin with the "You must be very brave" gambit. Comedy is not brave. Firefighting or dragonslaying are brave. Comedy is what bullied kids do in game of long-form catharsis. There is a long list of questions asked which are all or some of the following;

• Tell me a joke
• What's your favourite joke
• You don't seem very funny off-stage
• What got you started
• When will you be famous
• When will you be on TV
• ll tell you my joke (it's a bit blue)
• Please validate the drudgery of my pathetic, baseless existence by talking to me

This drunken woman proceeded to go through all of these at length and by the end I was wondering if it might be considered impolite to end the conversation by vomiting.

This put me in a thoroughly bad mood for the show. LOTWAA had a small but reasonable crowd. We had 2 walkouts but I was beyond caring by that point.

Then I socialised with Will Howells for the last night and sat down to figure out the most important thing in all Edinburgh.

Where will I watch Doctor Who "Let's Kill Hitler" tonight?

Day 12 - Perpetual Motion

3 Man Roast was not on Sunday so I spent most of the day lazing on a Sunday afternoon.

Will and I met up for lunch and, as our press blurb says, we did'nt perform because we were eating.

Will and I had a 2 Man Roast. It was almost spiritual. Even if the lunch descended into our writing a series of hilarious Doctor Who based jokes utterly incomprehensible to anybody except fanboys (and girls).

After that I went off to do LOTWAA in the evening and was, once again, lovely. This is becoming an uncomfotably regular occurence. According to the bar staff our numbers are larger than any of the other shows and all our audiences are if not universally wonderful then never unpleasant.

I also have picked up some followers on Twitter from the show.

This was my last LOTWAA for 24 hours as Monday night I am off the Pleasance to watch The Wrestling.

If its repeated next year and I'm not in it I shall cry. Given my general physical resemblance to The Undertaker and my hobby all the roads are pointing to me. Give me a Goldberg gimmick and the match writes itself.

I'm not saying I should be there as that's what you should be saying.

Then I closed the evening hanging around with Norwich's finest John "5 Stars" Osbourne and Tim "The Leader" Clare.

Then I had a relatively early night which is unheard of at the Fringe