Edinburgh Festival with Mark Watson, The Rubberbandits and Educating Rita

                                          Mark Watson                                               

Our first show of the day was at 5.40pm but Tony, Alan and I decided to head through to Edinburgh with an hour to spare and squeeze in some valuable drinking time. We navigated our way to the Old Town part of the capital and found a pub selling some delicious but scandalously overpriced Thistly Cross cider. I can't remember what the pub was called, either Innis & Dunn or Innis & Gunn. If I had ordered an non-alcoholic beverage then maybe my brain would now be able to locate the exact name of the pub. We didn't have time for a second pint so we moved on to the George Square Theatre, a spectactuarly ugly building belonging to Edinburgh University. Grey concrete sucked the soul out of the building and it's ugliness was only heightened by the quaint cobbled stoned streets and tenemants of the surrounding area. Educating Rita is a play written by Willy Russell about the relationship between Frank, a somewhat disillusioned University tutor with a drink problem, and Rita, a frank talking hairdresser who takes a course in English Literature to lift herself out of the perceieved limitations and monotony of her social class and peers. Through the interaction of Frank and Rita, the only two characters portrayed, the plays goes on to deal with themes of social class, education, personal freedom and aspiration, and culture. The script is sharp and witty, at times challenging, and laced with a sense of impish fun which prevented the play from getting bogged down with too many references or discussions about literature and poetry. Matthew Kelly and Claire Sweeney had good chemistry together and played their parts convincingly. The set design was very detailed and well put together, giving the air of a scholarly study to contrast with Rita's working class dress and talk. It made you think about who literature and poetry and art belongs to. The way Frank would search for his hidden stash of whisky bottles behind various books on the shelves was a nice touch. All in all, a very enjoyable 90 minutes with lots to think and laugh about. After the play we sheltered under a canopy nursing some pints as the rain belted down. Ah, a Scottish summer. Up next was Mark Watson, an English stand up comedian best known to me from occassional guest appearances on Mock The Week. His show was called The Information and on the stage was a screen with Mark's mobile number, twitter account and email address. I overheard Alan groaning 'I hope this is not going to be more audience participation like with Adam Hills'. But fear not, Alan, as Mark Watson had plenty of good material to bulk out his routine. He did interact with the audience, which was good fun, but most of his jokes came from the whole topic of information access on the internet and other such technological advances. He was much funnier than I expected him to be and much wittier than his tv persona. As Alan pointed out, this is what Adam Hills should have been. We were all starving after the perfomance so we bought some overpriced food from some of the kiosks situated along the Assembly George Square. It was our best meal of the Festival, but McDonalds and Burger King were the level we were judging it by. We popped into the Udderbelly for a pint, wondering what this strange building was used for outwith the Festival, and then hung about the Gilded Balloon for a few pints as we waited for The Rubberbandits gig to start. Some 'technical issues' delayed us. Maybe one of them was having an Axl Rose diva strop. 'I'm not going on stage until ma God damn burger is cooked just the way I like it!' Eventually we were let in and ushered downstairs to the nightclub. We stood about not quite sure of what was going to happen as The Rubberbandits, a hip hop comedy duo hailing from Limerick in the west of Ireland, are not averese to writing songs of a potentially offensive nature. It was a case of hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Well, it was a suprisingly entertaining evening of two men wearing polyester bags over their heads rapping to music videos shown on a big screen behind them. With a couple of exceptions all the songs were funny and clever, and I was impressed by their ability to rap in sync with the music videos. Even their banter, or craic, inbetween songs was amusing. Irreverant, edgy but strangely entertaining. The show ran ovetime so we had plenty of time for one last, or was it two, pints before the 1.30am bus back to Glasgow. Another successful Festival. Mission accomplished.

