History
This was the White Belly at the Underbelly in Edinburgh at around 10am this morning.
So is this. And this is Chris, our tech man.
And this is me and Richard, at 10.20am, before the audience turned up, wondering if, indeed, they would. This was, after all, a free event (apart from the 80p handling fee if you booked online); it was at 10.30am, on a week day, in Scotland, and it was pouring with rain outside. Would anyone really beat those insurmountable odds and turn up to see two grown men ramble into an Apple Mac laptop for an hour?
Yes! What's more, it went surprisingly well. This is surely the very hardest of our hardcore. And we rambled at them for an hour, and almost ran out of things from the newspapers to talk about, until Richard riffed on the subject of the Tempting Tattie baked potato shop, which he has been to every year of his Edinburgh Fringe life. His evil plan was to get everybody to come with us after the show - that's about 80 people who genuinely could not think of anything better to be doing at 10.30 on a Wednesday morning, not even stay inside, in the dry - and to clean the Tempting Tattie out of potatoes and orange cheese and mango chutney. Although the audience promised to help fulfil his Andy Kaufman-style performance-art prank, actually only about a dozen people trudged after us across half of Edinburgh, in the rain. But these people deserve your respect. It would have been so easy for them to slip away while Richard and I weren't looking, but they didn't. Well, one of them did. But most of them didn't, and dutifully queued up for a tattie. I love these people.The podcast, number 25, will be up in the usual place later on today. Whether you were part of this historic moment in podcast history or not, have a listen. The wankers who complain about our sound quality will notice that we are actually using professional microphones, albeit put through a PA and then recorded on the in-built microphone on my Mac.
Stop Press. Here are some nice onstage pics taken by Vik Peek (the last one is of me taking the photo of the audience with my MacBook at the end of the gig - you can actually see them on the screen - it's a mediaquake!):
posted by Andrew Collins @ 12:32 PM
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51 Comments:
Ahh!!!
I want it now!
This makes me even more cross with my friends in Edinburgh who have decided to have a baby instead of putting me up for the festival as usual. Am going to have to stop reading Edinburgh coverage or I will end up having murderous thoughts about stupid baby Elspeth!
Wish I could have been there what with working in Edinburgh but what with working in Edinburgh unfortuntely I couldn't be there. Look forward to listening to it later. Hope you were able to sit on that hard chair without any discomfort.
Yes, really enjoyed the live podcast sir. I, like yourself, was worried that doing it in front of a live audience would perhaps affect the rambling shambolic and much-beloved 'house style' but you seemed to manage well.
Unfortunately, I'm far too grown-up and sensible to wander along to a potato shop, in the rain - but I trust it went well.
A very enjoyable way to spend a wet Wednesday.
Charlie Mingles
(The UK's First Primate Internet Millionaire)
xxx
PS: youre much better looking in real life Andrew. I say that in a non-bumming man-to-man sense, of course.
Charlie
xxx
I'm setting off for Edinburgh NOW, 14.33 on Wednesday. Nice timing. I feel like the Unlucky Alf of the Collings and Herrin fan club.
"we are actually using professional microphones, albeit put through a PA and then recorded on the in-built microphone on my Mac."
So you were bootlegging your own gig?
Punk rock!
Cheers for a surreal morning in wet edinburgh. A dose of comedy in the morning sets you up for the day. So much so I didn't need a potato, sorry.
Bearing in mind the home-made lo-fi nature of the broadcast, wouldnt it be more appropriate to change the name to 'Shodcast'?
(My lawyers have just pointed out that this term is the Intellectual Property of The Charlie Mingles Global Media Corporation, August 2008.)
Charlie
xxx
Hi Mr Collings, im a big fan of Collings and Herrin podcast (how you ever managed to get your name before Richards i don't know....he's such a child i supprised his toys didn't fly in all directions) anyway a friend of mine Joel Horwood is at Edimburgh with his play http://www.broadwaybaby.com
/fringe/reviews
/icaughtcrabsinwalberswick
If your there try and see it.
Cheers
Tom Barrett.
Well done Andrew. Sad to say I was actually waiting with anticipation of the podcast. I kept refreshing iTunes every few mins until it came! There was a real energy with that audience I don’t think it could have gone better. Its amazing how Herrin comes alive with a live audience. Looking forward to your thoughts on it next week. For that matter will there be one next?
Majorjuggs
There will be one next Friday (Aug 15)- we recorded it this afternoon, despite being full of baked potato, and put it in the reserve tank.
Then I am going on a well-earned holiday. The next as-live podcast will be recorded on Thursday Aug 28.
It was great doing the podcast live, and we'd like to do another, perhaps in England? But it's not really something we can charge for, so we'll have to work out some way of doing it that doesn't incur major costs. (It was easy enough to work out up here, with Rich already on at the Underbelly and there being a large, available audience in town.)
