High Apple Pie

I feel very mellow this morning; it's possibly the effects of having replaced tea with honey and lemon in hot water... where all the caffeine used to be raging around my system I know have a very gentle bee-juice induced cosy feeling. It's not doing anything for my throat sadly and I still sound like an angry male football fan whenever I speak. I just opened the curtains and it's an almost beautiful day outside. I'm qualifying this statement because, in Edinburgh, a beautiful day is where you can see a small amount of blue sky behind the clouds and you're not going to get thoroughly soaked by the day - just a little bit, so it's OK.

It might sound a little mad, but I'm beginning to get a good idea into my head of what next year's Edinburgh shows will be... we're only 1/3 of the way through this year and yet there's a little nugget of an idea that's taken hold in my mind and the more people I tell about it the more they think it would be lovely. I'm thinking it might just be time to branch out into some children's theatre... it's the natural progression from topical drama about the British Media I believe.

Yesterday I had three very different shows to deal with and I realised that marketing is a trick that, if mastered, can set you up for the rest of your life... and if you can't quite get it right you feel like you're going slightly crazy. Ink yesterday happened in front of the strangest audience of the run so far; a moderate number of absolutely silent, stock still people sat before us and just stared at the events as they unfolded. No laughs, no nods, no sign of human interaction at all... and then I disappeared off to do Quiz In My Pants and performed to 80 people with an absolutely electric atmosphere. We'd got Tom Green as one of our guests on the show and once the audience found this out, the level of energy was insane. Later on that night I played to about 8 people in a roughly 100 seater, at midnight in a room above a nightclub... the ups and downs of this career could quite easily send you round the bend I swear.

I'm sure when Einstein said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results he had no idea how much the Edinburgh Fringe would undermine his assertions. Stay here for just 4 days and you will see how the slightest fickle trick of fate will determine how many bums on seats you have seated in front of your masterpiece... was it flyering in a specific spot that worked? Was it my elevator pitch that put them off? Should I keep my hair down when I'm telling people about it? Is it more serious if I've got black trousers on? So many questions... not an answer in sight.

Ah well, I'm off out for Round 9... bonkers.