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Al Pitcher Fringe Blog: Edinburgh Olympics of comedy, dreams and broken hope

By | Published on Wednesday 15 August 2012

Al Pitcher

Al Pitcher writes us a Fringe Blog.

I was born in England, I grew up in New Zealand, and I now live in Sweden, so when the Olympics come around twice every eight years, I always get that fizzy stomach feeling. Maybe, just maybe. I have these different options of countries; I’m like Dora Explorer on a gap year. It’s not happened yet so I’m heading to The Edinburgh Olympics of Comedy, Dreams and Broken Hope with my show ‘TINY TRIUMPHS’.

Yes there are prizes. Yes there are reviews. But it’s just the competing that matters. It’s helping your fellow drunk comedian over the front doorstep, it’s about giving a flyer to a local Edinburgh person who hates this visiting circus and who spits out the word FRINGE each August. Some comics get competitive and it becomes a race to them, not many are drug tested. One rumour of this Festival is that one comedian is ordering missile launchers on the top of their Edinburgh flat, just to show the comedy world that they take all this very seriously.

There will be no Olympic lane in Edinburgh, no corporate freeway. There is, of course, the Edinburgh trams but they don’t move; they begin moving in 2014, so always look right and left, you never know, Scotland the brave and all that. This is my first show in Edinburgh since 2007, I am coming over from Sweden, I am as pumped as a Ben Johnson Viking and I will eat a poor diet and rely on this famine of vitamins to push me to the finishing line.

Edinburgh audiences are fantastic because they are spoiled for entertainment, so if they mumble ‘thiissss is shiiiiittte’ they mean it and I admire and embrace this honesty. My show is interactive, people will be brought on-stage, this could be a disaster; you pick the wrongun and it could be a risk, luckily for me I have hired a top level security company called G4S, they didn’t seem too busy in August. I have had champagne bottles opened and aimed at my head, some have thrown rubber ducks or even mimed a hand grenade, but those are just the good gigs.

I am hoping for laughter and happiness in the wonderful city of Edinburgh, where it won’t be about Gold, Silver or Bronze. It will be Deep fried, Lonely and the Land of Hope. I have to promote my show for you too. So come see the ‘TINY TRIUMPHS’, a show about the little victories in life or, just visit the Edinburgh Olympics, we got it all and for us performers it will be as up and down as Usain Bolt in lycra on a trampoline; don’t miss that.

Al Pitcher’s show ‘Tiny Triumphs’ was performed at Gilded Balloon Teviot at Fringe 2012.

LINKS: www.alpitcher.com



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