by Jo Brand
The second of the three best venues, the Pleasance, is exactly what it’s called — a pleasant cluster of venues grouped round a central courtyard where people can breeze in and out and watch absent-minded or terrified comics drift through their line of vision on their way to and from shows. On a sunny day it’s lovely to sit at a table with a beer and witness a few impromptu performances of the juggling/street theatre variety (It has to be said though, that a sunny day in Edinburgh is quite a rare phenomenon.)
The inimitable ‘father’ of the Pleasance, Christopher Richardson in my day could often be seen striding round the courtyard, his ample frame clad in an ancient linen suit and straw hat, holding forth about some irritation or other.
The Pleasance had a lovely buzz about it. Studenty arty sociable, it was always a pleasure to be at.
The Gilded Balloon can be found in what appears to be a street running underneath the rest of Edinburgh. Epicentre of drunken socialising for most comics, apart from some of the older ones who like a sit-down in the Assembly Rooms, it was the scene of much alcohol- and drug-fuelled shenanigans, and drew a crowd of ne’er-do-wells, both from among the comics and the audience.
I remember once heading towards the place and bumping into Steve Coogan, who informed me that the Pleasance staff had gone on strike and I was to immediately go there and show my solidarity with them. When I said that I’d like to know about the genesis of the dispute, before I made up my mind whether to support them, he said, ‘Oh Jo, you’re such a liberal.’ I think that is the only time I’ve ever been called a liberal.
The Gilded Balloon was run and managed by one Karen Koren, as feisty a Scotswoman as you could hope to meet. Everyone seemed terrified of her. I thought she was a good laugh. She made sure that the atmosphere of the Gilded Balloon was always slightly edgy and difficult to predict. One way she did this was to put on a late-night show called Late and Live which didn’t start until after midnight. There was always an interesting combination of mainly English acts and a predominantly Scots audience. The added factor of the late hour also helped to ensure that much heckling of a not entirely complimentary nature went on. My approach was to try and make sure I was as drunk as the audience — which was very, very, very, very, very drunk. I could then respond to them on the level at which they had pitched their alcohol-fuelled comments about my appearance and the content of my material. Also, being this pissed meant the following morning I couldn’t remember a bloody thing about how the show had gone which, nine times out of ten, was a blessing.
Having filled you in on the venues I have spent most of my time in, there now follows a brief history of my Edinburgh experiences. It is surprising in some ways that I can remember anything about them at all, given that Edinburgh for me has always been a distant bacchanalian country which is not in any way connected to reality apart from the wreckage of one’s physical and mental state on returning home.
First Edinburgh, 1988
My first trip to Edinburgh was your standard cabaret show with a compere and two other stand-ups. The compere was Ivor Dembina, a lovable character who I’ve mentioned before, and with whom I became good friends; at one point we even shared a flat. Ivor ran the comedy venue, the Red Rose in Finsbury Park in North (yuk) London. He was the regular compere there and, like myself, didn’t turn over new material at the speed of light like some of the newer, keener comics did. This meant that over the years I came to know his set very well, and jokes of his would be bandied about by most of us in a fond kind of way Ivor’s act was occasionally inconsistent so it has to be said we saw him dying some spectacular deaths on stage from time to time — but that only endeared him more to people.
Ivor was also like your favourite uncle. Bespectacled, sardonic and easygoing, he was always good fun to be with. When we shared a flat, things were pretty amicable between us as for a few months we played ‘Who Is the Laziest Flatmate?’ We had one huge row once that started over who put a bottle of tomato ketchup away and it escalated into a massive shouting match, but apart from that it was very hard to fall out with Ivor, who had been a teacher before he’d become a comedian, and we rubbed along pretty well together until we moved on.
At an out-of-town club, as compere, Ivor once called the interval and remarked to some guy in the front row, All right mate, you start the dancing,’ only to discover that the guy in question was ‘dancing’ because he had a serious physical disability Much embarrassment ensued, including some audience indignation because they assumed he was taking the piss out of a disabled person.
