What a weekend... part 1 (Don’t worry there are only 2 parts).

I know I usually write reflective blogs about issues and topics which I believe I need to think about more. But I had a great birthday weekend full of comedy fun and meeting lots of new people from twitter, so I shall tell you about that instead, you lucky people.

The 11^th July was my 30^th birthday, not something I was dreading, mainly because I’m generally ok with getting older (see this blog) but also because I had such a full weekend planned. My twin sister was a little bit annoyed that I was missing her party on Saturday night, but we compromised and went to Alton Towers together last week with some friends. So on Saturday the 10^th July I headed to London town. I had managed to book first class train travel as it worked out only a couple of pounds more expensive (if you know where to shop for cheap train tickets it helps), I was extremely glad I had done this as it was a very hot day and the air conditioning was only working in those carriages. Free tea is always a bonus too.

On arrival to London I soon met up with Vicky (@tainted_harmony) who I had met before and we got the tube the Southwark to check in to our hotel. I don’t need to go on about it but I will just point out the tube is ridiculously hot on a sunny day, think of this whenever I mention tubes in this blog. So we freshened up and headed on the TUBE (see earlier comment) to Hyde park to find the Watsonian’s picnic (Mark Watson fans from his forum set up by the lovely Misha (@HowlieT) had arranged a meet up). Being as rubbish at keeping up with forums as I am, I had already booked later trains for us to get there fashionably late at 4pm (ish), it started at 12pm. We also failed to bring any food (everyone else had contributed), but there was plenty left and they were all very friendly and fed and watered us. I didn’t catch everyone’s name (nor would I have remembered them if I did) but it was nice to finally see some people from twitter in the flesh and have a chat (I had met a couple of them before). As we arrived the blog entry was being written, each person was writing one word and passing it on, the result can be found here. There was lots of chat about gigs, comedians, arenas and the travelling we had all done just to see comedy. It was all very pleasant and civilised. After burning in the sun for a while we said our goodbyes and headed for the tube again.

The Penny Dreadfuls were an act I had never seen or heard much about, but I trust Simone’s (@Simone_QOF) comedy judgement as should everyone (see her blog) and so we headed to Greenwich with Vicky to meet up with a few more people and watch the preview of their Edinburgh show. I really should thank Kerri (@KerriSullivan) for organising my ticket, thank you! Now I won’t give too much away about the show as it is not fair to spoil it for others, but I can say the opening was very Pappy’s (fans of Pappy’s Fun Club, as they used to be known may guess what this means). It was a wonderful hour of dreadful overacting in brilliantly clichéd sketches. Some of the twists on other sketches I had seen were much more clever than I expected. I was also impressed at the colour theme which ran throughout all of the intricate costume, set and prop changes. I do recommend you go and see them in Edinburgh or anywhere else if you can. We hung around in the bar for a little while after, again talking to a variety of people I hadn’t met before, and a few I had. And then we realised that our plan to get the boat to Southbank for our next gig had some timing flaws in it, so we dashed for the train, only to find our timing was not quite right there either. But it didn’t matter, the lovely Kirsty still had cookies in her bag from the Watsonian’s picnic, so fed us as we looked at Venus in the night sky. Until a random man came and ranted at us that we were wrong (there is an app for that and we checked, we were not wrong), he told us to google someone, as this wise woman knew what the mystical light in the sky was... we laughed, a lot.

We dashed into the upside down purple cow tent, that is Udderbelly on Southbank, just a couple of minutes after Andrew Maxwell’s Fullmooners had started.

Words cannot describe Andrew Maxwell’s outfit (see the photo, you will know which one I mean). He had a go, he said he was going for “summer” and then later there was some discussion about how the tight 80s shorts were squashing his knicker kittens. It was my first Fullmooners, and I did enjoy the cabaret aspect of it, it felt like a proper Edinburgh late show (which is where I will see it next), the only part of the concept I wonder about is the howling at the moon. I understand why... Fullmooners, but is it not forcing people to react to comedy rather than waiting for the laughs? The idea is that people howl instead of laugh, sometimes the crowd start it off and then the moon picture is projected onto the back of the stage, but sometimes the picture is up first and the audience reacts. The howling was lots of fun, but there were one or two times it felt like I was in the audience of a sitcom and someone had held up the APPLAUSE sign. The first act was Adam Bloom, I had never seen him before and although he was very energetic and I did laugh out loud a few times there were a couple of bits of his material I was not comfortable with. I had heard about his vegetarian material from Michael Legge’s blog which he did at the end of his set. I don’t mind offensiveness or pushing boundaries, but it just didn’t make me giggle as much as I had hoped. I didn’t think it went as well as it could have done for Adam, despite him stating every few minutes how much he was enjoying the gig. The breakdancers are a regular feature of Fullmooners and do it very well, I do think it is a great way of energising the crowd again. Lady Carol is another regular, she was very beautiful and played the ukulele while singing a song (I think some of the lyrics of the song passed me by, but it was entertaining none the less). Abandoman were another act I had not seen and they were excellent. I can’t say I am a fan of hip hop but the way they improvised the lyrics and had fun with the audience was genius. There first song being “Something in my pocket”, I did hope to see more of them but it was a packed show. The final act was Steve Hughes, I think I have seen him before maybe at Latitude?), he is an Australian comic who is very at ease on stage. Some interesting political commentary including a bit of ranting, just my kind of comedy. I really enjoyed his set. After all of the acts had performed (breakdancers and Lady Carol twice) it was time for the closing ceremony. This takes place outside of Udderbelly as we reached the 1am kick out time (they wouldn’t even let us go back in to wee after). Sir Timothy Fitzhighham (who was on the sound and lights desk all evening and had some wonderful banter with Andrew Maxwell between acts) brought the ceremonial bugle following the still caped and caned Andrew Maxwell. They climbed onto a raised flower bed at the entrance to the udderbelly pasture where the crowd surrounded them. Sir Tim drank a pint of beer through the bugle which he then played as we all saluted. Someone had thought it a great idea to light a Chinese lantern at this point and watch it float into the sky. However, it flew straight into the tree above us and staying there burning dangerously, resulting in Andrew and Sir Tim climbing around trying to know it out of the tree. As all of this was going on some of the people I was with remembered it was now my birthday and sang to me... aw lovely.

We then wandered through Waterloo (for the wee the Udderbelly staff wouldn’t let us have) and in search of food, realising we had only had a couple of bits of cake at the picnic and nothing else since breakfast. Neale (@ColonelHitch), Vicky and I not only found chips n cheese, but we also found a possible entry for Pun Street on Dave Gorman’s Absolute radio podcast (I think it deserves fail lane, but I have not checked the website yet to see if it already exists). Then finally after a great day, we were needed sleep ready for day 2 of the comedy adventure...

Thank you for reading if you got this far (I do realise this is more for my own future recollection than anything else). Oh and sorry I didn’t mention all of the tweeters I met up with, there were too many of you, and I don’t know all of the twitter names, do say hello though.