ar
The Fringe is now officially over. It's been a thouroghly enjoyable 4 weeks. But all good things must come to an end. I have been looking about town to get a final symbolic photo which would sum up the Friunge experience, but unfortuantely I'm slightly stupid and waited until today to do so when doing it yesterday- being the final day of the Fringe and all- would have been a better option. So no colourful photos of fireworks, no mad buskers and no crazed leafletters throwing their shows flyers in your face. Instead, I offer you a truck!

On a normal festival day, this would be the Smirnoff Underbelly. It would be full of festival-goers laughing and drinking. But today, it is being dismantled for another year. I am intrigued to see how they dismantle the inflatable upside-down cow venue: The UdderBelly. It would be great if some rougue comedian is doing a performance right now, whilst the inflatable walls are caving in on him.

Roll on Fringe 2007!

Walking along Princes Street, I have discovered the best busker I have ever seen. It requires minimal movement but, bloody hell, he deserves every penny he gets.

As the festival winds down to a close, the workload becomes lighter. This is good because it leaves more time for me to relax. So, after compliling my last feature for the Evening News, I returned to the flat, to discover my flatmates purchasing, what looked like, all the alcohol Edinburgh has to offer. Beer cans occupying every space in the fridge, wine bottles poking out of a every crack in the floor, and vodka bottles on every window sill in the flat.
This was going to be a good night.

2 hours later, my flatmate Nerea had invited every Spanish person in Edinburgh to the house, and with me and my other flatmate, Mike, being non-Spanish, (English and Irish respectively) we decided to ingratiate ourselves into the conversation, which mainly consisted of 'Que?' and a lot of exaggerated shrugs, with our bottom lip drooping in a cartoon manner.

I can't really remeber much else, to be honest. I do recall bumping into well known stand-up comic, Tim Minchin, at a burger shop, late on in the evening. It was weird because he came ambling over to Nerea, Mike and myself, and made a wisecrack about something. But a split second later, Mike and myself burst out laughing, only for Minchin to abruptly leave. I'm not sure if we insulted him or not. I hope not. I was too drunk to remember. Although, Mike is having some flashbacks to the night, and is certain he said 'YOU BOLLOCKS!', to Minchin's joke. For the record, Minchin is NOT a bollock. He's a top quality comedian, who just happened to have an unfortuante encounter with two drunk gits.

Staggering back to the flat at 6am, I flopped onto my bed, only to hear Nerea (who is a formidable 24/7 party machine), shout outside my bedroom door, 'Sam! We are going to a punk festival on an island tomorrow, are you coming?' To which I drukenly replied, 'Bruuuuulllgh!' She assumed this meant - 'Why, of course I will partake in this splendid punk festival. '

9am I rolled out of bed with a hangover I can't describe with mere words. My head just wanted to jetison off my neck and run to the hills. But I had made a drunken promise, of sorts, the night before, and I was determined to go to this punk festival on an island. The plan was that Nerea, Mike and myself would get a bus that would take us to Camford Island, and meet up with her Spanish friends at the festival. Simple? Like hell it was. The bus journey was incredibly long, and when we finally reached our destination, we discovered we were on the site of waste disposal depot. We asked the driver the direction to the festival sight, to which he shuddered and stroked his whispy white beard. I half expected him to say: 'Ye had better turn back, for no-one has ever mentioned that island's name...AND LIVED!' But what he did say was a bit of a worry. He looked each of us in the eye - he doesn't have 3 eyes, by the way. What I mean is he looked at us one at a time - and he said in a stern voice: ' You better hurry, the tide is rising, and you don't want to get stuck and rescued by the Coastguard, do you?'
We nodded.
'DO YOU?!' he asked again, clearly wanting a verbal response.
We all mumbled our agreement.
So with the bus-drivers chilling message still ringning in our ears, we did the most sensible thing we could think of, and legged it towards the sea, hoping we could sprint across the small pathway that was soon to be submerged by the rough seas. We failed our task.
Nerea and Mike wrenched off their shoes and socks, rolled up their jean, and bombed across the pathway, which, already, had water covering it. I did the same, but it appeared I was the only one who applied some logic to this predicament, because whilst they were running ahead of me, I could see that their ankles were already submerged, and we still had a good mile of pathway ahead of us. So, at the rate we were going, we would be running along the seabed by the time we got to the end of the pathway. Therefore, I stopped running after 1 minute, realising the dangers involved in this, and shouted: 'Guys! I'm turning back. I think I would like to LIVE today.'
They stopped running. They looked perplexed at my statement. They looked at each other. Then at me. Then looked straight ahead at them. Then looked at me in unison, and did a kind of smile that would normally be followed with a faux-American style statement like: 'YOU GUUUUYS!'
Laughing, they walked back towards me, and we all laughed and joked how we nearly died a horrible and needless death.
To compensate for our wasted 2 hour journey, there and back, Nerea had an idea which was wise and profound: 'Let's get drunk!'.
She treated Mike and myself to a Spanish drink called - Calli-Majo. Which is red wine mixed with coca-cola. All I can say is that it is an aquired taste. But I was polite, and nodded my approval, whilst inspecting the bottle with a curious face. And that was what we did for the rest of the evening. Sat on the grass of West Princes Street Gardens , drinking this challenging Spanish concoction whilst listening to a wood-wind midget band from China. A good end to a turbulent day, I think.