 

                                           The Rubberbandits

Edinburgh Festival with Adam Hills, Sandi Toskvig and others

                                                   Adam Hills

An early start this week. The usual suspects, Tony, Alan and myself, arrived in Edinburgh late morning, leaving ourselves just enough time to grab a pint of very refreshing strawberry cider and get our seats for the first event of the day, 'Stu and Garry in the Lunchtime Show'. Alan was sitting too close to the small podium, so we shuffled along a few seats to get out of the line of fire. Not that we had much to worry about. Being improv-comedians Stu and Garry needed suggestions from members of the audience for their different sketches but they are not the sort to single anybody out and make fun of them. They proved to be a very likeable and funny double act, playing games similiar to those in Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Despite being relatively unknown they were funnier than some of the big name comedians we saw last week. They deserve a much larger audience and more exposure. We left The Assembly Rooms well satisfied and in the mood for more good laughs. A quick greasy pie on route to the Pleasance Grand had to suffice for lunch, we didn't want to be late for Sandi Toksvig's 'My Valentine'. For those who don't know Sandi Toskvig is a Danish/English radio and tv personality, writer, and comedian. She is a bubbly little character and bounded onstage to the aptly chosen 'Ode to Joy' by Beethoven. For the next hour she regaled us with funny anecdotes, stories, jokes, off the cuff wit and general merriment. Her big finish was to invite us to conduct the final few bars to 'Ode to Joy', which she lead with great enthusiasm and energy. I was tempted to join in but I didn't want to embarrass Tony and Alan. After the show we had several hours to kill until Adam Hills so we hung about the Pleasance for a few pints of Bulmers Cider (this blog is beginning to sound like it's involved in cider product placement). It was nice to just sit to there, chatting and slowly drinking, letting the alcohol kill our brain cells one by one. We moved on after a couple of hours, bumping into some of my cousins in the process, and eventually found a nice enough pub called The Hebrides for more cider. I managed to embarrass myself when chatting to a friendly guy from Liverpool and asked if he was from Poland. Maybe cider kills more brain cells than ordinary alcohol. As far as I remember, it's all a bit blurred from 5pm onwards, we wolfed down some fast food from Burger King before making our way to The Assembly Hall for Adam Hills. His show, entitled 'Mess Around', was not routine stand up, going from one joke or story to another. He basically just messed about with members of the audience, mostly to good effect. He possesses a bright and quirky personality and this helped him to interact well with the public, although to be honest I was hoping for more prepared material. His add lib jokes were generally quite funny but did not have me bent double with laughter. Our next show, also at The Assembly Hall, was Marcus Brigstocke: The Brig Society. The title of the show was a reference to David Cameron's famous Big Society speech, which was meant to inspire a generation of upstanding citizens to fill the void created by the present Governments regime of brutal cuts to public services. Brigstocke really got tore into David Cameron and George Osbourne, to the extent that comedy and entertainment were often pushed to the side. His political rant was punctuated by moments of laughter but it was few and far between. His show finished just after ten pm, so there was still time for one final pint. I can't remember the name of the pub but at least this time I didn't confuse a Liverpudlian with a Pole.

