When they opened the door to what would be their temporary home, Sarah finally had a taste of the university-style experience she had missed out on. The place was filthy. Hence the first thing she did, upon arriving at the Fringe for her debut solo show, was to go to the shops and buy a stash of cleaning products. Pulling up their rubber gloves, the two comics blitzed the place before rewarding themselves with a feast at local eaterie, Monster Mash.
Later, while leafing through the Fringe brochure, she circled a massive 50 shows that she wanted to go and see. No matter how her show was received, it was going to be an incredible month and she didn’t want it to be all hard work and no play.
Sarah was pleased to be booked into the Pleasance Courtyard for her show’s run. With over 500,000 visitors each year, 16 venues, and every kind of entertainment imaginable on the billing, it’s fondly known as the heart of the festival.
But then disaster struck…
Back in 1990, because of the huge array of acts performing at the Fringe, its organisers had installed a special computerised booking system, which allowed show tickets to be bought from a number of locations around the city. With the advent of the Internet, in 2000 the Fringe launched its own official website, allowing tickets to be bought online for the first time.
It was a huge boost to Fringe earnings – by 2005, over half a million tickets had been sold online. Following this success, the Fringe decided to design a festival-wide ticketing system, to try and consolidate its sales. It has also since been suggested that the move was borne out of the discovery that several major venues in Edinburgh were launching their own independent ticketing system, taking income away from the Fringe organisers.
In March 2008, a company was hired to design and install the new system. But they had never done anything like it before, and only had 14 weeks to install and test it.
The system failed spectacularly.
It happened on an overcast day in June – the first day of advance Fringe ticket sales, and a notoriously busy day for festival ticket buying. Some shows had a very limited number of seats and were in high demand – getting tickets early was the only way to guarantee you would see your favourite act.
Chaos followed. Thousands of people tried, and failed to buy advance tickets, and despite repeated attempts to fix the problem, it soon became apparent that it wouldn’t be possible.
The failure was described as the biggest crisis in Fringe history, and led to a bill of around £300,000 for the Fringe organisers. But worst of all, sales suffered. After so many acts had paid a fee to perform, many wondered if they would end up in debt because of the poor sales.
In fact, sales were down 10 per cent from the year before, when 1.7 million tickets had been sold. It was a huge loss, although it was partly blamed on poor weather, the Beijing Olympics, and the economy.
But for the acts due to appear at the festival, it was a huge blow and for Sarah, it must have been frightening. She still had no idea how many people would be in her audience each night. It was her first year as a solo stand-up artist, so she couldn’t quote sell-outs from previous gigs on her promotional material and posters.
And despite her recent wins, a lot of people had never heard of her. But the only way to get fans was to perform. So on the first night Sarah went onto the small stage and tried not to let her face fall when she looked out over the audience.
There were just five people.
Sarah tried not to be downhearted as she went through her routine, wearing her specs and something flowery from her wardrobe. On stage, she was slender and delicate looking, with plain brown locks falling to her shoulders. She looked more like a nursery school teacher than a sweary comedian who was about to talk an awful lot about sex.
But her routine must have been a pleasant shock for the five-strong crowd, because the next night Sarah saw more people in the audience. The night after that she saw even more. And her audience kept growing…
Four days later, when she described the night in a novice’s account of her first week at the Fringe, it was obvious she was pleased at how things had gone so far. She told The Guardian: ‘On the first night I had an audience of five. The fact that they had bought tickets without knowing who I was felt like a massive compliment. Out of five shows so far, three went brilliantly and two weren’t so good. But I’m notoriously hard on myself. I had a reviewer in on one of my bad nights, and they gave me four stars.’
In the frank and honest diary-style piece she was ultimately philosophical about how her first week had gone. ‘Every time I’ve had a good show I treat myself by eating chocolate or going to see some comedy,’ she wrote. ‘So far I’ve seen Josie Long, Andrew Laurence and Jon Richardson. They were all great.’