Hi Andrew
I fear it may be me that you thought had slipped away during the tattie-trek! I'd been right behind you all the way up until the crossroads just before the shop, only to find I had no bloody money in my wallet! What an arse! One quick sprint up the royal mile to a cash machine and was back just in time to join the tail end of the queue and wave you goodbye as you left. This unfortunately meant that I missed the bloke's face as everyone trooped in, but the female assistant had a face like a smacked backside, so I guess the joke was lost on her.
Thanks for a great morning and for being such top-notxh hosts.
Doug
Thanks once again
I would have lent you three quid, Doug! (Glad you enjoyed it.)
I wouldn't dream to have even asked you for a sub Andrew, although thanks for offering. You'd already provided a free morning of entertainment. I would have made it back sooner had it not been for the pissing rain and the aimless wanderings of all the fucking tourists!! ;-)
Glad I made it back before you left though.
Hope you have a good night tonight and a safe trip home tomorrow.
Doug
Enjoying it right now - cheers guys.
If I might be permitted to be a wanker for a moment, the sound quality really is very poor. It really feels like I'm listening to a bootleg.
I do like the thought of you two sitting on stage with your Apple Macs though.
You both clearly benefited from having the audience there. I think you should have bought them all a potato to thank them.
The things your fans do for you...
Sorry - would have come for a tattie too but we had to travel back home and had a car ticket that was going to expire! Had to make do with a Subway sandwich in the car, which I'm sure wasn't half as nice!
Sorry also for walking in a bit late - had been packing up the sodden tent at the campsite!
Enjoyed the recording - thanks for having us!
I just listened to the podcast - really great, cheers guys! I wish I could have been there at the recording, looks a lot of fun.
Hopefully you'll do a live one in London sometime? Perhaps we could all come to Richard's attic? he he
I was all up for a Tattie-visit, but had gone down to the Box Office to see what else was on, and must have missed the tramping hordes of acolytes as they went past. So I had a nice bacon and guacamole burger somewhere else.
Mind you, Simon Munnery did take his audience to Arthur Smith's art gallery after his show to finish off the bits he hadn't managed in the hour, where I had to read out something derogatory about Rich's show that a Munnery-attender had written.
Has a strange sense of completeness to it, no?
No? Ach, I was up at 6:30 for you people. I'm going to bed.
Andrew,
We were there! And we thought it went really well. My only complaint is about the sound quality of the actual podcast but i will keep that to myself for fear of having jacket potato stuffed down my throat in a revenge mission.
We also made the trip to Terrifying Tatties or whatever it was called. The woman behind the counter was not pleased at all. Either that or she was Scottish. Oh. Right.
Anyway, cheers for the free laughs.
These people who complain about the sound quality of the 'cast, I bet the watch the wire on their poxy i-phone's tiny screens, drink stella and have no mates. Going to save the show for a train journey on friday, I'll be the one smirking on the oxford train 10.30 ish.
Thanks Andrew, i had a great time this morning. My potato was lush too. Have to agree with Doug though and say that the lady in the shop was one of the stroppiest people i've come across in Edinburgh so far! Luckily i was served by the man and he chatted away to me about Richard, his show and how we all knew him.
Anyway, had a great time, cheers
Sorry about the lady in the shop, she was out of our jurisdiction.
In case you missed it, Andrew was on some new (I think) radio 4 thing last night called the music group (again I think, I was driving at the time)
Celebs pick a song each and then chat about it. Andrew managed to pick something so down it made the radio 4 appeal sound cheery.
Anyway it should be on listen again if you missed it.
That was The Music Group, a repeat of the show I recorded in Brighton earlier this year. Nice that's it on again so soon. The track I chose was One Hundred Years by The Cure.
I listened to it last night and it sounded like it went well. Shame that Richard Herring's microphone was trying to explode though!
Was interesting to hear the change in dynamic, almost a reverse of the normal state of play with Richard interrupting all the time! Clear to see that's his natural habitat though.
There's also a slight chance I know the lawyer there you spoke to there as well, which made me feel closer to it in an almost unbelievably pathetic way but also slightly sad as I had hoped I might be the only fan from such a boring profession
If you ever feel like doing a live one in Manchester they often have all day workshop things at the contact theatre so people would be there already and you wouldn't have to charge
Andrew,
Listening to the podcast. Very good but may I make one point? Can you stop saying Scotland? I mean stop referring to Edinburgh as Scotland. Actually, you may have form here as Eastenders used to repeatedly have their characters go "up to Scotland". It's quite a big place. I'm no expert but I think it constitutes about a third of the UK mainland land-mass.
Like, if you were in Dundee and you were going to, say, Grimsby for a holiday (unlikely) you wouldn't say "I'm going down to England" would you?
