It's Over!!!!!!

So today is the day that everyone starts packing up and heading back from the Edinburgh Festival. I recall all to well how depressing that is, trying to clean the rented flat enough to get your deposit back, trying to fit all the jumpers you've had to buy while you were up there into a case filled with unworn summer clothes, doing your final show tonight (assuming you sell enough tickets to actually do a show tonight, the place is deserted!) and doing all of those things with a raging hangover and/or comedy flu.

All the awards have been dished out - massive congrats to Sarah Millican who won Best Newcomer, well deserved sista! - the bills are piling up and the depression's begun to kick in. The more affluent comics with be jetting off to somewhere hot and peaceful, and the poorer ones will be attempting to adjust to doing a mere 20 minutes again after a month of doing an hour every night.

I went up about 10 days ago for my 48 hour blitz, saw my great friend Stephen K Amos's show - Find The Funny - which  was excellent. It was a perfect hour of Steve doing what he does best, being funny! No messages, no great confessions, just gags. How brave of him!

Other than Steve's show I didn't see any comedy. We went and saw a dreadfully dated play and some dance thing that didn't live up to it's publicity, and frankly after those two experiences - especially the play which went on for 90 minutes, I felt like a bloody hostage! - I wasn't inclined to commit to anyone else's performances! Well none that I could blag into that is. Even with Steve "The Last King of Scotland" we couldn't blag freebies for Joan Rivers, and comedy chums like John Gordillo, Rhod Gilbert and Tim Vine were all sold out with no standing room even for an ace ligger like me.

I did do a fair bit of socialising tho, having drinks with Roy Walker, Jim Jeffries and various other characters, showing off my new face and figure to old pals who haven't seen me in a while - one of the nicest compliments was Michael MacIntyre saying 'I used to know your mum', bless him - and generally just hanging out and chatting with a ton of people in the biz. I had a blast but 48 hours was plenty!

Every year I say I'm gonna do a show "next year" and every year I come to my senses in the nick of time. This time however I've actually got something I'd like to do, so who knows, maybe you'll see me wandering around the streets in the rain handing out flyers next August!