Come to Edinburgh where the streets are paved with opportunity

Posted on January 22, 2012

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It’s been many months since my last update, largely because there’s a final chapter to our year one escapades in the world of Fringe which I couldn’t write about until now.

There was one major omission from my list of Top 10 EdFringe Moments .  During out time in Edinburgh we went out to dinner with a very nice wise man.

The dinner was with Mick Perrin.  Anyone who knows anything about live comedy or about Edinburgh Fringe AT ALL knows that’s a massive big deal.   But if you don’t, suffice it to say that he’s among the biggest and most respected comedy promoters in the world – Bill Bailey, Eddie Izzard, Ross Noble are but a few of the A listers whose tours he’s responsible for.

In short, he came, he saw the show, he liked it and whilst we were in Edinburgh he took us to dinner to discuss coming back next year as one of his acts.  I can’t tell you how excited and proud we are to be not only rated by Mick, but to be one of his acts – as Doug says ‘I’m the cubic ziconia in Mick Perrin’s tray of showbiz diamonds’ – we look at the announcement which has just come out on Mick’s Just For Laughs Landing page and their company blog the feeling is slightly surreal I have to say.

Many people would say that our Edinburgh dream came true.  But the truth is we didn’t expect to be a massive success (we only booked 10 days just to see what it was going to be like) and all we wanted to do was NOT die on our arses.  All our efforts were focused on that, it was only when we got there and we started to sell out and get great reviews that we realised something was really coming together.

But that on its own is not enough …. Edfringe is like playing SuperMario you have to leap over alot of barrels to get to the boss fight at the end,by which time you’re exhausted – but if you win, you get to the next level…. and that next level has totally different challenges … and comes under the category of ‘uber-exciting-scary and even harder work’.

However I will end my year one blog on this last point …. many people want to know how we persuaded one of the biggest comedy promoters in the world to come and see a Free Fringe show above a room in a pub – simple – WE JUST ASKED.

Posted in: Progress report, What we've learned