Robert has the chance to be on prime time TV! What could possibly go wrong? A comedy poetry show about not becoming famous.
Join performance poet Robert Garnham for his new solo show, Bouncer. When Robert is asked to perform on the UK’s biggest TV talent show, he dreams of fame and fortune and never having to leaflet in Edinburgh again! But of course, these things never go the way you want them to go . . . An hour of storytelling, poetry and comedy about fame, and hope, and dreaming.
‘Playful, warm . . Funny and always surprising’. (Write Out Loud)
‘Wise’. (Word NYC).
‘Clever and entertaining’. (Barnstaple Theatrefest).
‘There’s warmth in his whimsy, it’s sturdy not flimsy’. (Matt Harvey)
‘Witticism, wordplay and wistful romanticism’. (Dandy Darkly)
On a cold, January evening, I caught a train from Devon to London. I was looking for some sense of magic in the air, a barely-perceptible tingle as if fortune were tickling my conscience and smoothing the way to a stardust future. But the train was cold, and dinner was a chicken tikka pasty I’d bought from the convenience store next to the station.
The countryside was hidden in darkness. Beyond the reflection of my own face I could make out tiny villages, clusters of lights in the middle of nowhere, lonely cow barns lit up against the frost, and I thought, do any of these people also dream of everlasting fame?
It pains me to write this letter, but circumstance has forced my hand. For many years, the Brixham Town Scone Society website has been a valuable tool for members to connect, ask advice, share cooking tips, and buy and sell both equipment and ingredients. There have been no complaints and many of us have both enjoyed, and taken advantage of, this wealth of scone-cooking know-how just a click of the mouse away. However, lately it has come to the attention of this committee that the Classified section of the website has been coming under some abuse from certain members whose interests lay beyond mixing methods and how to create a really cracking milk glaze. The problem first came to light when it was pointed out to me that a lot of our newer subscribers to the website, who filled in the online form, listed the classified section as their main motivation for doing so, yet almost all of them answered the question ‘How many hours a week do you spend cooking scones?’ with the response, ‘None’, and in a lot of cases, ‘I do not like scones’. This was somewhat perplexing and an investigation was launched in case there were some confusion in the title of our website, (Scones A-Plenty.com), or indeed if there were some new boy band or comic perhaps titled ‘Scone Man’, that was leading to this sudden influx in new members. However, after a terrible mix-up (no pun intended) the other day in which one of our senior committee members, Maureen Hepplethwaite, found herself not at a scone cookery demonstration as she had been expecting, but at a swinger’s sex party, it was decided that action was needed. The first thing we noticed was the number of young men offering a variety of different shaped spatulas for sale in the classifieds. While these are great implements in the mixing process, it is probably more common in the scone community to use wooden spoons, so I think it’s fair to say that this raised a few eyebrows among the committee. Most of these spatulas were advertised as being new, ‘or in new condition’, while some were being offered in a slightly battered state. At this stage, alarm-bells didn’t actually start ringing. The admin behind running a pro-scone website means that some matters don’t actually get attended to until there’s some kind of emergency. The Great Flour Shortage of 2005 was one such calamity, and equally fraught was the resignation of our chairman in 2009 when he announced that frankly, he preferred muffins. We then noticed the alarming number of society members offering scones of varying states of completion, some of which were ‘ready to pick up now’, others were, ‘come and collect’, while many were ‘lacking one final ingredient’. ‘Already in the mixing bowl’, apparently, (and according to Reginald, who does not proclaim to be an expert on such matters), means that the ‘seller’ is willing to conduct the process in their own home. ‘On the baking tray’, apparently means that they are willing to travel. And it’s anyone’s guess what ‘ready to be consumed with fresh fresh salad’, means. Suspicions were raised further when Phil Burton (member since 1988), advertised that he had a home-made ready mix featuring fresh sultana pieces and fruity chunks only to receive an email which read, ‘You’re a dirty boy, oh my, you’re a dirty boy!’, followed by someone's phone number. Dear society members, this will just not