RHLSTP!
That's going to be amazing. Your line up looks great!

I think I would skip Jupitus and keep Henning, if that was doable.

I would agree with zooo Henning over Jupitus. Frankie Boyle & Craig Ferguson are both from Glasgow so should have lots of Edinburgh material. But is there availability with the big names ?

I'd also consider adding some good quality theatre into the mix, inc. non-comedy. It's a huge part of the Fringe, and I'm sure there are some really exciting shows on offer, though I'm too out-of-touch with that world to be able to recommend any specific stuff. Maybe someone else here can, or there's another Forum somewhere for theatre, or you can find some recs on a blog, or from the Guardian, or whoever. Seems a shame not to see a theatre show, or two. They're not all stuffy and old-fashioned.

Also mix things up with a few comedy groups, not just stand-up. (Sorry, can't help here either.)

And leave some gaps in your schedule to be spontaneous - you might hear good word-of-mouth about someone/something when you're there, or fancy seeing something on a whim.

Oh yeah, on the practical side, check out the distance between venue locations when you're planning your day, so you leave enough time not to have to rush. The streets can get very busy, and I seem to remember there being quite a few hills/steep slopes around. Wouldn't bother with the Edinburgh (Military) Tattoo either.

I ended up leaving *lots* of gaps in my schedule and was almost entirely spontaneous. Here's most of what I ended up seeing. I didn't see a ton of super famous people like I thought I would. I ended up more interested in more 'fringey' people, and whatever happened to be getting a buzz or in some cases just what I chanced upon or got flyered with when I was at a loss. There are at least 30 shows I wish I had been able to fit in, but I was pretty disorganised and a lot of stuff I wanted to see was sold out when I tried to see it. I'm definitely going back next year though, so I'll be better prepared then. Here's a sum up of the shows I can think of off hand (there were definitely more, but apparently they weren't terribly memorable):

Richard Pullsford - twitter punster
Roger Swift - cut rate Tim Vine
Bec Hill - really funny pop-up art comedy
Richard Herring - pretty good
Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe Podcast - James Acaster was hilarious
Andrew O'neill - Excellent spasmodic satanic magic comedy
John Hastings - Canadian fellow, pretty good
Trevor Lock - Excellent, saw him twice for good measure
Comedy in the Dark - Lost Voice Guy was excellent, the others were just okay
Kate Butch - Drag act based on the idea of a mixtape, not my thing
Amused Moose New Comic Award - Jack Gleadow won, and rightly so, check him out!
Suzanne Lea Shepperd - bad American (I'm not biased against Americans at all)
Kevin McAleer - Absolutely astounding, so glad I got to catch him (twice. Mark keeps making fun of me for seeing things twice, now he's stuck watching things twice, ha!)
Richard Herring - again...yeah, I rewatch things
Jerry Sadowitz - brutally hilarious. loved it
Derren Brown - it was a best of and I was sat at the back, I was a bit underwhelmed but it was still good
Sketch Thieves - very funny, though that American chick was on again...
Colin Cloud - smug gimmicky magician who was supposed to be funny but wasn't. kind of a marketing genius in a really off-putting way
Stuart Goldsmith - Excellent! talked to him and he signed my drawing of him. What a friendly and funny man!
Kat Bond - an interactive show about loo roll. I played the role of her One Direction loving mother and got to stuff her in a bin at the end. It was pretty funny.
Alun Cochrane - he made fun of me so much! Called me a man, made fun of me for being American, did 15 minutes on my sneeze (I blame Trevor Lock for getting me sick!), and then said I look much older than I am. The show was just okay. (not biased)
Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe Podcast (again) - Jason Manford was on. Rich had just lost to Manford on a radio times competition, the resulting discussion was definitely hilarious (check it out here on bcg!)
Joe Wells - 5* Loved it. Definitely going to follow his work.
Caspar Thomas - Really ace magician/comedian with more magic than comedy, but I didn't mind because I'm a magic nerd
Chris Coltrane - Positive and friendly lefty political comedian who started the lolitics comedy club in Camden. Delightful man
Liam Withnail - Not great, and also left me feeling very discouraged about the prospect of getting a visa to live in the UK, thanks...
Joke Thieves - like sketch thieves but with single comedians instead of sketch groups. Stealing each other's material and getting vengeful. Much roasting.
Tony Law - newly sober and totally on-point. Really really wild energetic whacked-out hour. Never seen anything quite like it
Phil Kay - Must have been on coke, but maybe wasn't. Really funny, and an amazing improviser. *highest* energy
Simon Munnery - a bit of a shambles sadly, but it was still good
Kiri Prichard - kind of terrifying, but in a good way
Goose - funny, from what I remember
Gein's Family Giftshop - dark and totally my kind of thing. I can see what the league of gentlemen see/saw in them
Tim Key - did some W.I.P stuff at a charity gig I lucked into. Very funny, but definitely not entirely polished yet. He looks like he's lost weight
Daniel Kitson - Absolute best way to cap off my fringe. I feel so lucky to have seen him. He wasn't doing a run, was just in town for a few bits and bobs. Unforgettable.

