How do you like your humour? Stand up, sketches, slapstick, characters, poems, magic, hypnosis or witty songs? We had a week of varied experiences ranging in size from the huge tent for a BBC recording of ‘Just a Minute’ to being the only 2 in the audience for an intimate performance by Boris, a Russian themed magician. We also think we went to pretty much every different type of comedy performance you could imagine as well as a couple that don’t fit in with any definition.
We needed a good laugh after the moody weather and scenery of The Lake District so we headed North to visit the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Our campsite was just a 20-minute walk to the nearest train station and the train took just 10 minutes into the centre of the city.
We chose to visit ‘free’ venues where there is no charge to get in but you are asked to donate some cash into a bucket when you leave. The standard varied enormously but, in general, it was very good and we often left with tears rolling down our cheeks.
We are big fans of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Just a Minute’ hosted by Nicholas Parsons. He is now 93 years old and has been hosting the programme for 50 years. The BBC tent was huge and felt like a theatre inside. It housed many shows including the recording of two episodes of Just a Minute during the week when we were there. We were lucky enough to get one of the few tickets held back from the online lottery for the day for the later recording. It was hilarious and we were treated to an excellent performance from Paul Merton. This show will be aired on Radio 4 on August 28th.
By contrast we had a show to ourselves when we went to see Vodka Spy hosted by Boris the ex KGB mind control agent….well that’s what he said! The venue was off the main track and was a pretentious joint charging buckets of cash for a simple Magners Cider. This might explain why we were the only 2 people in the audience which guaranteed us his total attention as he performed some obvious tricks and a few that were actually very clever.
We also discovered that Cheryl is not open to suggestions. Earlier in the summer we laughed when the losing contestant on Ken Bruce’s Pop Master Competition on Radio 2 was asked if he wanted to say ‘hello’ to any friends and family. The contestant was Ben Dali and he launched into a shameless bout of self publicity about his upcoming show at the Fringe. His show was called ‘Take a Trance on Me’ and he asked for 10 volunteers to take part. Neil was tempted but decided to watch the antics rather than be a guinea pig. Cheryl was just as shameless as Ben Dali and rushed to be one of the first onto the stage………just another wannabee!
What followed was just amazing. Several of the volunteers were quite clearly hypnotised whilst some were possibly faking it. They performed some really amusing antics which were ‘fun’ rather than being embarrassing. However, Cheryl just didn’t go under and after laughing and signing to Neil that ‘nothing was happening’ she was the only volunteer who was asked by Ben to leave the stage like a naughty child and told to return to her seat next to Neil……….we just sat and giggled for ages.
Neil enjoyed poems, yes, you read that correctly…..poems! Porky the Poet, AKA Phil Jupitus of Never Mind the Buzzcocks fame, gave a performance along with a couple of guest performers. Neil’s not generally a of poetry lover but having given Attila the Stockbroker a try at Glastonbury a few years ago he decided to give Porky a go. He was excellent with some very thought-provoking poetry as well as some very silly stuff.
We saw The Northern Power Blouse, an all girl sketch show featuring 3 very talented young women that had us rolling around. We especially liked the inspired James Bond themes where they changed the lyrics to fit in with their role as cleaners with songs such as ‘Dysons are Forever’ and ‘Mop and let dry’ as they suggestively cleaned the stage…brilliant!
We had more audience participation as we were watching a solo stand up comedian in a very small room upstairs in a nightclub. Part way through the performance an extension socket bar attached to the wall and used for a spotlight up in the rafters came adrift and nearly hit us. Neil found himself re-attaching it to the wall with gaffer tape much to the amusement of everyone else. It got more laughs than the comic and even more laughs when it fell off again and we decided to unplug it and leave him performing in twilight!
There are a few venues where several performers can showcase their main shows. Highlights from these were a character comedian who performed as a Noel Coward type making sense of the modern world – watching Formula 1 racing will never be the same again. Two other great shows were The First Annual All Black Comedy Showcase which included General Ojambo an African Leader who ranted and raved and had Neil gasping for breath between gags. The LOL Word featured five lesbian stand-up comics and a 95% lesbian audience in a very small nightclub room, almost uncomfortably intimate, but very, very funny! Even if they hadn’t been funny we wouldn’t have been brave enough to heckle.