do. To get to the root of the problem, we have employed a code-breaker whose previous area of expertise was the Egyptian hieroglyphs and also the mating call of the common sparrow. And it was no surprise to learn that the codes adopted by many of the users of our classified pages were also a base form of mating call in themselves . Once she had explained what many of the codes and terminologies were, I, as your brave Chairman, decided to pose online as one of these lovelorn scone-bakers with an advertisement composed specifically to entrap the guilty. Spatula for sale (or rent). Slightly rusty yet ergonomically designed to offer maximum stirring. Mixture in bowl yet also functions on the tray. Fellow mixer must have GSOH. No salad please. Jam and cream to spread as desired. Satisfaction guaranteed. Stirs in an anti-clockwise or circular motion. Alas, the only reply to my classified ad was from another society member who offered me a ‘lasagne’. ‘I don’t get it’, I said to the code-breaker. ‘Nor do I’, she replied. And just to be safe, I haven’t eaten a lasagne since. Dear society member, it is time to put an end to this, and the decision was recently taken at a committee level to put an end to the classified section of our website. We understand that this may very well reduce the number of people who have joined our society, (over twenty thousand new members in the last six weeks, a figure which still manages to perplex us), but we believe that this is the safest method to rid our wholesome community of undesirable attention. Like many of you, I started out as a young man with a head full of ideas and dreams intent on devoting my life to the construction and consumption of the humble scone. Starstruck by such scone-bakers as Ethel P. Anderson and Audrey ‘Iron Knuckles’ McGinty, I saw the society as a means to connect with like minded souls whose purpose and heart were in a similar vein to my own. It has been nothing short of tragic to see our fine institution highjacked by those whose thoughts remain as base as their own animalistic instincts. I see this as an opportunity to root out these wrongdoers and make our society safe again! The moment I’ve finished writing this email, I shall be visiting the committee where no doubt we shall be indulging in the wholesome pursuit of the perfect scone. And yes, fellow committee members, thanks for asking, I shall definitely be bringing my own spatula.
This is a poem about a man who’s obsessed with his record collection. Taped live at Exeter’s Taking the Mic, November 2023. I hope you like it.
Rekkuds
Rekkuds
I like my rekkuds I’ve got one or two Playing my rekkuds Is something I do.
They’re mostly jazz, The rekkuds I play. Whenever I listen The world melts away.
I went to the rekkud shop and I said to the chap in there, I said, I thought you liked jazz?, and he said, I do like jazz, And I said, if you like jazz so much, Then how come you ain’t bought any of these rekkuds?
I like my rekkuds. 33 rpm I go home at night I’m surrounded by them.
I went to this party and this bloke says to me, got any Kylie Minogue? I said, bugger off with your Kylie Minogue.
I like my rekkuds. They’re mostly jazz. I play them loud So I can hear them When I’m having a wazz.
I went to the hardware shop the other day and I bought a bucket, Just a plain ordinary bucket, and when I paid for it, The bloke behind the counter looked at my bucket And he said, ‘Enjoy’. How the bloody g hell am I meant to enjoy a bucket?
I like my rekkuds. Of that I’m quite certain. I play Frank Sinatra in the shower. I face the vinyl curtain.
I saw a friend of mine, I asked him what job he had now, He said, beefeater. He meant the restaurant but I said, oh, You mean the Tower of Lunnon? Nobody laughed. Why didn’t you laugh, I asked my mates, you miserable lot. They said, We would have done, if we’d have known it was funny.
I like my rekkuds. I left a Thelonious Monk rekkud in the car. Someone broke in And added two more.
I treat my body like it’s a temple. Shame it’s been Converted into a Wetherspoons.
I like my rekkuds. I like this poem. I’ve made it to the end, for once. Must be some kind of Rekkud.
This month I had great fun making a filmed version of my Edinburgh solo show, Bouncer, with film maker John Tomkins. On a sunny morning, we booked. A beautifully sparse room at Paignton’s library and filmed the whole show, which John has edited wonderfully. I can’t wait for you to see the results.
The film takes place entirely with me seated at a desk, which is something that I’ve wanted to do with a solo show for quite some time. I think it really adds to the project. Here is a trailer for the film, which might give you some idea of how it looks:
So what is Bouncer about?
