CityLife

Marissa's Edinburgh Fringe Blog - The Beginning

Marissa Burgess - on the high road again

SO, it’s August once more and in the comedic calendar that means one thing - Edinburgh Fringe time. It seems to come round quicker than a wasp senses an orange Tango in a pub beer garden.

The time for a comic to leave home (for a month) with their dreams of stardom and appearances on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow only to return in September having all hope stamped out of them and vowing never to leave the womblike confines of the Jongleurs circuit again.
 

This year is my sixth full run at the Fringe after I came up for a week in 2003 and got bitten by the fringe bug, well something bit me anyway – but I was a journalist sleeping on the floor of a flat I shared with eight comedians, so it could have been any one of them.
 

Unlike the regular circuit where you get to cower at the back scratching away at your notepad in blissful anonymity, the show’s at the Fringe have a way of drawing you in.

Ostrich riding

Not least because you’re often one of just eight in the crowd. In previous years I’ve had my notepad stolen by Bernie Clifton* (he of the ostrich riding shenanigans), been serenaded by Toulson and Harvey, become Pete Firman’s (fine comedic magician) very surly assistant and was at the very same gig that eventually led to Flight of the Conchords’ HBO series being commissioned.
 

Last year by the close of day one I’d seen two counts of full frontal male nudity (that’s not counting anyone I shared a flat with).

And, in fact, I rounded the festival off with some more en masse nudity during a naked peace protest in Phil Nichol’s if.comedy winning Naked Racist show (I was one of them in fact - then we broke off, formed a splinter group and went on tour following comedian Phil Kay about the city centre streaking when the opportunity arose).
 

Nor are you resistant to the whore-y lure of celebrity yourself. I got so giddy last year at the sight of my a quote with my name on it emblazoned across Rob Deering’s bikini dressed tits (I’m not absolutely sure, but I think his poster last year was photoshopped…) that I had to have sit down.
 

Nabbed the note-taking tool

Who knows what this year will bring, but I’m off, I have an afternoon tea date with the ducks at Tebay services on the M6 on the way up.

*FOOTNOTE for anyone wondering how Bernie Clifton came to steal my notepad he was wrapping his audience in brown tape at the time, spotted me at the back who hadn’t been quick enough to hide said notepad in time by sitting on it – my usual method.

He nabbed the aforementioned note-taking tool, took it to the stage and proceeded to threaten to read from it at various points during the rest of the show.

Luckily he’d lost his reading glasses so couldn’t see what I’d actually written was my shopping list for Tesco.