News Bulletin #23
I have fringe fever! (it's an actual fever so I'm taking lots of cold and flu tablets)
Hello!
I am in a country that’s not Australia. Can you believe it? After years of being trapped on mainland Australia I’ve travelled to the United Kingdom. The most culturally different place in the world! (a quick little joke to kick things off).
Anyway, I’m at the world famous EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL.
SORRY for the delay in newsletters. I’ve been so caught up seeing cabaret performers, magicians and clowns harassing poor tourists that I haven’t had a chance to sit down and put pen to paper.
Look at some of these lovely photos I’ve taken.
(there’s a garbage strike in the city so it’s heading for another plague.)
It’s so nice to be here. I’ve been doing shows and people are coming and it’s honestly so much fun.
I spent a week in London before I came up to Edinburgh. There’s A LOT of Australians in London. Somehow it feels like there’s more Australians in London than in Sydney and Melbourne combined. They really punch above their weight. Also I don’t think English people like Australians. Mainly because Australians in London tend to be very loud and doing huge amounts of cocaine and verbally I heard a bunch of Londoners say “I really don’t like Australians” (which to be honest was a huge giveaway for me).
I have a theory that Brits include Australia in their stupid little class system. We somehow make the rankings because of our shared cultural identity of cricket, colonisation and NEIGHBOURS.
We’re included, but we’re at the bottom. Somehow below whatever far-northern backwater town with an accent no one can understand; Shropshire or Cockles-Upon-Tyne or whatever silly name every town has.
Once I got into an Uber over here and the Uber driver heard me speak and said “oh! Are you a Kiwi?!”
I said “Oh! Close. I’m Australian” and he let out the most disappointed sigh I’ve ever heard. He said “oh damn” and sulked for the remainder of the trip.
3 weeks ago in London I was talking to this posh English guy and he said to me “you’re from Australia? How’s it all going in the colonies?”
The colonies?! Jesus Christ. What is this? 1850? Australia is its own country! We have the 13th highest GDP in the world! If we were a ‘C O L O N Y’ how come we have the Queen on our money still?? Huh?! That’s how independent we are. We loved the Netflix series The Crown so much we put our favourite character on the $5 note.
FLY(ER) ME TO THE MOON
The flyering game is strong here at Edinburgh Fringe. I mentioned it earlier with the clowns and cabaret performers, but you can’t go anywhere without someone handing you a flyer to a show. The theory is they hand you a flyer, pitch the show to you, then you go and buy tickets to it. This festival is worth millions of dollars yet they use a marketing approach from 300 years ago.
I have no idea how people end up at my shows. It’s such a vanilla sell. “here’s an Australian man doing stand up comedy”
BORING.
Every other show is BONKERS.
You’ll just be walking along and someone hands you a flyer and screams “DO YOU HATE BORIS JOHNSON BUT LOVE THE MUSIC OF DUA LIPA?! COME TO THIS SHOW!!!”
You’re like “woaaah” then the next person will walk past and hand you a flyer and is like “COME SEE THREE DISABLED TODDLERS TELL THE STORY OF THE TITANIC”
Of course I want to see that!
I want to do a show and be like “COME TO THIS SHOW WHERE WE PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE AND SHIT IN YOUR MOUTH”
I think people actually would come and we could start an arts festival fight club.
MUDBALL
Before I came over here I was at Splendour In The Grass. That music festival where everyone takes MDMA and can’t get phone reception.
I had a ball. I was doing stand up and no one at the festival (rightly so) cared about the stand up comedy. Basically I’d spend 15 mins of my day talking to 200 hundred people who were deep in a ketamine hole. It was an interesting experience. Stand up comedy generally works better when people attend because they’re keen for a laugh, not because they can’t feel their bottom lip and are looking for a nice place to sit down.
There was mud everywhere and the media went to town on it all.
I stayed in a hotel and was driven in everyday so my experience was very different to the people in the campsites. One night I was on our bus going back to the accommodation and I got talking to a 17-year old girl who was speaking on a festival panel about youth leadership.
She had sued the government about climate change earlier in the year and was now a climate activist. She bragged to me that she had Greta Thunberg’s email address and they talk often.
Isn’t that nuts? Metres away from us during the festival people were taking drugs and absolutely ruining themselves and she’s backstage WhatsApping Greta.
I felt a surge of competitiveness and wanted to brag about famous people I knew so I blurted out:
“I have ROVE’s email address in my phone!” (I don’t. This was a lie to make myself sound cool)
And then she said “who’s ROVE?”
Man, what a burn. She didn’t even know who ROVE was! Why are these kids bothering to stop climate change if they don’t even know who ROVE McManus is??
What’s the point? That’s not a future I want to live in.
‘Say Hi To Your Mum For Me?’ More like ‘Say Goodbye To The Planet For Me!’
She spoke to me at length about suing the government, which I didn’t even know you could do. It made me want to sue the government for lots of things. Like when I’m late for something because there’s too much traffic. Or when someone is playing music on the train without headphones. Or every girl in high school for not dating me.
Basically I think it’d be cool to take the government to court for any small inconvenience or bad fortune that’s come my way.
GOODBYE
Okay! Thanks for reading. Not my best piece of writing (or my longest) but I can’t stress what an ordeal this was to push out. I was convinced I had COVID last week because my arm kept hurting where they put the vaccination needle in. I assumed getting COVID was like Harry Potter’s scar hurting whenever Voldemort was close.
Turns out that’s not a thing, but the 20 year-old Scottish kid that works at my venue believed me for about 20 minutes and it’s made this whole festival worthwhile.
Okay goodbye and see you soon xx
P.S These are some of the comedy shows I’ve loved.
Lou Sanders
Stu MacPherson
Christopher Bliss
Gareth Waugh
Emmy Blotnick
Danielle Walker
Paul Williams
Milo Edwards
Ivo Graham
Sarah Sherman
+ loads and loads more.
P.P.S if you’ve missed any of my other newsletters and want to catch up, you can here. Follow me on Insta, here’s my podcast, OR you could subscribe to my fledgling Youtube channel.