“Robert has the chance to be on prime time TV! What could possibly go wrong? A comedy poetry show about not becoming famous.
Join performance poet Robert Garnham for his new solo show, Bouncer. When Robert is asked to perform on the UK’s biggest TV talent show, he dreams of fame and fortune and never having to leaflet in Edinburgh again! But of course, these things never go the way you want them to go . . . An hour of storytelling, poetry and comedy about fame, and hope, and dreaming.”
At the same time, I shall also be releasing a self-made video diary about the process behind learning the lines for the show. ‘Learning Bouncer’ was filmed from December 2022 onwards up until a point in which I believed I’d learned the whole show. Of course, I then rewrote big chunks of it!
These will both be ready from November 1st and you will be able to stream them from my website.
It’s not the countryside, he protested. Just an enclave of the city. The actual city. London, he said, Like I had to be reminded which city. It might look green but we got that Big city vibe going on, Urban infrastructure, neon, Oyster cards. What about all the tractors?, I asked. What tractors?, he said. And at that moment, a tractor chugged past.
That’s highly unusual, he said. We don’t often get tractors here, Because this is the city. I’m as shocked as you are. Chug chug chug chug chug went Another passing tractor. There goes another tractor, I said. I didn’t see one. Are you sure it wasn’t a double decker bus? And then another tractor chugged past.
It’s the pulsing throb of metropolitan energy I like, He said, Looking wistfully at a cow shed. And a tractor chugged past. You can even see Canary Wharf If you go on the roof And then climb into a hot air balloon And go up and bring a telescope. It’s right there, Canary Wharf, That’s how urban this place is. That thatched roof gets a bit slippery if it’s Been raining. And then another tractor chugged past.
The traffic is so bad, he said. The other day I ordered a pizza. The Deliveroo cyclist took nine hours. He had to sleep on my sofa. His big Deliveroo box frightened the hens. Hens?, I said. City hens, he said. And then another tractor chugged past.
I thought to myself, (Because you can’t think to other people), I thought to myself, I’ll let him enjoy his delusion, For geographically he may be nearer Yeovil, But at heart he’s a city boy And he’s got that city life And he’s got that city buzz And sure, he swears blind that the sign on the bus stop Which reads Farmers Market Every Tuesday Is actually graffiti in rhyming slang for Darren Is A Tosser In a new kind of rhyming slang That’s so modern that it Doesn’t even rhyme, But he’s a city boy.
And then another tractor chugged past. And another tractor chugged past. And then two tractors chugged past. And then a combine harvester chugged past. And then a tractor chugged past. And I asked, What’s with all these tractors? And he said, I don’t know, it’s weird, isn’t it? Let’s go and make out in the turnip field.
I suppose I've always been a little bit clumsy. Affecting a demeanour each day of professional detachment, a manner almost sullen were it not for those moments in which human discourse were necessary, affecting an amiability, an openness, an expression of eager understanding and a willingness to compromise, only to have my belt suffer a sudden and catastrophic malfunction and my trousers fall around my ankles. A hand outstretched for a businesslike greeting, a shoe accidentally scraped against the skirting board, a sudden lurch sideways into a pot plant. Oh, I do apologise! And then later on, noticing the skirting boards around my office marked and scuffed by the numerous other times that I have stumbled. Hey, hey, your flies are undone. Again. And due to my body shape, I concede that my trousers have always been a little bit baggy.
2.
