Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (14 page)

The
night’s auspices weren’t good, due to my suffering from what many people think
is the mythical PMT but is very real in many women’s cases. I was bad-tempered,
slightly paranoid and one of my favourite words, ‘labile’ — a term used often
in psychiatry to denote someone who is emotionally on the edge and could lose
it at any time. Not a good state to be in when facing a pissed Glasgow
audience, at any rate.

When I
stepped on stage, someone shouted something along the lines of, ‘Fuck off, you
fat English cow!’ and it pretty soon slipped into warfare. Normally I would
have used my ascending collection of pre-prepared put-downs, but I was in no
mood and launched straight in with a couple of my mega-put-downs which were
very coarse and aggressive. This unfortunately did not do the trick, and to my
incredulity after some very bad-tempered banter between us about the Scots and
the English, I found myself saying, ‘Well, who the fuck won at Culloden?’

As soon
as the words had come out of my mouth I knew this was A VERY BIG MISTAKE.

As if
the atmosphere wasn’t bad enough already it then descended further down the scale
of civilisation and became really dark. However, as PMT sufferers might tell
you, in a weird way this was somewhat enjoyable in a masochistic sense, and I
stayed on longer, taking a right verbal kicking and only leaving the stage when
I thought it looked likely that someone might jump up there and take a swing at
me.

I take
full responsibility for this furore. It was totally my fault and 1 deserved
what I got. It is just slightly scary that when faced with a semi-baying mob I
decided not to go down the Mrs Sensible route but crank things up even more.
Glasgow, I apologise. I have always loved Scotland and regret turning into a
British bulldog for five seconds.

Another Edinburgh, 2003

After a substantial break
of a few years in which I got married and had two children (more of this
elsewhere), I had another crack at Edinburgh. We decided to go up as a family
and rented a house there. Eliza was six months old and Maisie one and a half.

I took
on a bit too much as I was doing my own hour-long stand-up show at 10.45 in the
big venue at the Assembly Rooms, after performing a two-hander play with my
friend Helen Griffin, or ‘Griffo’, in a smaller venue there. The play was
called
Mental,
and Griffo and I had written it together. It was about a
psychiatric nurse and a patient and was set at night. The trick at the
beginning was that we didn’t make it clear who was the patient and who was the
nurse, and tried to make some points about mental health in a funny and not too
worthy way.

I had
known Griffo since university and we’d both trained as psychiatric nurses,
whilst also nursing ambitions — hers to become an actor and mine to go into
comedy.

Griffo
has had a tougher time than me in the world of acting. Firstly it is much more
competitive and there are many actors competing for any one job. Griffo moved
back to Wales reasonably early on in her career and I think this has enabled
her to be a big fish in a small pond.
Doctor Who
buffs may know her from
the Tennant/Cybermen battle episodes in which she played a revolutionary
van-driving underground type called Mrs Moore.

Doing
the Edinburgh Festival with the family in tow was a very different prospect
from doing Edinburgh as a single woman. Most of the differences can be summed
up under the heading ‘responsibility’. Whereas during previous Edinburghs I
could party till dawn and get off my face, I was now pretty much waking up at
dawn and therefore wanting to go to bed about ten, which was forty-five minutes
before my stand-up show even started. I found it bloody difficult and
stressful, especially given that Griffo and I had to perform our play first.
Days were spent out with the kids, maybe at the beach — but although it’s
beautiful, the nearest beach at North Berwick tends to have a gale-force wind
blowing across it, making a mouthful of sand a certainty and frostbite a
distinct possibility.

My
social life dwindled to nothing, as by the time I finished my stand-up show at
11.45 I would have been quite happy to fall over backwards onto the stage and
start snoring there and then. Still, I got through it without having some sort
of showbiz ‘breakdown’ and vowed never to do two shows back to back ever again.

Griffo
and I got pretty good reviews for the play and as we neared the end of the
three-week run I got slightly stir crazy and planned a joke for the last night.

In the
play there was a line which Griffo had to say:

‘You
wouldn’t expect a man in a fucking bear costume to walk in, would you?’

I
managed to persuade one of the guys who was doing a show before us to dress up
in a bear costume and enter stage right when Griffo said that line.
Unfortunately the audience was completely confused as to why someone had
actually appeared dressed as a bear, and Griffo was — to put it mildly —
not
amused.
I suppose this underlines the differences between stand-ups and
actresses. I just wanted to make her laugh. She, on the other hand, just wanted
to do her job. Another of my practical jokes gone wrong.