Sarah also mused a little on her competition. ‘The standard is really high,’ she admitted. ‘You get people in the audience who’ve just seen Mark Watson or Tim Minchin, which means the pressure’s on. But I don’t feel threatened. I can’t do what they do, but they can’t do what I do either.’
They certainly couldn’t. Because Sarah’s routine was a culmination of all the pain and sorrow she had felt, all the lessons she had learned, and all the experiences she had grown through since her husband had left her four years before.
She addressed questions that resonated with everyone from divorcees, to happily married couples, and even to the single and willing. What if I’m rubbish at sex? Why did I marry the first man who liked me? What if no one ever fancies me again?
Sarah’s audience quickly began to fill out, thanks to the power of word of mouth. Soon everybody wanted to see the potty-mouthed northerner who was causing such a stir in the courtyard.
Comedy critic and art writer Brian Logan was one of the first to review Sarah’s show. ‘Breaking up is hard to do,’ he wrote in The Guardian. ‘But if you launch a stand-up career on the back of it, well that’s got to take the edge off… It sounds like therapy masquerading as entertainment, but you’d be hard pushed to find a jollier set on the Fringe. Millican establishes a real atmosphere of bonhomie, which is no mean feat when your subject is heartbreak and you’re probing couples in the front row for their sexual peccadillos.’
Logan found Sarah refreshing. He admitted it wasn’t an unfamiliar stand-up style – there have been plenty of female comics who combine a lovable demeanour with a foul mouth. Nor, he said, was it an especially appealing range of material – her subject matter rarely delved further than smut, sex and relationships.
‘But there’s no denying that Millican applies the formula with brio and (not withstanding her self-proclaimed cynicism) a big heart, and the jokes feel fresh and true,’ he said.
The jokes, in fact, had people howling with laughter. And there were plenty of them. From the one about having sex with men in their thirties – ‘generally much better, but you’ve got to rub their legs afterwards for cramp’, to the one about administering hand relief on a bus – Driver: ‘Are you ever going to get off?’ Sarah: ‘Tell me about it, my wrists are f***ing knackered.’
But it wasn’t just her expertly crafted jokes that began to fill her seats, night after night, it was her delivery too – a delivery that she certainly had a natural talent for, but that she had also honed over the years. As Logan summed up: ‘Sometimes the funniest pay-offs need no words: Millican’s face is priceless. The marriage failed, but the comedy career is unlikely to.’
It was a stunning review, but it wouldn’t be the last. By the end of the Fringe, every journalist was talking about Sarah Millican.
But even as the buzz was growing around her, Sarah sometimes found the experience a tough one. After one particularly hard show, it was up to Gary to cheer her up, by taking her to a chip shop and buying her a bag of the potato treats along with two bars of dairy milk.
Another wobble came when she went home to Newcastle, to celebrate her father’s birthday. Spending the whole day travelling, she missed her afternoon nap and felt tired and probably a bit grouchy. Seeing her mum and dad also highlight
ed how much she was missing her family. But she soon got herself back on track and facing her packed little Pleasance Courtyard hut with her usual gusto.
Sarah settled into a routine. Every afternoon at 5pm, she went back to her little flat in Marchmont – next to Edinburgh’s grand public park, The Meadows – and performed a little ritual. She had a power nap, put her face on, and walked back through The Meadows chanting the order of her show under her breath. Luckily the only other people around were performers, who were mostly doing the same thing.
She also tried to make sure she had snacks in her bag, as it is hard to do an hour-long show when your energy levels are flagging.
After her shows had finished she would go with friends to various late night eateries. One of her favourites was the appropriately named Favorit, which opened till the very early hours.
At 2am one morning, one of Sarah’s friends ordered muesli with sliced bananas. The staff member was apologetic and said they’d run out of the fruit, but Sarah was remarkably prepared and said: ‘Bring a knife, I’ve got one in my bag!’