The trill of the alarm clock had interrupted a dream in which I was trying to get a giraffe to go up the stairs of a double decker bus. The giraffe had been stubborn and no amount of tugging or enticing could tempt it up to the first floor, and once underway, it got wedged firmly, its fat buttocks blocking the stairwell, much to the consternation of my fellow passengers. It's the usual recurring anxiety dream. The long neck of the giraffe allowed it to peer up to the top deck, grinning like a bastard, while I pushed and shoved and swore from behind. Buzz buzz buzz buzz! I got up, showered, shaved, made some toast and pondered in the coming day, only to glance at my watch and discover that it was four in the morning. And then I recalled that the trill of the alarm clock had been a part of the dream. For the giraffe and I had been returning from a trip to the shops where we had purchased an alarm clock. I set to work at my desk, organising various work-related files on my laptop and trying not to think about my giraffe dream. I watched as the sun came up and lit the neighbouring houses a brilliant red, secretly resplendent as it rewarding me and others like me for getting up so early. I stopped for a few moments to look out at the sky, feeling if only for a short while the majesty of the planet in its eternal rotation, this celestial dance of time and fate, when the alarm clock sounded, this time for real. Buzz buzz buzz buzz! Had anyone been with me, no doubt, I would have at least given a smirk or acknowledgement of the humour in this, but as I was on my own, the only emotion I felt was one of deep annoyance. I got up from my desk and I switched the alarm clock off. The only comfort came from the fact that the new trousers I was wearing were significantly roomier than had been my previous pair.
3.
I was never The class clown. When I think of this It gets me down. The popular kids Would mess around. But me? I wouldn't Make a sound.
4.
I had a meeting with my boss today. I've written down everything that was said and I've made it into a short theatrical piece, which I call 'Bulbous'.
SANDRA stares at ROBERT from behind her desk.
SANDRA - I suppose you know why I've asked you here. ROBERT - To be honest, no, I don't. SANDRA - I've had an official complaint from one of your colleagues. ROBERT - Oh? SANDRA - It's about the meeting you chaired yesterday, on Effective Time Management. ROBERT - Yes, yes, I'm so sorry that it overran. SANDRA - No, it's not that. ROBERT - What . . what is it? SANDRA - (Sighs). Robert, is everything okay at home? ROBERT - Yes, absolutely. SANDRA - And you're not drinking heavily, or anything? ROBERT - No. In fact, I hardly drink at all. SANDRA - The complaint was actually about your appearance. Did you realise that your flies were undone the whole time? ROBERT - No, I didn't. SANDRA - So the message of the meeting, in which you were meant to instil in your colleagues a certain business-oriented professionalism, would probably have been received unquestioningly had you not got your foot stuck in the waste paper bin. ROBERT - Yes, that was rather unfortunate. SANDRA - And when you tried to pull it off, you sat on a desk, and the desk . . . Collapsed. ROBERT - Again, I apologise. SANDRA - And your nose. You see, Robert, it's becoming awfully red, and bulbous. That's why I asked about the drinking. ROBERT - As I say, I can only apologise. And I shall make an effort to act from now on in a more businesslike manner. SANDRA - Thank you, Robert. Please, for me, see that you do.
ROBERT gets up from his chair, shakes SANDRA's hand, then stumbles sideways through a glass partition wall.
5.
Walking home through the silence of the park, I could hear a soft squeak, squeak, squeak with each footstep.
6.
‘I've just had it with clowns’, Josh said. ‘I need a man I can respect’. We'd met online and he suggested we have a date at that new cream flan and custard pie restaurant that had just opened in the middle of the town. It seemed the sort of place where nothing could go wrong. The seating was comfortable and so was the decor, warm and inviting. We sat at a table for two at the rear of the premises. ‘That is very important to me’, Josh continued. ‘Love, yes. Love is up there. And physicality, of course, but respect. Respect is the most important of them all. It seems to me these days that everyone is a comedian, so you get that sense, too? Where's the depth? It's all artifice, isn't it? It's like we've become avatars, covered in layers of glitz and showy nothingness’. ‘You can depend on me’, I told him. ‘I treat each moment with absolute and utter seriousness’. ‘I just don't know why people feel the need to fool around’, he said, ‘in every sense of the word’. ‘I think people just want to be noticed ’, I reply. ‘That's what's happening in this modern age. We all seem to want to get a kick out of making other people uneasy. The nuance of yesteryear is gone. Subtlety is missing from all of our lives. I blame the internet and social media. People can't even be bothered to wait for the punch line, any more. They want immediate gratification, whether it be sexual or comedic’. ‘I can tell’, Josh said, ‘That you are a thinker’. ‘I try to be’. I looked at him, and he looked at me. I could see the small candle on the table between us reflected in his eyes. ‘Do you ever feel tempted’, he asked. ‘To become like all the other men? I mean, brash, and obvious, and only in it just for a laugh?’ ‘No’, I replied. ‘I try to play the long game. Strip away the surface and this world that we live in is a very serious place. And how else might one approach the act of living itself, but through the contemplation of philosophical and existentialist inquiry? In such a way, I forsake the easy option and the expediency of a cheap laugh in order to probe the searing heaviness of our own manifestation’. ‘You know what?’, Josh said, ‘I think I've finally met a man who I can respect’. At that moment the cream flan and custard pie conveyor belt around the serving desk suffered a sudden malfunction, sped up, and propelled its load, one after another, at such an angle and velocity across the room as to connect squarely with my own face, one after another in a perfect rhythm to the accompanying laughter from all the other customers. By the time the eleventh and last cream pie had been delivered with a forceful splat, and I was scooping the filling out from my eyes, Josh had long since gone.
