After a disappointing show today (Gig 141), what better way to recover than to inflict Terry Dowling onto the Edinburgh Fringe?
I’ve not done any guest spots during the run so far, so I was delighted to be asked by Red Redmond to do a turn at this afternoon’s Dead Cat Comedy Club. I was itching to give Terry a run out, but as he’s pretty odd, I gave Red the choice between him and me doing stand up. He messaged me after today’s show to say that he was happy for me to do either, so I had a couple of hours to grab something to eat and re-familiarise myself with Terry’s set.
I wasn’t nervous before going on, but I also wasn’t really sure what would happen. Most of Terry’s appearances have been at SOS Comedy, where people are expecting that sort of thing, but there’s an inherently random nature to an Edinburgh audience. I was aware that it might be a complete disaster, but it was an exciting risk to take.
For those of you not familiar with Terry, the act is someone who is being forced into stand up by an overbearing mother, despite the fact that he neither likes nor understands comedy. Each of his bits are his interpretations of different types of comedy that he may or may not have seen on television. Many of the bits don’t really make sense until they reach their conclusion, where the audience, hopefully, realises what he was trying to do. When it works, it’s great, but, despite him being ludicrous, there can be enough of an element of doubt as to whether this is on purpose or not for some audience members.
In the end, it was really enjoyable. Terry blundered through the opening of his set (do remember that this is me blundering on purpose, though), and there was a nice mix in the audience between those who were bemused and those who really went with it. Lots of the bits are largely improvised around themes, and there’s an amazing sense of freedom to just be Terry for 10 minutes. The time flew by, and it was a relief to get Terry’s official Edinburgh debut out of the way.
Dead Cat Comedy Club is running twice a day: 16:00 @ Opium on Cowgate, and 23:00 @ Globe Bar on Niddry Street. Today had a cracking line up for a free show (even if I include myself), so get yourself along to one of the shows if you can.