It was my first time abroad, and I didn't really have the internet the entire time, which was tricky, but by day three after having gotten lost about 30 times, I got a decent grasp of the lay of the land and felt like a total native by the end of the first week. By the end loads of non-locals were asking me for directions. I guess I looked like I knew what I was doing. Also something weird happened to my accent apparently because both trevor lock and stuart goldsmith thought I was welsh and a large handful of random people thought I had a Canadian lilt (I'll take it! Anything but American. I probably sounded like an idiot, but I don't care.) The tip about looking at the distances between venues would have been a smart thing for me to heed before I got there, but now I know for next time. I think experiencing where things are situated first-hand is probably a quicker and more feasible way of coming up with a decent schedule, but I definitely found myself practically bowling people over in the streets booking it from say, Pleasance Ct. to one of the Stand venues with only a 20-minute gap between shows. Woops! I made it though. I think I lost some weight with all the hills and stairs. There were 109 steps to get to my hostel room. The first time I went up I nearly had a stroke, by the end I didn't even notice the time passing between steps 1 and 109.

Got to meet Mark and Aaron and other wonderful BCG people, which was lovely. Had a few BCG meetup things. Mark was super busy, but sort of looked after me especially when I first got into town, which was super nice. BCG people are lovely lovely people. I feel lucky to get to be a part of the community. I'm going back next year.

Oh and I failed to mention that prior to getting to the fringe my flight got cancelled, and then 8 hours on the phone later I had a ticket from Portland Maine instead of Portland Oregon to Edinburgh then I managed to weasel out of those tickets and get a refund for my friend who was going to come but decided at that point to back out, but she was incredibly generous enough to help me buy a new single ticket to get me there 2 days later than expected but I got to stay an extra week...which I totally didnt pack for...but that didn't matter, because....

When I got pack to Portland (Oregon), my car was broken down and then my luggage got stolen (and also my identity). The eastern European factory workers (one of whose name is Dragon) who I was sharing a 12 bed hostel with didn't touch my stuff and were lovely, then the moment I get back to America, bam! Everything stolen. Luckily my backpack with my tablet and journal and chargers and ipod and everything other than my clothes basically, didn't get stolen.

I don't think I'm welcome in America. No money, no car, no clothes, no identity, no food. Effing hell! Take me back Scotland, you're much friendlier! (I'm fine though, honestly. I'm sorting it all out, bit by bit. Still totally worth it.)

Holy crap. Maybe you should have used the Maine ticket instead.

You saw loadssss of people. I love that you saw Herring 4 times!
Trevor Lock's show sounded so weird and confrontational, I saw a pic of how the chairs were set up - yikes. But I saw him do normal stand up years ago and it was one of the funniest shows I've ever seen, so I can imagine it was amazing.
(P.S. is it me or is Tony Law quite hot?)

Umm, yes definitely. I need to draw him.

The chair setup was kind of perfectly just aekward enough for Lock's show. It wasn't actually confrontational at all. It was definitely interactive and some people had the piss taken out of them (almost literally in one case) but Trevor did a good job of keeping the audience from lashing out too brutally at anyone in particular. For instance if someone mumbled something racist he'd quickly and carefully move things along, or if anyone was visibly uncomforable he'd back off them. He only messed with people who spoke up, really. You had to ask for it. That makes it sound lot more confrontational and scary than it actually was though. It was a very friendly (albeit odd) community experience (Community being the name of the show).

The premise was that 4 note taker/reality checkers would record 'objectively' what happened in the hour and he'd grab the notebooks between 'bits' to sort of get an audience generated feedback loop off callbacks that he didn't have to write (clever bloke!). The only things he consistently did in the show was to ask if everyone's first language was English, go through a roster calling off random names to take attendance, sing happy birthday (kind of not really) if anyone in had a birthday, and say a summative prayer at the end. The rest was all audience generated. Really experimental framework, and the audience generated 80% of the content. It really worked though! Amazingly well. I was note-taker both times. I really went for it. People afterwards came up to me both times to say good job and whatnot. I'm not actually a funny person, but I did alright I think!