7.
I never realised before how small my bicycle was until I glanced sideways at my reflection in a shop window, my knees out at a crazy angle, dwarfed by the buses, the cars, the lorries.
b. I never realised quite how tatty my old jacket had become, so tatty that I tried to draw attention away from its tastiness by putting a plastic yellow flower in the lapel.
c. And I shouldn't have gone swimming and then dyed my hair. The hair dye had a chemical reaction with the chlorine from the pool and turned my hair bright green. Still, what can you do?
d. And as I filled in the official documentation online to tell my work colleagues my preferred name and pronouns, my computer’s predictive spelling changed my name from Robert to Parsnip.
e. Sandra, my boss, has for some reason pulled me from delivering a seminar on Modern Business Etiquette.
8.
With the power of his intellect and his encyclopaedic knowledge of contemporary stand-up comedy, my school friend Hasan could reduce the entire class into fits of laughter. And the laughter would drive him on, and he'd say something else that was funny, and the class would laugh some more. But Hasan was canny, he'd leave his best material for the end of the sequence, leading us up blind alleyways of silliness before delivering his punchline. Boom. As a result, this rather nerdy individual became one of the most popular people in school and I must admit to feeling rather jealous of his command of a room. My teachers would always tell my parents at parents evening that I was always serious, unsmiling, intense. They said that I wouldn't join in with the other kids, and would bury myself in my work. Perhaps they were worried that something would give, that I'd snap one day and have some sort of life-changing episode, go beserk and tell the other kids exactly what I thought of them. Humourless, is the exact word that was used on more than one occasion. But I carried on in much the same manner and took my exams. I left school with average marks. Hasan became a marketing executive for a company that manufactures airline meals.
9.
To be mocked, and come out fighting with humour, is never a position in which I have ever found myself. Steady as she goes has always been my motto. I have rarely left myself open to ridicule by using the simple tactic of blending in to the background. And during those moments in which I have found myself in the limelight, I have adopted the simple strategy of being as intense and as dry as I possibly could. ‘You're too intense’, Steven had said to me, on what was to be the last night we'd spent together. ‘Just because I don't go down the street, laughing hysterically . . .’. ‘It's not that. It's more your tendency to over analyse everything. We can't even watch television comedies because you point out that certain things would never actually happen’. ‘All I was pointing out was that in real life, Tom would simply catch and eat Jerry . . ‘. ‘You see! You're too much of a realist. In all the time that we have been together, I never once heard you laugh. It's all buttoned up inside of you, isn't it? That's where you keep it. It has to be somewhere’. ‘Life itself is the ultimate ridicule’, I pointed out. ‘What does that even mean?’ The two of us are silent for a while. ‘I'd just like to find’, I tell him, ‘A well adjusted and content tarot card reader’. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ ‘A happy medium’. Steven thinks about it for a few seconds. ‘OK. So admittedly, that was quite amusing. But it's too late, Robert. I'm sorry, but it's too late’. Steven bent down and picked up his suitcase, walked through the door, and slammed it shut behind him. The oil painting of a clown on the wall above the sofa wobbled for a bit, then fell off and landed right on top of me, my head tearing through the canvas, the frame of the picture now hanging around my neck.