Sarah is, as she herself says, ‘annoyingly maternal’, for someone who so loathes the thought of having children. She made friends quickly at the festival, and often behaved like a surrogate mum to them. ‘I once bumped into my flatmate in the Pleasance Courtyard and asked her if she had eaten yet,’ she recalled in The Independent a year later. ‘She said she’d had a hotdog and a gin and tonic. She seemed to think that was adequate. I plied her with microwaveable dinners.’
Some viewers were left confused by the title of Sarah’s show – why was Sarah Millican ‘Not Nice’? Steve Bennett, writing for the comedy website Chortle, tackled the answer in his review of the show: ‘Sarah Millican may look quite sweet and she certainly sounds that way… but as this show’s title gives away, that’s an utterly deceptive image. She’s not nice in two ways: because she is, in her own words, ‘a bit of a cow’, and because her material can be utterly filthy. Her lilting north east accent sugar-coats everything from sex toys to coprophilia, giving an illusion of gentle charm to the crudest of material.’
It was a succinctly accurate description of the 33-year-old, and one that whetted the appetites of many a Fringe-goer.
‘The vivid pictures she paints of a pain, unsalved by her father’s casual doom-mongering, bring a hefty dose of reality to her jokes,’ added Bennett. ‘And my, has she got jokes. Tim Vine aside she surely has one of the highest gags-per-minute count on the Fringe, with punchlines arriving every few beats with unwavering punctuality. The effect of such an onslaught is irresistible and laughs come thick and fast.’
Sarah ordered her show very cleverly. She didn’t just instantly bring out the sex and swearing – instead she gradually built up to it, initially talking through her divorce like a sad bedtime story. ‘They said time is a healer, as if someone had died. Rubbish. If he’d died I’d have had my mortgage paid and danced on his grave,’ Sarah told her shocked audiences.
With the laughter flowing freely, Sarah then headed to her most comfortable ground – below the belt – where she remained for the remainder of the hour. Her material verged on the masculine, with non-stop references to bad sex and masturbation. But viewers were impressed when she steered clear of the penis jokes and clichés and, as Bennett put it, ‘refreshed the genre’.
‘Although she has a generally unromantic view of relationships… a note of optimism – albeit pragmatic optimism – does emerge at the end, as she concedes that she is happy in her new relationship. It all adds to the feeling that her stand-up is based on real experiences, not contrived for the sake of a gig. It’s how she avoids clichés, and stays likeable, all contributing to what is an impressive, and consistently funny, festival debut.’
What Bennett was voicing was the honesty that is an integral part of Sarah’s charm. People generally don’t like to be lied to, even for the sake of a gag. An obviously faked moment or emotion can separate a viewer from the journey they’ve been undertaking with the comedian and leave them feeling like they have woken up from a hazy laughter spell.
The same goes for comedians who try too hard. Audiences don’t want to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed for the entertainer they’ve paid money to see.
At her Fringe debut, with her frank and self-effacing manner, Millican made the ever-growing crowd in her audience feel like they were part of her world. She asked them questions about their sex lives – ‘Do you use food in the bedroom, flower?’ Or: ‘Do you dress up for your partner, pet?’
She was greeted with both shy reticence and an avalanche of volunteered information. She coped equally well with either. During one show, Sarah asked one man in the audience whether he had ever had a shower with a partner.
His girlfriend was sitting next to him when he replied that yes, he had. Sarah was just about to ask him for more details, when a voice from the back shouted: ‘Ask him what happened in Magaluf!’
There was an awkward moment of silence. His girlfriend looked puzzled and he just looked very uncomfortable.
Sarah quickly understood that the guy at the back obviously knew the red-faced man and was trying his best to embarrass him. The poor guy was squirming in his seat, trying to figure out how best to dodge the answer.
Sarah was kind and immediately diffused the situation. She gently asked: ‘Do you want to tell us something that your girlfriend clearly doesn’t know about, which happened in Magaluf?’ When the man said that no, he really didn’t, she led the audience in a round of applause and swiftly moved on.
