Luminary Yum

Luminarium Mirazozo, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

I did a photo inside the Mirazozo Luminarium yesterday - it's a big inflatable walk-in sculpture - so obviously I took my own camera in with me as well.

All the colours are created by natural light hitting the outside of the structure. It's stunning. It's in George Square Gardens so if you're in Edinburgh, I recommend popping in. It's very relaxing.

The photoshoot was for The Scotsman. I'm not sure when it'll be out. The show is going very well. The first three were sold out and I think tonight is too. I might be wrong. But it's going that way. I'm having fun.

Here goes...

Microphone, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Heading up to Edinburgh today. Gulp.

Elastic Time

Royal Type, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

It seems like it was just a few days ago, that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival seemed to be a distant object, just entering the horizon.

And now all of a sudden it feels like it is starting any tiiiimmmmee.... now. I mean... now.

A full theatre is a fun theatre. If a theatre isn't full, all performers want the audience at the front. It isn't just that you want people closer to you, it's that you want the audience not to be contemplating the empty seats.

An audience isn't just a collection of individuals, they become one entity. Especially with comedy when they all laugh at the same time because the same idea landed in all their heads at the same time.

That means that when the place is full, the back row feel close to the action because they are connected to all the people sitting in the row in front who are connected to the people in the row in front of them and so on.

Well I think the same is true of time and a full diary. When I was doing my first previews Edinburgh felt like it was ages away in part because I knew I had a trip to LA to take care of between then and the festival. It was only 5 days... but in terms of connection, it was like having a few empty rows. It made the back row seem miles away.

But now it's imminent. In fact it's practically started. I do four more previews. Tonight and tomorrow in Shoreham, Thursday and Friday in Taunton... and then I have Saturday to pack my bags because I do the radio show on Sunday morning and train up to Edinburgh on the Monday. (I do technical things in the venue on Tueday and start the show on Wednesday with my first in-Edinburgh-preview aka a cheap ticket.)

So now the diary is full, the back row seems close. It's in the same room as me. It's now. It's started.

It hasn't. But it has.

I'm excited.

Back from LA

Encounter at LAX, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

I'm back from LA... and have to get my head back into show mode. I have a preview in Maidenhead tonight.

The glamour never stops.

The Standard On Sunset.

The Standard, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

London - Los Angeles - Maidenhead - New Greenham (New preview gigs)

I'm in Los Angeles. The ten hour flight was actually quite nice. The five hour war of attrition that was the queues in LAX weren't. There are lots of different queues and lots of people in tight trousers shepherding you into this or that line. I did as I was told. Only I chose a very bad line.

From the back of the line it was impossible to see where the front of the line was. It emerged part way between several booths, two of which were occupied by Customs Officers. But only one of them was calling people from the front of our particular line. The other was looking to a different queue... one that was already being serviced by three other officers. The line to our left was also leading to multiple officers. Only our line was leading to only one officer.

But by the time that had become clear I was more than half way in. I'd already been queuing for 90 minutes. Leaving the queue to join the back of a new one wasn't really an option. None of them were moving fast. It's just all of them were moving faster.

There were rumblings of discontent from my fellow visitors. Screams of complaint were made. Quite something in an airport. Nobody wants to upset the people who decide whether or not you can enter a country after all. One man insisted to us that our line was leading to two different officers as if we were imagining what our own eyes could see us. He wandered by three times and had the same conversation. Before finally deciding that we might not be making it up and going to take a look himself. He then told the second officer that he was meant to be looking to our line for his next visitor and he duly obliged. Problem solved.

Except that he only processed two more people before clocking off. Fifteen minutes later a new officer turned up in his stead. And proceeded to invite people from the neighbouring line and not ours. Uproar broke out again. A couple of people were close to storming the barricades. There were what can only be described as hollers. Yes. Hollers.

Eventually a supervisor came along and was yelled at by five different irate passengers. You could see that she thought we were just a rowdy bunch who needed to understand that this process took time at first... but then slowly it dawned on her that there was sincere pain in those eyes and that we really had been in that line for three hours. In three hours I had travelled ten yards. She took us seriously. She asked who had been on the British Airways flight... a flurry of hands went up. Mine included. She pulls a handful of us out of the line and walked us - with begrudging apologies - straight to the front of some other lines. Such a relief.

Oh yeah... and then I picked up my suitcase and had to join the 40 minute queue to leave the airport. I've never seen one of those before. The journey from plane to hotel ended up taking up half the time of the flight itself. Ridiculous.

Having got here I checked my email to discover that I've got the chance to put in two more Edinburgh previews. I'm a firm believer that you can't do too many - and the four that were already in had sold out so I figured it was worth trying to squeeze another couple in. It's short notice so I hope we can still shift enough tickets to make them worthwhile.

They're on July 20th and July 21st. The first is in Maidenhead - at the Norden Farm Arts Centre (details) and the second is at the New Greenham Arts (details).

Thanks Folkestone

The Quarterhouse in Folkestone turns out to be a lovely venue and a great place for my first three previews. Doing a new show for the first time is an exciting and nerve-racking leap in the dark. The audience treated me gently and it was fun.

I like doing previews back to back like this... it becomes a sort of bootcamp. You do the show then spend the day changing it, then do it, then change it and so on. So it was three days of 8hrs cooped up in a hotel room powerpointing - yes, that is a verb - followed by a show each evening.

While the core material in each show was the same I did throw in a small amount of different stuff from night to night. But more usefully the order, the structure and some of the way in which it was put on screen were changed and I learned a whole lot about what belongs where. So thanks to all who came.

I was staying in Sandgate and went for a brief stroll on Wednesday morning - the only time I really saw anything of the area - and where I saw this sign...


















I was only there for three days.