On the train.

After doing my only gig of the fringe (BBC night - there is a lot of buzz about my performance) I spent Saturday evening in Brookes bar. Brookes is officially a bar for Pleasance performers and the more naive of you might expect it to be just a little bit glamorous. In actuality it resembles a sixth form common room/youth club and is almost exclusively populated by unrecognisable journeyman comics like myself. Although it's not particularly hip to say so, in small doses I love it because it's also filled with my friends. There was one event though that slightly spoilt my binge...

I spilled half a pint of Guinness over a lady's trousers and a man's jacket and bag. I was immediately enormously embarrassed and went into apology overload. Now when you're on the receiving end of a spillage you get understandably annoyed and then you accept the spiller's apologies by saying 'it's alright, don't worry about it' whilst inwardly despising them. Those are the rules. That is what you do. But this lady was a maverick and I hated her for it. She proceeded to have a serious go at me.

'Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm so sorry.'

'You've ruined everything!'.

'I'm sorry.'

'You're a prick'

'I know. Sorry'

This went on for a good five minutes. Happy ending - I poured the rest of the pint over her. Real ending - I waddled away mumbling sorry.

I am now on the train returning from Edinburgh. There have been a couple of events worthy of note on this journey but 3 days of booze and steak bakes have rendered me a shadow of my former self and I fear I won't be able to do them justice in the telling. In brief the first half of the journey was dominated by four ADHD suffering teenagers from Doncaster pestering two gay upper class American lawyers to let them have ' a shot' on their laptops. The biggest incident of the second half has been the poshest man in the world. He has a booming voice, a pair of binoculars and bellows things like 'Gentleman! Mumsy is over here!'. He is talking to a different pair of Americans who no doubt think he is completely representative of the average Englishman. I have genuinely never come across anyone who is closer to how the British are portrayed in bad American movies. Perhaps he is hired by the tourist board to roam train carriages giving visitors the cartoonish Englishness they came to see. Just now he bounded down the carriage shouting things like 'Good evening sir!' to strangers. It is 5 o'clock.

Every show I saw at this years fringe was good and I hesitate to single one out for fear of upsetting friends. Fuck it though, Nick Mohammed's show may well be the best I have ever seen in Edinburgh.

Posh twat update - He is ASTONISHING and pissed out of his mind...

'I'm looking for my wife!! We went to Paris - I went for the rugby, she went for the opera!'

Then he shouted at an Asian trolley pusher; 'Good evening good sir, are you going to the Oval tomorrow for the cricket? They are playing a team from the South Asian sub continent and it's not India or Bangladesh. Are you with me matey!?'

If this was a sketch it would be considered unoriginal but it is HAPPENING and it is INCREDIBLE.

'You, good sir, are a fine young man!'

I am lost for words which, I guess signals the end of today's blog.