10.
Emerging from the supermarket on the corner, the busy street glistening with a damp drizzle which fell from the overcast sky, smudged neon into the road surface. I stood there in my jacket, my loose fitting trousers, my green hair, my Parsnip name badge, my squeaky shoes, my lapel flower. I decided that I would give up on trying to understand the world, and how good it felt! I didn't need Steven or Josh or even Sandra, I didn't need any of them. Life is filled with organisms and mechanisms too complex ever to make sense of, A small, battered car screeched to a halt right next to me and a gentleman in baggy, multicoloured clothing jumped out. Then another, then one more, then two more, then six of them, seven, twelve in all, until I was surrounded, and without saying anything I understood that there was a home for me.
You can see Arthur’s Seat from the window of my student accommodation. Boom, it’s right there, looking in all the time. At night you can see the torches and lamps of people climbing up it, which is kind of eerie. Lost souls, perhaps. And during the weeks of the fringe, Edinburgh has a lot of lost souls.
This is the longest that I’ve ever stayed in Edinburgh with a show, which means that this show is the one I’ve performed more times than any other. I know every inch of it, now. To think that I started work on this almost a year ago, almost as soon as I came home from last year’s fringe. No wonder I know the thing back to front.
And so does my technician, bless him. There are a couple of songs during the show, and I looked over to his booth during one of them and I could see his head bobbing away. He knew the words. He knew what was coming next. That poor chap could probably write a thesis about my show.
But I still hate the flyering. I still hate it with a passion. Today is my penultimate day, so that means I’ve only got two more flyering sessions left. Perhaps I wont even flyer at all on my last day, because immediately after the show, I’ll be off to the airport to get the plane home to Exeter. I might have luggage with me during the usual flyering session. To be honest, I think I’m just talking myself out of doing some flyering.
The shows have been going well. I’ve been very pleased with my performances. In two weeks, I’ve only ever stumbled over the words of a poem once, which isn’t bad, for me. The weird thing is that the audiences differ so much. You can have a small audience, but they can be very loud and appreciative. Or you can have a larger audience and everyone just sits there quietly and you think you’re going down like a lead balloon.
Of course, it’s the camaraderie and the connections you make, which makes a fringe all the more enjoyable. Not only my technician, but also my flyerer, Tash, who took two days off to get married. She has a very Scottish accent but we got talking the other day and it turns out that she grew up in the same part of the world as myself. And she’s very good at flyering. She’s even convinced people to come and see my show!
And then there are the other performers. People like Jonathan Kinsman, Tom Juniper, Elizabeth McGeown. There’s a great community here among the spoken word artists. It makes you think that you’re not alone.
So tomorrow I’ll be performing and then flying home. I have a taxi booked to pick me up from the airport and drive me the thirty miles to Paignton, which means that I’ll hopefully be home by around nine in the evening. And I’ll probably still be wearing the same clothes that I perform in. Obviously, not the sparkly sequin jacket or the top hat. And everything will start to feel like a dream.
In fact, it already does. I’m proud of this show and the fact that I’ve managed to stick at it for a year. I love the way that it flows and tells a story. It’s going to be weird not performing it every day.
And I’ll miss the routine, too. I won’t miss the flyering, (I usually start around 10.30, carry on till 12.30, then linger around outside my venue). Once the show is done I head up to the Plains and the Circus Hub, where there’s a bar that most people haven’t discovered yet, where I can find a table and relax and drink a cola and eat a sausage roll. There’s a van on the Plains which sells the most amazing sausage rolls. I think I’ll miss those sausage rolls.
There’s a divine madness about the fringe. It’s so big that it brings out the despair in us all. How can one possibly compete with all of the other shows that are on at the same time? At the last reckoning, possibly six hundred going on at any one moment. Or was it six thousand? It couldn’t have been six million, though at times it seems it.
The venues are tucked anywhere throughout the city. If you stand still for long enough, you become a venue yourself. Underbelly have already contacted me about using space inside my backpack. It’s a new stage which they want to add to their roster, and advertise as The Cow Bag, and then rent it out to theatre companies. But then I moved, and they lost all interest.