Compiling jokes for the paper is trickier than I thought. I am going to blame my surname for this. Holtmon is a bit of an unusual name - and 99.9% of people assume it's spelt HoltMAN not HoltMON, when I say my surname to them. So, when speaking to various important people on the phone like PR people and comedians, I tell them to send me info in an email - which they do...to the mis-spelt address. The cursed HoltMAN mis-spelling, when it should be sam@samholtMON.com. I am seriously thinking of changing my name by deed-pole. Get it changed to Holtman. Or, just to ensure that there will be no more problems like this ever again - sam@samsam.com. In fact, I quite like the name Sam Sam.

On the festival front - I saw the incredible Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa absolutey blow the roof off the Assembly Hall. They were brilliant. The audience, which mainly consisted of octogenarians, were leaping up and down with enjoyment to the rythmic music. A great sight to behold. A bit embarrasing, however, was at the end of the show, when I was certain the choir were going to get a standing ovation, so I sprung up out of chair, hands raised clapping in the air, only to discover I was the only one doing this, and gingerly sat down again. Trust a British audience to remain seated at the end!

After a finishing one feature-Fringe Nightmares- another one immediately pops up. This time I have to compile the top 50 jokes of the fringe. It's a hit or miss affair with some that make you do a loud spluttering laughing sound. Whilst others that make you produce a sound similar to "Harumph!". In fact I was saying that loudly in the office. No wonder I was getting odd looks.
Below are my favourite ones.

"I got an odd job man in. He was useless. Gave him a list of 8 things to doand he only did numbers 1,3,5, and 7. Had to get an even man in to finish itoff." Stephen Grant, Gilded Balloon.

"Christmas’ were terrible, not like now-a-days when kids get everything. I remember one year I got a jumper that was 20% nylon 80% brillo pad! And my sister got a miniature set of perfumes called Ample, it was tiny, and even I could see where my dad had scrapped off the S” Stephen K Amos, Pleasance Courtyard

"The inspiration for my latest character first came to me 6 months agowhen I saw another comic doing exactly the same act." Simon Brodkin, Pleasance Courtyard

"I realised I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat."
Marcus Brigstocke, Pleasance Courtyard

"To us, bird watching is harmless. To them it's just creepy."
Demetri Martin, Assembly Rooms

"My body has changed so much since I have been here. My stomach is fat from thefood and booze, my legs are skinny from walking up all the hills. I’ve decidedthat ET wasn’t from out of space, he was from Edinburgh!"
Wil Anderson, Smirnoff Underbelly

"I banged my floor on the head with joy."
Tim Brooke-Taylor,The Goodies, Assembly Rooms

"Couldn't they have made dyslexia easier to spell?"
Demetri Martin, Udderbelly

"We need a more moderate leader in Iran. Something like a mullah-lite"
Shappi Korsandi, Pleasance Courtyard

"I’m still making love at 71. Which is handy for me, 'cos I live at number 63"
Bernie Clifton, Udderbelly

"My girlfriends from Australia, she came over to live with me in England but she had to move back after a few months for Visa reasons - she'd maxed out my card"
Gordon Southern, The Gilded Balloon

"I'm a big fan of the band Franz Ferdinand though part of me would like to see them assassinated just to see what happens"
Glenn Wool, The Tron

And my own personal favourite........."I've got a DeLorean. The Police hate it. They pull meover, walk up to the car, I wind down the window and yell: "What year is this?!" They hate that"
Paul Kerensa, Smirnoff Underbelly

I've had a short sabbatical from the Fringe. I travelled to London on Sunday to see an excellent performance from those old Rolling Stones. A marvellous spectacle, only dampened by a short but brutal downpour at the beginning and a drunk old man in my row, falling over and crashing into the chairs in front. Which amused my friend and I very much He did this every 10 minutes or so. He may have looked utterly wrecked and confused but he had an efficient routine which ran like clockwork.