Also on the bill for my first Edinburgh jaunt were Mark Thomas and James Macabre. Mark Thomas, as I’m sure you will know, is what the London listings magazine City Limits used to call a ‘polemical’ comedian. Fiery, in your face and full of energy, he used to force his way into the consciousness of the audience and held the stage almost as if he was under siege. James Macabre (real name Jim Miller) was altogether different. More understated performance-wise, he was equally powerful as a stand-up. His material was pretty dark and very silly at times, and I think as a trio we were a good balance, each offering a contrast to the others.
We appeared in the Pleasance bar, which was the perfect venue for us as it was the most like the cabaret clubs in London that we were used to, and not theatre-like at all. This did mean that the audience could get quite pissed, as the bar was open all night. Still, we were used to this too, so it suited us.
And get pissed they did.
One of the characteristics of Edinburgh was the unspoken antipathy between the Scots and the English. I say unspoken, but on a number of occasions I was abused for my English accent. However, this was more than made up for by the jocular nature of the vast majority of Scots I met.
My abiding memory of this first Edinburgh was a fight which started at the show. A group of locals, having imbibed a fair bit, got stuck into some heckling during our show. It wasn’t particularly nasty, just irritatingly constant, like an itch, and every form of put-down, clever retort, desperate plea that they were ruining the show, went unheard. So we just put our heads down and got through the show as best we could. So far so good.
However, after the show, on our way out to the courtyard to have a well-earned drink, we encountered our hecklers face to face — two young men and a very lary woman. She and I began a rather foolish argument involving a lot of swearing, and at one point, pissed as she was and probably not really aware of what she was doing (to give her the benefit of the doubt), the charming woman stubbed a fag out on my arm. This was more than I could cope with and, calling for reinforcements, the argument spilled out into the courtyard and became a bit of a fight.
Drunken fists were flying. All of us were crap at fighting, and I suspect to an onlooker it was quite good comedy Eventually people were dragged off other people with the usual clichés of, ‘It’s not worth it!’ and, ‘Leave it out!’ and the whole thing was over as quickly as it had started. It was a baptism of fire for me as I usually manage to contain myself and get no further than just verbals.
The other baptism of fire one encounters at Edinburgh is, of course, reviews. These are hard to take, unless they’re brilliant obviously which in the early days for me they often weren’t. I convince myself that if reviews are bad yet constructive and not personal, that is fair enough. (However, I don’t really believe that.) But it is much worse if they are personal.
In that first year, I remember getting a review that took the piss out of the way I delivered my material in my football-scores style. Unused to this sort of criticism, I saw red. A fantasy developed in my head that when I saw the critic—can’t even remember his name now—I would cause him some sort of physical damage. I nursed this fantasy in the evil, black part of my heart until I actually saw the man in question in the Gilded Balloon bar later on in the Festival. By this point, however, the heat had gone out of my anger and I just gave him my hardest stare and moved on.
Second Edinburgh, 1989
This year I worked at the Gilded Ba
lloon with comics Kevin Day and Michael Redmond. We called the show Sean Corcoran and Phyllis Holt Present because I had a character called Phyllis Holt in one of my jokes at the time, and Michael had a character called Sean Corcoran in one of his.
Michael was a lugubrious Irish one-liner merchant whose delivery was slow, measured and expressionless, whereas Kevin Day was your archetypal London cheeky chappie whose jokes always had a sting in the tail and belied his laidback style.
We always performed a little play at the end of the show about Sherlock Holmes, and our main aim was to get as many puns on the phrase ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ as we could. Sounds crap? Dear reader, it was, but we loved it. We worked our way through A lemon entry’, ‘alimentary’ and many others which mercifully I cannot remember. Weirdly, though, I do remember, word for word, a review we got from a student magazine. No, I don’t have a photographic memory. It seared itself into my brain …
Because …
a) It was short
and
b) It was horrible
The review stated: Michael Redmond is Irish, Kevin Day is a cheeky Cockney and Jo Brand is fat.