I love that I saw Herring 4 times too

And Maine is sounding pretty good right now. 3000 miles away, but that's 3000 miles closer to the UK.

The key is the planning, and not seeing the best hour of comedy the two hours before your train is due to leave (it's was about 6 or 7 one liner comedians showing their stuff for their own shows). Anyway, having done three fringes now, I can safely say that next year I will be organised, I will make more of the fringe app, I will not panic that I'm going to miss my train if I see a show on route to the station, I'll see more shows, I'll book in advance for the big names (Gutted to have missed Tim Vine and Alun Cochrane), I'll not wander into the wrong room and almost sit on stage in an attic with an American comic (she was OK though).

ohh, top tip number two ... stay in Edinnburgh, and not a town like Dunfermline or Cowdenbeath...yes, it did save me money (even considering train fares), but it would be good to be around to see more late night shows.

I had another top tip two, but it's gone. I'll post back if I remember.

Sleep? That's my tip to myself. I think I would have been a lot less haggard and scattered if I had bothered to sleep more than about 6 hours per 3 days. I know that's insane (but you all know I *am* insane). Still, worth it.

What was the one-liner thing Tony? Was it a one-off or a full run?

I think I worked out a free place to stay for next year (fingers crossed), so that'll be a huge advantage.

It was just a promo show really for the comedians to showcase their own stuff. There were five or six comedians I'd have gone to see their own show had I got more time.

Anyway, I've learnt something this fringe, that been that my favourite (standup) comedy is political and one liners. Who'd have thought that? I wouldn't.

Interesting!

I found myself enjoying political shows (not necessarily one-liners) a lot more than I would have anticipated. Three of my favourite shows were very political: Charlotte Gittins, Joe Wells, and Chris Coltrane. All three are also just super friendly in person and also on twitter, so that might make me slightly biased. I'm not sure whether I've been steering clear of UK political comedy because politics stresses me out on the whole, or because I figured I wouldn't get the references, but it turns out I do get most of the references, and those particular three shows were either too funny or too optmistic/hopeful for me to be stressed out by the political content. I think honestly I was just turned off by political panel shows.

I've learnt lots of things this Fringe:

1. I need to be less generous with my donations at free shows! Way less generous. I am so broke now it's very not funny.
2. I am way too susceptible to a good bucket speech
3. Review culture is super complicated, a bit corrupt, vast, and entirely too fascinating to me.
4. Fringe workers are too often taken advantage of
5. I tend to like low key performances or really really high energy, and less so the middling stuff (bipolar much?)
6. I know where all the best public toilets are now
7. The masonic lodge New Town Theatre has the best wifi (and toilets) in the city
8. Sea gulls in Edinburgh have a different accent to the ones in Oregon
9. When going from Pleasance Ct. to anything on the Princes side of town, cut across waverly station to save a good 5 minutes and avoid hills/stairs.
10. Mark really does like orange juice.

I heard he bathes in it.

Number 8 is very intriguing!

I don't know if it was you that recommended Chris Coltrane, but I was in the queue to see him (none ticketed free show), but you needed to get a ticket from the bar and it was full when I arrived.

I can now find the Pleasance courtyard. It's not where I expected and in previous years I've got in a muddle with it. Each time I've arrived from "the wrong side". Thank god for Google maps on the phone anyway.

And as for the accents, lol

Quote: zooo @ 28th August 2017, 9:34 AM

I heard he bathes in it.

View original

Seems like a plausible rumour.

Tony, for me the one I kept getting confused about the location of was all the Gilded Baloon stuff. I saw Bec Hill at Gilded Balloon on day one or two and went by a really confused route because I didn't know what I was doing yet, then when I tried to get back to it on subsequent days my mental map of where it should be was waaaay off. Pleasance was fine. The hill tipped me off.

Yeah, several of the venues in that little area on Niddry or Blair had the grab a free ticket/card/whatever at the bar system. I thought it was a sensible system, because then as soon as all the seats were filled and all the cards/tickets were distributed they could call out that it's sold out and tell people to come back earlier the next day or stay and have a drink or whatever and they wouldn't be queueing for no reason for longer than necessary. But None of the venues that used that system had very good signage saying that you're supposed to grab a free 'ticket' from the bar. It was especially confusing so near the Heroes venues where you only have to grab a ticket if you want to, and you can still often get in without one if you don't want to pay ahead.

It's perfectly simple. You grab a free ticket, after you cross Waverly Station, before buying Mark an orange juice, then use the wifi in the toilets of the masonic lodge, move your own clothes onto the lower peg, greet the visitors, and report to Mr Viney that you've had your chit signed.