The day started familiarly enough with Comedy Tapas at Opium bringing in another big audience for me to shout at and to see Jinx Yeo bring the house down again. I made a note to see his show, "A+ Underachiever" that night.
Following that it was across town to join Louisa to see "Tipping Point". Not the quiz show with more than a small debt to seaside penny push machines, but an acrobatics-meets-dance show featuring people carrying, spinning and climbing incredibly long poles to music. An hour of anyone's time well spent.
From there we jumped in a taxi to get to Mirthquake and arrived just in time after some hideous traffic on Princes Street. The room was grotty, one of the mic leads was broken and one of the standing lamps had stopped working. Undeterred, we did a good show to 11 people - incuding Mel, Louisa, my mum and her partner Dave. The bucket money was atrocious though as many of the attendees were in other shows and therefore skint. Afterwards though I vowed to make some changes to the room. More on that later.
Having had a few drinks in a nearby pub; Mel, Louisa and I headed off to see Johnny and the Baptists perform politically charged comedy songs in a tent. Needless to say the politics in question wasn't exactly celebrating the shift to the right since 1979. The tunes were good and the guys were very charismatic. I would have given them a standing ovation at the end except I had to leg it out five minutes from close due to the previously consumed beer.
From there it was time for a nice curry in a BYOB restaurant and on to see Jinx at The Southside Social. His late night show had plenty of killer punchlines all loosely based around his Chinese origins but the bargain basement PA made him sound like an AM radio broadcast. Slightly odd but still enjoyable.
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Today we were up relatively early to sit in on a podcast with Mark Thomas discussing memories of fringes gone by before I headed down to Argos and acquired a desk lamp. From there it was back up to The Southsider, picking up a bright bulb and a long mic lead on the way. The partition had arrived so I put that up, tested the lamp and checked the new lead worked.
After a quick spot at Sportsters for 'Comedy Shorts" I was back up and flyering. At 4:30 we had a decent 25 people audience (pictured) and lights off with the exception of the lamp and some sidelights. For the first time the room actually felt more like a theatre and less like an open mic practice space.
With all four acts on the bill it was a tight hour and a lot of fun. The audience really bought into the sets with everyone doing well. I closed the show with three tracks and had a lengthy conversation with a giddy grandma discussing her experiences of craft fairs. This could be the start of something - older person coach tours as of tomorrow!
Monday
Shows Performed: 2 (26)
Bums on seats at Mirthquake: 11 (189)
Money in the Mirthquake bucket: £6.20 (£250.80)
Steps walked according to my pedometer: 15,874 (215,006)
Steps walked according to my pedometer: 15,874 (215,006)
CDs Remaining: 82
Tuesday
Shows Performed: 2 (28)
Bums on seats at Mirthquake: 25 (214)
Money in the Mirthquake bucket: £28 (£278.80)
Steps walked according to my pedometer: 13,344 (228,350)
Steps walked according to my pedometer: 13,344 (228,350)
CDs Remaining: 79
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