                                                   Sandi Toskvig

Edinburgh Festival with Stewart Lee, Mick Foley and The Lumberjacks

                                                Stewart Lee

It's that time of year again; a time of high adventure, even higher beer prices, pretty barmaids, even prettier female tourists, and a taste of some comedy and theatre that comes around only once a year in the life of an East End Glaswegian. I met Alan and Tony at the bus stop around 3pm and we didn't have long to wait for our transport to arrive. During the hour long journey I alternated between saying the rosary and deleting some of the 1500 text messages which is slowing down my phone, all the while trying to ignore a fuelled up loud mouth seated a few places behind. He interrogated a poor Sudanese man in a friendly but insistent way for the first half of the journey and then created a domestic scene with his better half, if you can call her that, for the remainder. Just after I stepped off the bus I remarked to Alan "If I ever turn out that like, you have my permission to shoot me". And I meant it. We then headed in the direction of The Assembly Rooms, a five minute walk from the bus station. All three shows this evening were to be held at The Assembly Rooms, which was a bit bizzare, so we thought that there would be no rushing about inbetween gigs but this did not prove to be the case. After a few pints at Wetherspoons and an interesting discussion about the Olympics, which were being shown on tv, we shuffled off for our first gig of the festival. The little I knew of Stewart Lee before this gig was a quick look at his standup on YouTube and I wasn't overly impressed. At The Assembly he bounded onstage and started brightly with some sharp socio-political jokes, but then for some reason the middle section started to flag badly. He started to play on the fact that only some parts of the auidence laughed at or understood his jokes and he began to explain the mechanics of his jokes in a way that suggested something was going wrong. I don't know how much of this was scripted or if he really did feel the need to explain things, but it was not funny and it made me feel uncomfortable. He picked up towards the end and finished strongly, but by then it was too late and I was glad when he had finished. He's a clever guy, I'll give him that, but not my type of comedian. A bit too cynical and smug. After the gig we didn't have much time so we shovelled down a cheap but unsatisfactory meal at McDonald's and rushed back to The Assembly Rooms for 'The Return Of The Lumberjacks', a trio of Candian comedians. The MC for the show, Craig Campbell, was a likeable hairy Canadian guy, and could not have been more different from Stewart Lee. He was the funniest of the Lumberjacks, interacting with the crowd well and dipping into Scottish culture for good comic effect. Next up was a rasping drawl dude whose name I did not quite catch. He was funny at times but never really engaged me in the same way the MC had done. Mick Foley guest appeared for ten minutes, so we got a little taster of what was to come later that evening. Last on was Stewart Francis, a comedian who seems to be battling it out with Tim Vine to be the king of the one-liners. His jokes were both corny and clever, and had the auidence groaning and laughing in equal measure. He's an edgier, harder version of Tim Vine but not quite in the same class. After the show we hurried about looking for a pub that did not have queues to the bar ten feet deep but we were out of luck and had to return to The Assembly unrefreshed. The queue for Mick Foley, former pro-wrestler and hardcore legend among devoted fans, was very long but we managed to get a decent vantage point inside. Mick's show proved to be interesting, funny and entertaining, and probably the highlight of the evening. He gave us a few anecdotes and behind the scenes stories about the bizarre world of pro-wrestling, but I was hoping for a bit more in that regard. Maybe the baser side of my nature was hoping that he would dish the dirt on some fellow wrestlers but he never did that. Still it was a good conclusion to a decent start to the festival. We travelled home relatively unscathed. I say relatively, because Alan was seated next to a semi-drunk passenger who was slumbering and slabbering over him at times. I guess that just has to go down as collatoral damage. It is the Festival after all.

                                                 Mick Foley

The Angel's Share (film review)

Director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty join forces once again to bring us 'The Angel's Share', a comedy drama set in Glasgow and the Highlands of Scotland. Robbie, played by newcomer Paul Hannigan, is a young father who narrowly escapes a jail sentence and is sentenced to 300 hours of Community Payback. With the responsibility of fatherhood weighing on his shoulders Robbie is desperate to make a clean break from the cycle of violence and drug and alcohol abuse which he has found himself entrenched in for most of his young life. But his history of violence catches up with him and the future looks increasingly bleak for Robbie. His only shot at redemption and freedom comes in the unlikely form of the whisky industry. At a whisky tasting event he not only discovers that he has a good nose for whisky but a financial opportunity opens itself up to him and his group of friends, a payoff that could offer a fresh start in life. Ken Loach brings his trademark social realism to the film, which is a welcome relief from the mass produced artificality of many Hollywood films. Casting non-actors is a regualar Loach method to attain naturalism and he does this again to very good effect in 'The Angel's Share'. In real life Paul Hannigan used to run about in street gangs and it was through a community help group that Ken Loach offered him the part of Robbie. One wonders if the scar on his face is real or the work of a makeup artist. His acting debut is very impressive and despite his character's thuggish past and appearance the viewer grows to really root for him and you really want him to overcome the odds stacked against him. Equally impressive is John Henshaw who plays Harry, a kindly Community Payback supervisor who helps Robbies out in a difficult situation and subsequently introduces him to the world of whisky appreciation. The screenplay is sharp and funny, providing much light relief and genuine laughs when the darker side of life threatens to overshadow. The language is fruity to say the least. The film had to be edited to receive a 15 certificate, but for some reason the swearing does not offend too often, which is maybe to the credit of Loach, Laverty and the cast. The characters are great, believable and human, and some of the banter between them is very funny. The plot takes many surprising and pleasant twists and turns, again take a bow Paul Laverty. The social issues raised in the film are highly relevant and Loach does not pull his punches in depicting the underbelly of Glasgow, but ultimately 'The Angel's Share' is a feelgood tonic of a film. One of the best Scottish films I've seen in a long time and one of the best films of 2012. 8.5/10