And that was it.
Third Edinburgh, 1990
My third Edinburgh was also as part of a trio. Patrick Marber, James Macabre and I styled ourselves as a band, The Holy Cardigans. Each of us did a stand-up bit and came together at the end as a musical combo. In terms of who did what, the only true musician amongst us was Jim (James Macabre), who played guitar. Patrick couldn’t play anything so he had to be the lead singer, and I played keyboards very badly since having given up the piano when I was twelve, I was pretty crap.
We were at the Gilded Balloon, in a small sweaty room with a low ceiling. By this point I was having an on-off relationship with Jim, which didn’t make things particularly easy He was more serious about the music than me and Patrick, who were just mucking about. There were many dirty looks slung across the stage as I plodded very badly through my keyboard part like a depressed Liberace. (Hey! Google him, kids!)
I shared a rented flat with Jim and a couple of other comics. There was endless partying and a constant stream of comics in and out, day and night. Our downstairs neighbour, a man who I think worked on a building site, must have been driven mad by it. He used to leave his heavy work boots outside his front door, and one day someone, on their way down from our flat after a marathon partying session, strolled past his flat and nicked them.
I assume this was just some sort of silly prank and not meant maliciously, but the owner of the boots went absolutely mental. We were woken by the most terrifying banging on the door at about seven in the morning, to be confronted by one of the angriest people I have ever seen — and having worked in a Psychiatric Emergency Clinic, that’s saying something. He was incandescent with rage and I honestly thought he was going to beat the shit out of us, if not kill us. Of course, the boys’ attempts to reason with him just added fuel to the fire, and he left saying that if his boots weren’t back there by the evening or some money to replace them, he would ‘fucking kill’ us.
I sheepishly poked some money through his door, praying he was not in and would not come to the door to ‘thank’ me.
Fourth Edinburgh, 1992
Against my natural instinct, I was persuaded for my next Edinburgh to strike out on my own, and was offered an hour in the aforementioned posh-sounding Supper Room at the Assembly Rooms. I say ‘against my natural instinct’ because I have always preferred to be on a bill with other comics.
This is for two reasons.
Firstly, I am a gregarious person and I like being with other people. This means you can chat in the dressing room, discuss the audience and all go home together and get pissed afterwards, whereas the solo gigs I have done tend to have been rather lonely affairs … especially if I’d had a bad one.
Secondly doing a show on your own demands so much material — a whole hour or more. Now I know some stand-ups manage to blah on for ever, but I am not one of them. My material tends to be fairly spare and one-liner-ish. I envy those comics who can ramble at will in a conversational style as it seems to fill up much more time. I was approaching this Edinburgh with, if I’m honest, only forty minutes of material, and I needed an hour.
So I decided to pad it out with songs. This wasn’t a great idea for someone who can’t sing very well. Comedy songs are always a bit risky anyway although if you incorporate up-to-the-minute topical material, that seems to give them a bit of a boost.
Subtlety was never my strong point and the songs used to get big laughs or gasps, either of which was acceptable to me so that was how it had to be. Weirdly, as I wasn’t particularly pleased with the show I was doing, I got nominated for the Perrier Award, a comedy gong for what a panel of judges considered to be the best stand-up/comedy show.
The nominees for the award my year were:
Me
Steve Coogan and John Thomson
Mark Thomas
Bruce Morton
John Shuttleworth (real name Graham Fellows)
I didn’t think I had the slightest chance of winning but nursed the dream that I would, by some quirk of fate, receive the ultimate accolade. On the actual night I was unable to attend the party which I was secretly relieved about, because I’m not a big fan of awards ceremonies. It’s not that I can’t make a nice face and be genuinely pleased for the person who has won, I’m happy to do that. There is just something I don’t like about the atmosphere of them. Normally they are a bit boring, people are pissed and annoying, and I’d rather be at home watching telly.
