The reviews should be in by now. Every night for the past week, I've taken a solitary midnight walk to where an enterprising newspaper man sells the following day's Scotsman, and with it the all-important festival review section. Edinburgh is a review-mad city, where even the pubs feel the need to photocopy their press reviews and post them up outside as an enticement. "Excellent decor, but few genuinely original fights. Three stars."
During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where 1,473 shows (at last count) are struggling for life, things can get gladiatorial, and having a good review in the Scotsman is like arming yourself with a really good quality trident. Or a top-quality, industrial throwing net. Maybe the gladiator analogy is breaking down. Let's just say it's pretty damn important.
The Edinburgh Fringe is not like any comedy festival we have in Ireland. This is no Cat Laughs in Kilkenny, where all the comics sit around being palsy-walsy, drinking till dawn, regaling each other with funny stories from their sold-out shows. The first question when two comedians meet here is always "Did you get many in?" For my first Sunday night show I handed out 20 free tickets, and still only 11 people turned up. If I hit 50 paying punters on a night, I dance till dawn. Often I dance till dawn anyway, but sadder, and poorer.
So it's out on the streets to get those punters. This city is awash with flyers, stunts and huckstering. My own clever stunt is to stand by the door to the box office, like the last canvasser before the polling booth. I give them my blurb, mutter something about "Comedy show. Nine o'clock. He's really good." And then I give them half a second to realise that it's also me on the flyer, whereupon they always turn to look again and confirm. Then I hit them with: "I know, it's me. I run a huge operation." We share a light-hearted moment, they leave thinking how witty I am off the cuff, and then they hear me having the exact same conversation with the next people in line. As they queue for tickets, they hear the words "I know, it's me. I run a huge operation" every 20 seconds, disappearing into the distance. Then they buy tickets for something else. And I do my gig to 11 people.
Another attempt to lure an audience involved a radio interview on BBC Radio Scotland done in the window of Jenners, the Brown Thomas of Edinburgh. This was at the comedy-friendly time of 9.20 a.m., and I really didn't get a chance to do much other than fire off a tried-and-tested, use-it-anywhere "Edinburgh is just like Dublin because . . . " joke.
Not to be cynical, but you do scour your jokes for one which will work in all situations, and then you lead with it for the rest of the festival. I have used that damn joke in six different locations now, on 23 occasions. If you ever hear me tell the joke about "Waterford Crystal jumpers and Aran underpants" once this month is over, I want you to just shoot me in the head.
Other promotional opportunities include slots on Late and Live, a gig which only starts at 1 a.m. and grows more savage every year. The break-even point in Late and Live is to actually finish your slot. If you do this and the audience is still listening, you must be some sort of comedy master. The show usually starts with a newcomer being tossed to the crowd. Rob Rouse, winner of last year's So You Think You're Funny? award is a good example. He didn't get past his first sentence. "I hear that Bernard Manning has just retired from comedy," starts Rob. "Why don't you?" replies the crowd. Rich Hall has taken to starting all his gigs there with the words "Good evening, career wreckers".
No promotional tool works better than a good review, though, and no review is more important than that of the Scotsman. Its five-star scale is the festival benchmark, whether accurate or not, and with four or five of those babies under your name, you need never say the words "I know, it's me. I run a huge operation" ever again. Just photocopy the review and hand to punters, smiling serenely. Many other publications run reviews of course, but the Scotsman remains the pre-eminent critique. A five-star review in the Edinburgh Evening News will be used less than an ambivalent but judiciously edited Scotsman three-star. In the paper in front of me I can see a show summed up with "If you have no time for subtlety, it is a perfect late-night, post-pub show". By tomorrow's flyers, that'll be "A Perfect Late-Night Show (Scotsman)".
All of which leads to the importance of The Night the Scotsman Comes to Your Show. Many performers would sooner not be told of the great man's attendance, myself included. The temptation is too great, in the tiny venues we play here, to hunt down the man with the notepad and focus on him for the night. I'd just end up winking at him repeatedly. So I was left in ignorance. Well, almost. We may be competing with one another here, but when it comes to the Scotsman, it's all hands on deck. When you walk into a gig and see everyone you know in Edinburgh in the audience, laughing raucously at jokes they've heard a million times before, then you know something is up.
With that support, the gig goes well. Then comes the wait. Every night I race to buy the paper, with nightmare stories echoing around me of the theatre group last year whose five-star review was mislaid until the last day of the festival. They read of their success on the plane home. Then they handed out photocopies to the other passengers.
Dara O Briain's Scotsman review finally appeared; he received four stars for his show with Deirdre O'Kane. He is delighted, but feels it was unnecessary to call him a "big man". The show continues in the Gilded Balloon until August 30th
