Kate Copstick: I hope I might get Marshall Cordell in the stocks

By Kate Copstick
Published on 18/08/2012 15:46

IT IS that time of the festival where people sidle up to me, eyebrows dancing a cha cha, to ask if I have “heard any buzz” about the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. And do you know, this year, I haven’t.

Not a buzz, not a hum. Of course, the comedy intelligentsia (if that is not an oxymoron) know that Eddie Pepitone’s shows at the Tron are a masterclass in the art of The Rant (see page 3 for more), and that Susan Calman marches at the head of a combined supporters’ army of Scots and Women. Vikki Stone (below) and The Boy With Tape On His Face can barely be seen on their posters behind strips of stars. Down on the Free Fringe, huge audiences queue for ages to make sure of being squeezed into the Canon’s Gait’s basement to see Yianni’s Numb And Number. But there is no obvious funny front-runner. Having said which, if the Rubberbandits are not on one of the lists, I will sit in an isolation tank listening to dubstep at full volume for an hour. And it would be strange but wonderful to see a performer like Trevor Noah there. A bit like seeing Naomi Campbell on Britain’s Next Top Model.

• THE choice is not any more obvious for those of us on the prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards committee. Hurtling towards decision time and still looking for that explosion of comic originality. We are inundated with Cunning Stunts for that award. And I am rooting (although I shouldn’t tell you this) for Trevor Noah for The Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid. The Awards show – generally a complete shambles – in honour of Malcolm is on Friday from 11pm at The Counting House.

• I SAW Milo McCabe’s excellent show Kenny Moon This is Your Life. The show co-stars his father. But, he tells me, people won’t believe that the bloke on stage is actually his father. Well it is. And I know because some of the TV clips from a show called The Warehouse, which document parts of the TV career of Mike McCabe, were produced by me. Quite a shock when they popped up on stage in the Gilded Balloon.

• I AM looking forward to my trip to Adult Conceptions in Drummond Street. They have very kindly agreed to lend Baby Wants Candy a load of SM kit for their one-off production of 50 Shades of Grey The Musical. Producer Marshall Cordell and I will be rootling around in the basement section of the shop (Fem2Dom) where they have some really rather gorgeous equipment. I am hoping I might get Marshall in the stocks before the morning is out. The show is on Wednesday at the Assembly Hall and the thunder of the Tattoo fireworks that night will be nothing to the sound of members of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland birling in their graves as a thrash of paddles and canes, crops and tawses take the stage. Come along. Bring your own tawse tho’.

• STEWART Lee is always worth listening to. And he has been vocal this month. Sadly, his passionate stance against commercialisation might be doing his own box office damage…

Place : George St Outside The Spiegeltent
Woman 1: Ah doan’t like the tent here. Ah liked it oan the Meadows.

Woman 2: Aye. It’s a too businessy here. It’s… sterile.

Woman 1: It’s a commercial.

Woman 2: D’ye thing that Stewart Lee wis right?

Woman 1: Nah. He’s jist a cynic.

Woman 2: D’ye no fancy seein’ his show tho’?

Woman 1: Aye, awright

Woman 2: (A puzzled pause) Whit section o’ the brochure d’ye think he’d be under?