My week in Lourdes

Intro - Lourdes is a small town in the south of France, just nestling beneath the Pyrenees Mountains. In 1858 it was documented that Mary the Mother of God appeared to a local girl called Bernadette Soubirous on eighteen occasions and since then the town has been a place of pilgrimage for millions of Roman Catholics, many spurred on by the reports of miraculous healings. My first four visits to Lourdes were as a carer with HCPT (Handicapped Children’s Pilgrimage Trust) but I was there this time as a sick pilgrim, something I would never have envisioned for myself. It is a humbling experience, as I want to be the strong one, the one who supports and cares for others, but I must accept that this is where I am just now in my life. Lourdes has played an important part in my life, helping me to grow in confidence and self-esteem as a shy and awkward teenager, and teaching me that selfless love for others is a very fulfilling and enriching experience. I made a personal pilgrimage to Lourdes in 2008 when my health was very poor, giving my family and I the strength to endure just a bit more. I am not sure why God called me back to Lourdes this year, but nobody who comes to Lourdes with an open heart goes away empty handed.
Friday – An early start with 8.45am mass at Motherwell Cathedral and then away we go to Edinburgh Airport. On the bus I notice a young lad with a t-shirt, which I thought was brave. I was covered in my usual seventeen layers of clothes, paranoid about the weather like there is a rain storm lurking with sinister intent around every corner. Everything goes smoothly at the airport, which I find surprising because I look like a Russian gangster in my passport photo. Soon we are in the air, arriving at Lourdes about two and half hours later. There are introductions and pleasant small talk over dinner, a four course affair which leaves me breathless. I skipped evening service. It was a long day and I was tired. There will be plenty of other opportunities for prayer and reflection. At the end of the day I had a good feeling about the coming week, both for myself and my parents.
Saturday – Thursday’s sleepless night caught up with me so after lunch I decided to skip mass at the Rosary Basilica and take an extended siesta, watching some golf on television up until dinner. Earlier today one of the priests said that confession was a good way of starting a pilgrimage in Lourdes, preparing a way for the Lord with a clean slate. I liked this idea so after dinner my mum and I went to confession. The priest, Father Harry, was a lovely, gracious man. The torchlight procession was a beautiful experience. It was a balmy evening as thousands of pilgrims gathered at the Grotto and then processed to the square in front of the Basilica while saying the rosary, led by people of different nationalities over the loudspeaker system. Even Arabic was sung, which I found enchanting and moving. The atmosphere was very peaceful and prayerful.
Sunday – Scorching day. After lunch there was the Blessed Sacrament procession. Walking down to the Basilica Square I had a good conversation with Harry, the priest who had heard my confession the previous day. The procession was nice but sometimes I don’t respond well to religious services or environments and this was one of those times. I was fine later on, although disappointed that the pretty brunette waitress who had caught my eye at lunch earlier that day was missing at dinner. It must have been her day off. In the evening there was quiz, which was fun. I enjoyed some red wine and banter, and it was good to get to know some of the other pilgrims better.
Monday – After lunch we went to the baths. It is tradition in Lourdes to bathe in the waters, something which Our Lady asked us to do when talking to St. Bernadette. When I got up in the morning a heavy wave of depression washed over me. I had a not experienced something like this for a couple of years and I had no idea where it came from. It lasted only a couple of hours but when I got to the baths I decided to make this visit for all those people out there suffering from the terrible scourge of depression. I have been to the bathes several times but I am always a little daunted by the experience because the water is so cold. You undress and then are covered with a towel that is so cold that it takes your breath away. Fortunately the helpers are very respectful and kind. They help you down a couple of steps into a regular sized bath with the water coming up to your knees and then dip