Embra Fringe 2007

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I went over to Edinburgh for the weekend. That’s my third long weekend in a row, yeehaw. Don’t know how I’ll cope with a 5 day week next week. Have wanted to go over to the fringe for ages and ended up going at the last minute(ish). Had a fantastic time, think I’d much prefer this than a music festival these days. I forgot what a beautiful place Edinburgh is too.

Only booked tickets for two events and left everything else to randomness. The first was Limmy’s Show, www.limmy.com has been one of my favourite sites for years. His silly, but slightly obscure videos and playthings appeal to my mentality. He got the show solely on the popularity of his site and hasn’t done stand up or anything before. It’s a brilliant show – a mixture of recorded videos and live one-man skits. All the material was brand new, no reference to the site at all, though I was tempted to whisper Requiem or shout Gies yer jaicket myself.

The other highlight of the weekend and the only other thing we pre-booked (you get what you pay for) was Fuerzabruta which was absolutely fantastic. It’s like a big a club, staged in a circus, featuring large-scale physical theatre, including overhead syncronised swimming in a ee-through pool, and treadmill stages with people running for their lives. Lasted about an hour and my mouth was wide open for a lot of it. The show would work great in a big club but that would lose some of the audience, everyone should see this. Here’s some video I took:

Got ticket’s for a few things at the 1/2 price hut. First show of the weekend was VHS 2 – Planet of the Tapes. Now I hate all things digital. Well maybe not all things but just things that used to be on tape, which is erm tapes and videos. So I loved the fact that a movie nerd pretty much dedicated a whole show to how crap DVDs are… mostly stand-up with a few pre-recorded videos.

Pappy’s fun club were a bunch of smug students. Well one of them at least. Actually maybe only one of them, the rest were likable enough. Show started off pretty crap but it turned out that the first half was mostly just building blocks for the second – and when they got to the bit where they swapped themselves with audience members and dissapeared while the audience members repeated earlier skits – well that was fairly hilarious.

Jesus I’m feeling really lazy now – not sure I’d intended to review the whole weekend, so here’s quick roundup:

  • Shaun Hughes was the biggest show we went to – was good but just a pretty normal standup nothing ground breaking.
  • Had great fun at Maxwell’s Fullmooners but by the time Ed Byrne was on I was awake about 22 hours and nodded off. Luckily I was up in a balcony and wasn’t caught snoozing. Apparently he totally redeemed hismelf of a few years of carphone warehouse ads.
  • The other late nighter – I couldn’t tell you who played but everyone was pissed down the basement of a pub. Was really up close and personal – I shared an intimate moment with one comedian and an audience member as he showed us a clip of him teabagging a mate who was asleep. Whole night was great fun altough I think the biggest difference between Sean Hughes and this lot was several pints and a few whiskies. Always helps.

My generous host Nessa:
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Some street entertainment:
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One of the fringe areas at night:
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Rest of photos.

3 Comments
  • Reply flossyla

    August 25, 2007, 10:24 pm

    hey limmy.com is fantastic. myself and Donal have just checked it out..so funny.

  • Reply Nessa

    August 28, 2007, 3:38 pm

    Pappy’s Fun Club got nominated for an IF award. Bastards! They’ll be on BBC 3 soon enough. Grr…

  • Reply John Braine

    August 28, 2007, 4:30 pm

    Flossyla. Could have sworn I replied to this already. It seemed to have vanished hmm. Anyway – yeah Limmy.com is great. Surprised you haven’t been sent the link before.

    Nessa – Typical! Could be worse – a lot worse. They were comic geniuses compared to Men with Bananas!

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