The next day I hopped back on a train which whisked me back into the hustle and bustle of the festival. I immediately got stuck into my work. I love it that I can call it work, when all I really do is sit in a theatre in a high-and-mighty posture, whilst a comedian tries and makes me laugh. I went to the Assembly Rooms to conduct a few vox pops for the paper. Once again, this proved to take more time than it should of. My opening gambit of, "Sorry Sir/Madam may I borrow you for a second" has, in the past, been greeted with, "I'd rather not," or a simple, "No". One eccentric loony even said "I suppose you want to sell me a religion". I explained to him that I was interviewing the public on what shows they've seen for the Edinburgh Evening News festival section, to which he bizzarely replied, "Yes. Yes. That's how it starts you see."
Anyway, it had taken me at least thirty minutes to get five soundbites written down in my notepad. I was just about to go to some other venue, when I chanced upon an old couple who would provide me with my vox-pop highlight of the whole festival.
The old man had those arched bushy eyebrows, which peaked upwards in the middle. The old woman was tiny and wore an anarok with her hood over her head, even though it was relatively mild and sunny. They were both leaning on a bin, which, already, proved they were going to give me a crazy answer to my question.
"Hello, I am a reporter for the Evening News," I said, changing my usual opening introduction, as 'borrowing' sounds slightly sinister in hindsight.
"Why hello there young chap," said the exceedingly posh old fella with a little wave.
I grinned a huge smile. This was going to be fantastic.
"I was wondering if you have seen any good shows since you've been in Edinburgh."
"Oh yes yes yes. We certainly have."
Silence.
I smiled and nodded, urging him on. But he merely stood there, eyes closed, head tilted up in the air, with his hands behind his back. I shot a glance to his wife who was nodding feverishly. I made a writing gesture with my hand, hoping she would understand and fill this enigmatic silence her husband had needlessly created. She complied with a scary zest I had never before seen from a mere human being.
"WELL! We saw Ketzal, the fantastic theatre show from St Petersburg. Have you seen it?"
"What, St Petersburg?" I chided.
She and her husband exploded with laughter. I mean, exploded. I took a step back.
Diverting them from my rubbish joke, I asked if they had seen any other shows they would care to comment on, to which the old man raised his finger in the air, and theatrically said, "No. Ketzall is the one for us. And I believe, the only one!" He even did a little bow when he said this.
I made a note of this, as I wanted him to feel his response held some resonance.
They were incredibly estatic that their names were going to be in the paper. They told me not to print anything of a slanderous nature about them. Although a headline, "OLD COUPLE GO TO THE THEATRE. ABSOLUTE DISGRACE!" is unlikely to sell many papers.
I bid a fond farewell to them and went to the nearest internet cafe to type up my feature piece - 'Fring Nightmares'.
After that, I realised, for the first time since arriving at the festival, that I had absolute nothing booked in my diary. No shows, meetings, or interviews. Nothing. I was free to roam. So I checked out all the little venues I haven't had a chance to see since coming to Edinburgh. Whilst doing this I noticed a sign in a trendy bar that disturbed me. It seems my ridicule of 'Accoustic David' and all he stood for had no basis. For he was top of the bill that night. I admire the guy. Last time, his poster was clumsily cellotaped on a tilt at the front of stinking pub in a side street. Now, he gets a nice black board. This time next year he'll be headlining Glastonbury and writing his autobiography: 'Accoustic David: My Uninspiring Story'

I did manage to take in a show later in the evening. 'We are Klang', who have been nominated for a Perrier Award - although they're not called Perriers now, it's something rubbish like, edinburgh.comedy.com. They were a three man sketch troupe and they were great. It was slightly intimidating because they were peforming in a tiny hut a dwarf would take offence to, and one of the troupe was 6ft7inch. And he did a lot of physical stuff like jumping and running around. It was as if we were all trapped in a small paddock with a crazy T-Rex.
Good fun, though.