So I deliberately agreed to a live radio interview on Radio Forth and asked one of the organisers to give me a ring when the prize was announced at about 11 p.m. so I knew one way or the other.
Well, I’m sitting there talking bollocks like one does on those sorts of radio shows and the clock ticked tortuously past the time of the announcement. I received no message and then the news came on — at which point they announced that the winners were Steve Coogan and John Thomson.
I had known Steve and John for a while by then. I met John Thomson with Mark Lamarr when we did a gig up in Manchester and he was on the bill. We all did OK. John was an impressionist at the time but had tried very hard to turn people’s expectations on their head. For example, he did a very good impression of Bernard Manning, which started as if he was going to do the usual Manning type of racist material and have a go at one ethnic group or another, but at the last minute he would flip it upside down and say he had used the ethnic groups to illustrate cultural harmony The character’s name was ‘Bernard Right On’.
When I first met John I found him a bit cocky and irritating. He was really young at the time, barely twenty and too in-yer-face. However, over the years he’s turned into a really good laugh, a nice bloke and fun to be with. I don’t see him that often, but when I do it’s always really great to catch up. I had a huge laugh with him on Fame Academy and I found the tabloid hounding of him some years ago really distasteful and undeserved. (It’s not like journalists don’t fill themselves full of booze and drugs, bloody hypocrites.)
I always thought Steve Coogan was a huge talent right from the kick-off. He was a brilliant mimic and his characters were marvellous. My favourite was the student-hating Paul Calf who would slag off anyone and anything in his orbit.
So I found out I hadn’t won the Perrier Award live on the radio … slightly disconcerting, but still infinitely preferable to being there. The interviewer probed for signs of disappointment, envy and homicidal feelings, but to be honest, there weren’t any I was genuinely pleased for John and Steve whose show was brilliant —so that was the end of that.
However, my show sold out every night, and to me that is a better indicator of success than getting some daft award. Also, at this point, I was beginning to be recognised on the street by people, and as most people in Edinburgh are pissed for the whole three weeks of the Festival, they let me know in no uncertain terms by shouting, trying t
o kiss me or just aiming some abuse in my direction. I suppose it was at this point I began to curtail my social life. Whereas before I had been pretty relaxed about going into any old pub, I now tended to hang around places that were slightly exclusive like the Assembly Rooms bar, because you needed some sort of pass to get in. It sounds wanky, I know, but in all honesty it did make life easier because I knew I would bump into someone there that I knew and could talk to, and hopefully the sort of people who would try to ruin my life would not be allowed in.
I chose to lay off Edinburgh for a bit after that. The pressure of writing enough fresh material to persuade the critics that I had an entirely new show was too strong and I decided it was better not to bother.
I did, however, go up to Edinburgh for a one-off show at the Playhouse a couple of years later. The Playhouse is massive, seating about 3,000. Mark Lamarr was compering and there was a line-up of the most fashionable comedians around at the time. Memories of this show include Mark Lamarr coming on stage with absolutely no clothes on whatsoever — much to the delight of the audience.
But sometimes you can die on stage. This might happen to a comic at any time, even when they are storming the gig and surfing on a wave of undying love. It’s such a fine line in comedy between laughs and boos sometimes, and it all hinges on such trivial things.
I made a big mistake in Scotland one night. A two-part gig to raise money for charity had been arranged so that a set of comics did two gigs, one in Edinburgh and one in Glasgow on the same night. It’s about a forty-five minute trip between the two. I did Edinburgh first and then hopped in a car and set off for Glasgow. Glasgow audiences are mythically difficult and there have been many legends about comics dying horrible deaths at the Glasgow Empire. It did not exist by the time my generation got round to working in Glasgow, but the residual fear still remained.