Millican rolled effortlessly with what was thrown at her, making it seem like the audience were at a good friend’s Ann Summers party, rather than a comedy show led by a stranger. Most impressively, she never let the show go off track, which can often happen when you interact with the audience. It was a combination of all of these things that led more and more people to her show, which soon sold out, and more and more reviewers to sit in on the action.
Her promotional poster was soon covered over with star rating stickers – so many, that by the end of the festival her face was almost obscured with the praise.
Sarah’s show also proved something else that cheered the hearts of her reviewers: you don’t need to be cool to be funny. Sarah happily gave a large number of interviews throughout her first Fringe run, and didn’t try to make herself out to be anything she wasn’t.
She told reporters that her favourite song was Cliff Richard’s Wired For Sound. She spoke about how proud she was to be compared to a young Thora Hird – in contrast to many of the other comics, who would have preferred edgier comparisons, like Bill Hicks or Lenny Bruce. She even joked about the benefits of being ‘a square’ during an interview with the Daily Record. ‘If another comic asks for a lift home from a gig, I have no shame about putting Take That’s Greatest Hits on the car stereo. They never ask for a lift again.’
Sarah was overwhelmed with the positive reviews she was getting, and began to hear her name touted as a possible festival award winner. When she was interviewed by The Metro, she acknowledged her huge delight at how well she was being received, but countered it with her typical self-effacing attitude. ‘I appreciate this isn’t a typical Edinburgh,’ she said. ‘I’m expecting next year to be completely rubbish. If I get nominated, that’s great, but even if I don’t, people will go: “Oh my God, you should have been nominated!” I win either way.’
The remaining festival days passed quickly, and the town buzzed with talk of the deceptively sweet and paradoxically filthy newcomer.
Seasoned festival reviewer Jay Richardson reviewed her show for newspaper The Scotsman, and wrote: ‘Throughout the show, you’re persuaded of a talent – and indeed sexual confidence – belatedly enjoying its fullest expression. Millican’s “not nice” feelings have developed from being a source of shame, through her post-marriage insecurity, to unabashed pride, her sadistically delivered lines on masturbation and crap sex technique offset by a pragmatic affection for her current beau, exem
plified by their rollercoaster non-engagement. So much of herself and her audience’s intimacies and indiscretions are packed into this hour that it’s totally devoid of filler, yet absolutely brimming over with muck.’
In hindsight it was inevitable: Sarah soon received word from on high that she had indeed been nominated for a festival award.
Celebrated at a prestigious evening ceremony at the end of August, the .if comedy awards were attended by a wide swathe of the UK’s media and presented by a host of comedy stars. They consisted of a main prizewinner and a best newcomer award – which Sarah had been nominated for. The best newcomer award recognised the talent of festival virgins, and acknowledged the promise of their career in the world of comedy.
Sarah was nervous and excited. Two years before, Oxford-educated funny lady Josie Long had walked away with the award, after her debut show Kindness and Exuberance was a landslide success. In 2007, Cambridge University’s Tom Basden – member of the four-man sketch group Cowards – snatched the title, with his show, Tom Basden Won’t Say Anything.
Sarah knew that the Best Newcomer Award would be an incredible achievement. Out of the hundreds of new and talented performers who had bravely tackled the festival that year, standards had been notably high.
And she hadn’t been to any university, let alone the country’s two greatest learning institutions, as both her predecessors had done. Both universities have a long-held association with comedy as entertainment, and regularly produce highly talented comics and performers from behind their ancient stone walls.
For example, since 2003, Oxford University has been home to The Oxford Imps, an improvisational comedy troupe who perform every week during term time. They have been described by Fringe festival magazine Three Weeks as the best show they ever had the pleasure to witness, and count an armful of comedy award recipients among their number. These include Ivo Graham, winner of the 2009 So You Think You’re Funny? competition, and Chris Turner, finalist at the 2011 BBC New Comedy Awards. Many alumni of the Imps have continued their passion for improv after their time at the university, founding a number of successful groups around the world including Chicago, New York and Sydney.
Sarah Millican--The Queen of Comedy Page 8