Still,
we got over it. I apologised profusely and things got back to normal. I crawled
back to London, exhausted and jaded, and hoped I would never do Edinburgh
again.

I
have
done Edinburgh since, but pretty much as a one-off or doing a benefit. I
suppose it might be a possibility when the kids are older, but by that time I
plan to be in a bath-chair on Hastings seafront.

Brief Diary Entries During
Edinburgh, 2003

Hunting back through my
old diaries, I discovered that I had somehow managed to scrawl some thoughts
about how it was all going, when I did the
Mental
play and my own
stand-up, and the kids were babies.

Friday 1 August

Press launch … hideous.
Mental:
sold out. Restrained but good laughs. Shaky on some lines. Stand-up show:
hard but fair and a laugh.

Saturday 2 August

Mental:
sold out. Really good crowd. Laughed uproariously in places. Our
prop walkie-talkies picking up security Stand-up: the bastards criticised my
clothes!

Sunday 3 August

Mental:
sold out. Big tech hitches and Griffo early wobbler. Nice audience.
Stand-Up: bunch of 300 twats.

Monday 4 August

Day off. Hoofuckingray.

Tuesday 5 August

Mental:
sold out. Terrible arseholes in front row.

Stand-up: heckle a-go-go.

Wednesday 6 August

Mental:
good. Stand-up: stilted, unpleasant.

Thursday
7
August

Mental:
Couldn’t find our way out. [No idea what this means.] No laughs.
Stand-Up: very good crowd, no weirdies. 2 people left near the end. [Oh madam,
the insecurity]

Friday 8 August

Mental:
sold out. Good, v good. Stand-up: sold out. Oh shit, Friday night,
full of pissed bonkers barmies .

Saturday 9 August

Mental:
sold out. Stand-up: sold out.

[Didn’t write anything at all for
Sunday 10 August.]

Monday 11 August

Day off. Jesus, am bloody knackered.

Tuesday 12 August

Mental:
bloody hard graft till halfway point then the buggers lightened up a
bit. Stand-up: sold out.

Wednesday 13 August

Mental:
bit of a struggle. Stand-up: dull — me, not them.

Thursday 14 August

Mental:
a hard, grinding pisser of a show. Stand-up: best so far.

Friday 15 August

Mental:
sold out, really good fun. Standup: good fun. The bastards made me
sing.

Saturday 16 August

Mental:
good. Stand-up: fucking hard work.

Sunday 17 August

Mental:
sour audience, Griffo fell on me. Stand-up: wading through bloody
concrete.

Monday 18 August

Barely alive. Day off.

Tuesday 19 August

Mental:
Griffo had TB type coughing fit. Stand-up: fucking hard work.

Wednesday 20 August

Mental:
dull, dull, dull, dull. Stand-up: audience full of personality
disorders.

Thursday 21 August

Mental:
no breaking-glass sound effect, just weird click. Stand-up: did as
benefit, very nice.

Friday 22 August

Mental:
nice crowd, but we were bloody shambolic. I forgot lines, Griffo got
her knitting caught. Stand-up: they were evil and should be killed.

Saturday 23 August

Mental:
so knackered, felt I was on auto. Played bear trick on Griffo — not
impressed, oh no. Stand-up: they were pissed, me too.

Sunday 24 August

Hooray … it’s over.

Being recognised is a
progressive phenomenon which doesn’t really dawn on you until it’s pretty much
under way I suppose the first time should have been a big event in my life, but
I can’t even remember when it was. And it was very gradual too, with maybe two
or three months between the first and second time.

It also
catches you unawares. In the chemist, in the street, and when you least want
it.

At
first, people’s recognition is hazy; they are not absolutely sure who you are,
so they take a stab in the dark. This is when you tend to get an array of
mistaken identities and double-takes as you walk down the street. Some people
come back and check. Then there are the surreptitious ones who walk past you
and do a double-take, and then do an about-turn and try to wander back past you
as naturally as possible, while staring at you — and you can almost see the
neurones firing in their brains. Other, bolder ones will march right back up to
you like the police, stick their face in yours and demand, ‘Who are you?’ Some
people just think they know you and say hello as they pass; I always give a
cheery hello back.