You think me a pedant? You could be right.
Sorry,
Musters.
Musters, I fear you are wasting good energy on the wrong thing. I use the controversial term "Scotland" as a celebration of Scotland. Just as if I told you I was going to Spain on holiday, as well as being geographically accurate, it would be celebration of Spain. Imagine if I said I was going to Africa! That's an even bigger land mass, but it would still be accurate. I was, until I left this morning, in Edinburgh and Scotland. I like both city and country. Also, I don't live in either of them. I was on holiday. I was excited about that fact. You can't urinate on my excitement by trying to pin some spurious ethnic/cartographical generalisation charge on me!
I've made a career out of wasting good energy on the wrong thing.
This email I just sent illustrates this:
"Actually we did wee this before. Here's the solution from the original ticket 240434"
Boring, boring, boring. Someone just pulled me up on my (almost) amusing typo and I replied saying that I should recall the email and change "wee" to "urinate". Now that would be funny.
And now, coincidentally, you, quite rightly, chide me for urinating over you. Or your excitement, anyway.
But look here! If you were in Catalonia hopefully you wouldn't say Spain...
I might.
Earlier this year I called people from Northern Ireland "Irish" rather than "Northern Irish" in a Guardian blog and got into trouble for that, even though by doing so I was merely, naively, uniting Ireland through the use of words!
I really think you should do more of these "live" podcasts Andrew.
In my opinion, you should not feel that you have to do them for nothing. I'd have happily paid a few quid to come to yesterday's recording. You should at the least being looking to cover your expenses, as it doesn't seem right for you to have to be out of pocket to entertain us.
Would I be right to assume that it is a bit nerve-wracking though, compared to sitting in Richard's loft (although it felt like we were all sitting in Richard's Anderson Shelter!), thus resulting in a different style of podcast?
Doug
Can both of you stop starting sentences with the letter 'A' please
I do that all the time. It winds (some) of them up no end. They'll correct me and claim to be "British" at which I always think of the Ali G line "so is you over here on 'oliday then?". But I don't say anything cos what's the point? And the other lot will simply deny the existence of a place called "Northern Ireland".
You can keep trying to unite that country via the medium of BLOG but I fear you may be wasting good energy on the wrong thing.
Hi Andrew,
The podcast was fantastic. Anyone complaining about the sound quality is missing the point somehow, I think. It's far better to listen to something sounding live and raw (in a good way) than some over-polished production.
Anyway, I couldn't be there I'm afraid, due to living and working many miles away.
Feel free to pop up to Liverpool to record a podcast in my house whenever you want though. I'll provide wheat-free snacks and keep quiet throughout!
Keep up the good work.
Chris
I think the sound quality is fine usually and obviously it makes it endearing. Was a bit hard to hear what richard was saying though at times. I dunno maybe that was the aim?
ps I forgot to say but my favourite part was andrew's story about his pigeon comrade - I had a similar one once but it was like a human/bird version of that thing where you are walking towards someone down a corridor and you do that sort of dance trying to get out of each other's way! I had to punch it in the beak in the end
Re: Musters' Scotland / Edinburgh thing.
I wonder if this is a Celtic phenomenon? My (Welsh) wife gets very cross whenever someone says they're going "to Wales" on holiday, which they say quite a lot here in Liverpool. She usually asks them where they're going specifically, to which they say "North Wales" or "South Wales" which is not much better.
And it's all a bit hypocritical, as whenever anyone asks her where we're going on holiday this year she says "Brittany", which is true, but it's not exactly specific is it? I've started saying "Le Camping St Gilles, about 1km south of Benodet, close to Quimper in South Western Brittany" just to annoy her... That's why she loves me. Possibly.
David, Liverpool
PS Haven't listened to the 'cast yet. Saving it for our holiday in Le Camping St Gilles...
I was walking right behind you, Doug, and I fear I was the person who reported your sudden disappearance to Mr Collins.
(This was just before I had a slightly awkward and stilted conversation with that same Mr Collins about Northamptonshire, the tediousness of which may have been the catalyst for him and his colleague to scarper as fast as they could...)
By the way, the tattie itself was marvellous. I went back and had another today.
You can never underestimate how sensitive the Scots can be about any perceived slight (and I speak as one myself, although now thankfully in exile and not having to put up with it any more).
John
Great show, poor sound quality, but a better show because of this.
If you feel like taking this show on the road so to speak then you can use my attic.
John, glad to hear that you've renounced your Scoticity. Do you speak like Gordon Ramsay now?
No offence.
Great stuff!
Got some very strange looks from fellow passengers on the bus this morning when laughing out loud!