There’s a piece of wasteland outside my student accommodation. It’s overgrown with vegetation and bushes and I stopped and looked at it and I thought, yes, there it is. The last place in Edinburgh which hasn’t been turned into a venue or a bar or a festival village. And just as I was standing there looking at it, someone tried to flyer me.
Because that’s what Edinburgh is all about. The flyering. You can have the best show ever written, and you can perform the best anyone has ever performed, but it’s the flyering which ensures people get in to see it, and it’s the flyering that ensures that the show is a success. Which is great if you have a passion for flyering, or if you have a theatre troupe filled with sixteen incredibly enthusiastic and young performers from middle class universities, with floppy hair and high cheekbones and winning smiles, but when you’re a lone operator doing it all yourself, from a seaside town in Devon, then the odds are already stacked against you.
Which is to say that I hate flyering. People scare me. The general public are frightening. I want to be polite at all times, but the moment I steel myself to smile and say hello, some young buck with an improvised opera jumps in and flyers the person that I’m just about to flyer. It’s a dog eat dog world. And also, my brain doesn’t move as quickly as some. I see someone coming and the words kind of tumble out in a nonsensical jumble. You wouldn’t think that I’m a performance poet! ‘Hello there. Yes, what it is, you see, I’ve written this show, and . . .’, by which time they’ve already walked away.
Consequently, I didn’t have much of an audience for the first couple of shows. One person turned up for each, and I knew each person. They were friends. I think my show is good, but they probably would have come even if it was just an hour of me on the stage doing armpit squelch farts. But there’s a guy from Cambridge University who’s already doing that, and he’s winning rave reviews.
I decided I needed a flyerer. I had no idea that you could just hire a flyerer. I thought only the good shows had a flyerer, because why would a flyerer want to flyer for something that nobody had heard of? But I went online and I made contact with a couple of flyerers. The first two didn’t turn up, on consecutive days. But the third did. And she’s wonderful.
I’ve had an audience ever since. She really knows how to bring in the people. I don’t know how she does it and I don’t really want to ask. Naturally, I was worried that she would take my leaflets and walk off and dump them in a recycling skip, but I actually saw her at work several times, and it really did fill me with glee.
We got chatting one day, my flyerer and I. She’s actually getting married in a couple of days. She’s getting married right on the Royal Mile. I even thought about popping along, or at least exit flyering the service. That’s how grateful I am at all of the flyering that she’s been doing.
The show is going well. In fact, the show is going really well. The last three shows have been absolutely wonderful. Great audiences, and I’m so comfortable with my performances. I know it inside out and I’m very happy with it. I think it’s the most accessible show I’ve done at Edinburgh, (which is code for the fact that this is my first show which doesn’t have an LGBTQ theme or gratuitous references to sex). It has: three costume changes, some choreography, a song, a high note which I try to sustain for twenty seconds, and I get to do a lot of acting, too. So yes, I’m very happy with it. From an artistic point of view.
I have a little post-show routine, now. If it’s a good show, I go to my favourite place at the fringe, which is the bar of the Circus Hub on the Plains, and I sit and have a cola and just relax. It’s a great place, because it doesn’t get as busy as the rest of Edinburgh and I can just take in the sunshine and listen to whatever’s going on inside the Big Top. There’s also a stall nearby which sells, quite frankly, the best sausage rolls I’ve ever seen.
So that’s how things are going, as I enter week number two. What will this week bring? Will audience numbers go down a bit, now that the weekend is out the way? Who will I get to do the flyering when my flyerer gets married? How does my show stack up against the six hundred that are also on at the same time? (Someone the other day called it ‘light and lovely’, which I kind of like). And at the end of the day, does any of this mean anything?
They always say that you should ask yourself why you’re coming to the fringe. Is it to get noticed? Is it to refine a piece of work? Is it to meet new fans? To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m here. I think it’s just the challenge of putting on a show, and writing it, and memorising it, and all of those other things. Or perhaps I’m just here to join in this merry dance, to at least say I gave it a bash.
Robert Garnham 