I've witnessed the most unusual shows today. They were all on at the Pleasance. The first one , at 11.30, was called The Acrobat. I read the flyer before going into the theatre. The impression I got was that this was going to be a hilarious play full of japes, juggling and general slapstick. I needed something nice and visual because I was nursing quite a brutal hangover. The room was half-empty. Populated with families and, what looked to be, an exchange group of students from India. When the lights dimmed, the acrobat in question, bounded on stage singing: 'Tra-la-la-la-laaa.' This was good, I thought, a play that won't make me use my brain. But as the minutes clocked up, it was apparant that this was a surreal piece of art theatre. It had a laughing clown that didn't add anything to the story whatsoever. There was also an actress who staggered on stage with a black blanket over her head, accompanied with huge black hands. The show was a mystery to me. Perhaps I was still in bed and dreamt this.
The next show at the Pleasance was Accidentally Waiting To Happen. It's one of these shows you know you are, at some point, going to see if you are exposed to a large amount of shows. It concerned 3 women who.......I'm not too sure , to be honest. One of the actresses was under a bed for most of the show, whilst the other actress was under an umbrella, whilst in a foetal position. And they shouted alot.
My hangover was officially worse.
Next stop of the day was at the Pleasance Dome, to see an innovative comedian called Richard Domenichi. He used his apple-mac and various gizmos to detail the events that concerned him picking up a lost wallet, and whether he was able to track down the person who lost it. Very funny. I think the whole room was populated by his mates, though because he was getting prompting from the audience. 'No, no, no. That wasn't Pete, that was Dave you were thinking about. Remember? ' That was the general jist of what was being shouted around the room.
Next up, Sit, at the Courtyard. I had my doubts, at first, because it was, after all, the history of the chair. Once again - the history of the CHAIR! I half expected a academic looking old guy with mad-frizzled hair walking out on stage, and sternly talking to us about chairs for over an hour. But, instead, it was the show I had been looking for to cure my hangover. Full of mischief, slapstick, and fantastic visuals. It was basically 3 Spanish guys running around whacking each other with chairs. Whilst, using a big screen, documenting the chair through the ages. Brilliant!
Hangover cured.

Edinburgh has been engulfed by a blanket of fog. The city, when sunny, is a great example of a cosmopolitan city, especially during the festival. When foggy, however, it's wonderfully eerie and spooky. Just looking up at Edinburgh Castle from Cowgate road is a sight to behold. The flags on the turrents flapping behind dense mist. And at night, whilst illuminated by lights, it takes on an almost magical quality.


Whilst navigating my way through the fog, I saw a great little show called 'Cooped' at the Assembly Rooms. A farce of epic proportions, and a random, if frankly disturbing, bit of full frontal nudity. Set within a gothic mansion, a murderer runs rampant, and the inhabitants - a seamstress, a butler, detective and the owner - must figure out who the killer is before they get dispatched. The humour is similar to the Airplane and Naked Gun franchises. Utterly ridiculous, but extremely watchable all the same.
After that, I saw the deeply dissapointing Michael McIntyre at the Pleasance Dome. He had been a Perrier Newcomer nominee last year, so I was expecting laughs aplenty. Instead, I sat stoney faced throughout. Mabye I'm being exposed to too much comedy at this festival and have lost my ability to laugh and, instead, I've become a bitter old cumudgeron. I hope not. But his show was slighty naff. The naffness was heightened when he accompanied each of his jokes with the cheesiest smile possible. I was cornered after the show by a woman who had seen me taking notes throughout. She told me how she had seen him twice already and how she thought he was the best comedian at the Fringe. She asked me what my opinion was and whether I'd be writing a good review. She had real hope in her eyes. I couldn't exactley say: "Rubbish!" and walk off. So I mumbled something along the lines of, "Very good, yes, very good. He certainly has a natural...speaking...voice. Good day!" Then walked off.

The Bedlham Theatre is now becoming my favourite venue. It always puts on innovative shows. True, some of them are hit and miss, but at least all of them are original. And it is student orientated, which gives the productions a freshness about them. After Little Red Things, which was sensational, I saw the equally impressive Alice Through The Looking Glass. A great twist on the legendary fairytale, with great sets and creative direction.

Special mention to Tim Vine's poster along the road to the Underbelly. It could well be the best poster ever conceived.