Cluracan - be thankful you weren't on a bus in Canada at the time!!!! Who knows what might have happened? :-)
Doug
I am about to go on holiday. This means I won't be moderating any comments for the next week, although you're welcome to leave them in the tank. A break will be good for all of us. But a C&H podcast, already recorded, will go up on Friday in the usual place.
Toodle-oo.
I've just written a blog entry for podcast 26 and auto-published it so that it appears, as if by magic, on Friday, Aug 15.
Fingers crossed, then.
If you, like me, are fed up with "rip-off" Britain with all it's whining Liberals sullying the water for all us blinkered racist bigots, you may like to read on.
I am Richard Littlejohn and I hate anything that is mildly different from my increasingly outdated views on a society that only really existed in Enid Blyton books.
Afterall, it was only last week that we didn't have to lock our doors, the milkman wasn't a terrorist, children had respect and you could be racist to minorities and laugh about it as it was funny.
There are many things that annoy me about the modern world, immigration, shoe theft, one armed men murdering wives and lastly, but by no means leastly, Perverts.
We really should make a stand on perverts and send them back from where they came from, Pervertia probably.
Perverts ruin our lovely society, pure and simple, especially the ones that eat plops.
I once read about a man that liked to fart into a welly and then smell it, the sick pervert would get off on this and then eat a Budgie wrapped in bin bags (him, not the Budgie), what a sick world we live in these days.
Not to mention that man who dressed as a lady and thought it was funny, I used to see him in ladies clothes laughing about it and he would be covered in make up. In fact, it became such an obsession to him that many observers felt that that he was in danger of becoming incredibly boring, and sadly, it happened, no one cared any more about the man-lady, even though he was convinced that he was being "out there" and whacky. Yes, that is right, Eddie Izzard, I am talking about you, sicko. (Did you see how I did that? I am so clever)
What is wrong with liking women anyway? To me, there is no finer sight than a bird with big bouncing bristols serving me a pint in my local, there is nothing more British than that, not some mincing Gordon serving me a gin and tonic with out stretched little fingers, I wont stand for that, I know what is going on there, don't worry about that, they all obviously want to have sex with me, but I wont let them, that is for sure, I like girls, especially exploited page 3 girls with big knock knocks, there really is nothing better than that.
Women would have you believe that I am sexist, but it simply isn't true, I just don't like women, there is nothing sexist about that, its nothing personal, it's just that I see them as a piece of meat, I am sure that they are nice and that, I just don't see what all the fuss is about regarding their personalities. It is a scientific fact that they are all stupid, that is why you will never have one writing an ill informed column in a tabloid, sorry girls, but it is true. Well, apart from Jane Moore and Lorraine Kelly, but they aren't really women anyway, they just look like one.
The worst pervert I can think of is that one who was found in bed with 2 chickens and a goose, that is sick, he said he couldn't help it, but I don't believe him. He needs stringing up, though, he'll probably enjoy that.
In my many years of journalism, I have had to cover some sick stories, but also some good "feel good" stories about cats stuck in trees, old ladies being helped across the road and war.
If these perverts got their way the cats would be in a tree being filmed felating a squirrel, old ladies would be having free love on a zebra crossing and there would be no war at all, I don't even want to imagine that world, mind you, they would probably all like page 3, so every cloud does have a silver lining I suppose.
So, to conclude, it is wrong to be a pervert, now, come on Britain, let's organise a protest against them, my idea involves, Sam Fox, topless in a tank, storming the gates of Pervetia.
If the kids (middle aged bigots) are divided they will never be united!
is that how it goes? I don't know anymore.
Re: The cloned dogs story.
Have you seen this? The woman may be a runaway criminal...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1042506/A-cloned-dog-Mormon-mink-lined-handcuffs-tantalising-mystery.html
Not that I read the mail, just found the link on Boing Boing.
I use to study in Stirling. I had a blast in Stirling and Edinburgh, going to gigs and just enjoying the way of life north of the border.
If I was up there now, I would have gone to the podcast and I would have paid for it
The picture with Richard pointing to his watch. I kind of thing he looks like Charlie Boorman from The Long Way Down. Before Richard takes offense, I will say Boorman is a bit chunkier than Richard, however with his hair and that expression it makes me think of Charlie.
Finally listened to the 'cast and thought it was one of the best yet.
Pity you're not doing another for a few weeks - Booger's clonemama seems to have a colourful past (which she apparently denies) but won't be topical by the time you return.
Hullo there - just found this blog and it's mighty fine.
Nice to see someone who has actually managed to escape Northampton...I try...
Anyway, are you keeping up with the local music scene in your home town? We've actually got one now!
Most of it's skinny jeans indie rubbish, but some of it's skinny jeaned indie and actually good.
Hannah
Did anyone else think that when speaking in front of a live studio audience, Richard sounded quite like Stewart Lee?
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