We even went to shows where we had no idea what was on offer other than an interesting title. Who could resist ‘My Dad Wrote a Porno – behind the scenes’? – especially when it was in the BBC tent! We’ve since discovered it’s a very successful and popular podcast – look it up.
Edinburgh is an extremely attractive city and venues for the Festival are scattered around the centre with the majority just off The Royal Mile. It’s also on a lot of tourists’ tick lists so it’s usually packed in Summer and we lost count of the different languages that we could hear around us. Add to that the numerous buskers and street performers, the countless people handing out flyers to promote shows and people just stopping to look and generally getting in the way making it almost impossible to move around.
Having fun was getting to be hard work. We saw at least 4 shows a day and it would have been rude not to have a drink each time, plus there were breaks for brunch on some days or just plain lunch, and as we found a fantastic and quiet Wetherspoons in an old well-preserved cinema you get more drinks included. To cap it all on 2 days we had to run for the train home catching them with less than a minute to spare……phew!
We’d earned a rest so after a week we headed to Crieff in Perthshire. On arrival we set up the caravan and then went to lunch with Colin and Margaret who we know from Goa. They live in Perth and came across to say hello. Thanks go to them for paying for lunch – Colin’s way of showing that not all Scots are stereotypical!
The weather over the next few days was very Scottish – bloody wet. However, we managed a couple of days walking around a couple of the zillions of Lochs. It really was very beautiful and just sitting looking at the scenery whilst we had our picnic was just so relaxing.
Happy Birthday
We came to Crieff with purpose – it was to celebrate Neil’s 64th birthday at the oldest distillery in Scotland, Glenturret, which is part of the group that owns Famous Grouse. We had an extremely good lunch in the restaurant before taking the 2.5hr Whisky Blending Course. It started with a tour of the distillery, then to one of the bonded warehouses where we sampled 4 different varieties of single malt with one being 65% proof! We were very surprised that the measures were good sized tots rather than just a drop in the bottom of the glass. Having had a couple of drinks whilst we chose our food at lunchtime, plus a bottle of wine with the food, we were beginning to float.
Next stop was the blending room and back to the school science lab……..ha, if only the labs at school had been stocked like this! First, we had 10 different smells in bottles that would tell us what sort of odours excited our noses. These were related to the 6 different varieties of single malt that we were to use to make our own blend and we were to take home in our own small bottle. This, of course, involved even more tasting as we went along, yippee!! We now realised what a good idea it was to travel by taxi!!
mmm…not sure I like this one!
After we had booked our trip to Crieff Neil remembered that an old friend of his from school and the scouts lived somewhere near. Somewhere near was something of an understatement – he lived on the fringe (ha ha) of Crieff and his Forestry Company was located less than a mile from where we were staying. Whilst we had lunch at the distillery Alan popped in for a beer and to tell us exactly where he lived. Thursday night was to be drinks and dinner at his house where we met his wife Heather. We had a few beers, reminisced and put the world to rights, had an excellent dinner and then lots more chat over an entire bottle of single malt…….oops!! What a great evening and we’d liked to say a massive thank you to them both for a wonderful time although we’d also like to apologise for not waking up early enough as it was 2am before we got to bed. This meant Alan was a tad late for work but, hey, he’s The Chairman so who’s going to argue?
We left Crieff for our final week in Scotland on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. Our simple caravan site of just 5 caravans was magnificent. We had a stunning view of the loch from the front window and the surrounding peaks at the side. What’s great about our caravan is that we can open the blinds at the front and sit in bed having our early morning cuppa just gazing at the wonderful scenery. It’s amazing just how the Scottish weather changes so dramatically and so quickly but we did have enough dry days to walk the banks of the Loch and The West Highland Way choosing a different location to start each day. This included the walk up to the top of Conic Hill where we had a magnificent view of the Loch and our wee caravan way in the distance.
Cheryl & Neil Our Story 
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