you back until you are submerged up to your neck. You stand back up, there are a few moments of prayer and then the helpers guide you out to the dressing area. I felt good after coming out of the baths, rejuvenated and light hearted. After a quick visit to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, my dad and I went for a coffee and a few glasses of wine, enjoying our conversation in the sun, a novel experience for two Scots. No father/son time is complete without talking about football, but we conversed about other things as well. I enjoyed our time together. At the evening meal the pretty brunette waitress was back sporting a new hairstyle. I like to think she had this done just for me. I decided to visit the Grotto at night so I went down at about 11pm, looking forward to the very peaceful and special atmosphere that the Grotto has at that time. Unfortunately there was a mass taking place when I arrived so I lit a candle for family and friends and went back to the hotel. On my return I felt unwell, so I took two paracetamol and went to bed.
Tuesday – I awoke late to more glorious weather. After lunch we went to the Rosary Basilica for the Mass of the Anointing of the Sick. Bishop Devine said mass but I understood about four words in forty. The sound system was poor but Bishop Devine had the unfortunate habit of jerking his head away from the microphone and speaking very fast. Still it was a nice service and good to receive the sacraments. No sign of the pretty brunette at dinner so my attention turned to a nice looking blonde waitress. I fear that I am becoming a serial womaniser, even if it’s all in my head. After dinner I watched some television and then went for an amble with my parents. On return to my hotel I was feeling unwell again. I was furious at God and a mixture of swear words and prayers flew in his direction. I came to Lourdes in an act of faith and then this happens. What the hell are you playing at Lord?
Wednesday – I awoke with murder in my heart and this must have been visible during lunch because my mum suggested that I speak with Harry. After some humming and hawing I relented to her idea. Harry was very attentive, gracious and our talk helped me a lot. He is an excellent man and priest.  Today was a free day so after lunch I spent some time with my parents down at the Grotto and then at a chapel with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The day was another scorcher so we went to a café and treated ourselves to some sorbet. It was so hot that I half expected to hear the main theme tune to Lawerence Of Arabia strike up. There was still no sign of the pretty brunette waitress at dinner. Maybe she is so distraught at the thought of me leaving that the end of the week that she has hurled herself into the river that runs through Lourdes. I continue to leave a trail of broken hearts in my wake. Quiet evening watching television.
Thursday – Last day of the pilgrimage. Temperatures around 35 degrees. After lunch we gathered across the river from the Grotto, finding some shade for the closing ceremony which included a renewal of our baptismal vows. It was a nice way to end the pilgrimage. We had some more free time to sample sorbet at our favourite café. I tried a tangy lemon flavour.  At dinner I spoke to Harry and I was touched and pleased that he had bought me gift and a card. I hope to stay in contact with him. Quiet evening watching Olympic football.
Friday – A very early rise and some bitter coffee was not the best start to the day. It would only get worse. We arrived at the airport only to discover that our flight had been delayed by a few hours so we headed back to Lourdes where we lounged about the hotel in a state of limbo. Back again to the airport but there were further delays. This was tough enough for me, a young guy, but it must have been much worse for the old and infirm of body. I read P.G Wodehouse to keep my spirits up. We didn’t get into the air until about 10.30pm and then instead of a decent meal the trolley dollys handed out limp, plastic sandwiches. I think most of us were on autopilot by this time and just wanted to get home. I did not get to my bed until 4am. It was not the ideal way to end a very successful and enjoyable week, but, apart from the chill I caught and the brief spell of depression I experienced, this was really the only negative aspect of the pilgrimage. I am not quite sure what I exactly took from the whole experience of being in Lourdes on pilgrimage. I just have that feeling of being blessed.