Kate Copstick’s Fringe Diary

IAM writing from my isolation tank where I am listening to dubstep on full volume as I promised to do if the Rubberbandits were not on the Foster’s Comedy Award Best Newcomer list.

Turns out they are not even eligible! However, we at the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards have nominated them in both the main award and the Act Most Likely To Make A Million Quid Award. At the time of going to print, I can exclusively reveal that the lads are going for the triple as we have just heard they are going to attempt a Cunning Stunt in time for their inclusion in our final deliberations. I cannot reveal what the lads have planned. All I will say is that they started their careers doing prank phone calls. And, as mentioned above, they are not yet on the radar of the Foster’s Comedy Awards people... you will know by now if they succeed. I do hope they do. This dubstep is giving me an appalling headache.

• FOR the first time in a long time I can wholeheartedly say I am so glad I was here for this Fringe. Although Free Fringe founder Peter Buckley Hill says the New Town venues have suffered, up on the hill, venues have been packed. Niddry Street virtually constitutes a festival all on its own and some great new comedy venues have opened up in the New Town. And to see the arms of the Free Fringe reach out to encompass The Jam House is a real thrill. It has really felt like “the good old days”. Do I sound very old ?

• FOR years I have been criticised as a woman hater. OK, to be honest, most of them tend to irritate me. Too many soi-disant funny women spend too much time excusing the failure of their mediocre performances by claiming comedy is unfair to women. Of course, there are unfairnesses – one need look no further than a Foster’s Comedy Awards list which does not include Susan Calman. But this cannot be a women thing – there are women on the list – so, I hear the soprano cry, maybe it is a lesbian thing. No ladies. It is just a stupidity thing. And stupidity has no gender. Talking of which, it has taken the great Greg Proops (right), or rather, his audience, to persuade me that there is sexism in comedy. Down in Assembly Rooms (George Street), you will find Kristine Levine, a women who has been getting more stick than the average drumkit for talking about her kids in her act. Her kids are fat. And she occasionally asks one of them to “fill up mummy’s glass”. Apparently that is not allowed. Up in Assembly George Square, Proops opens his main show with a glorious attack on the underage. They should be hit frequently, he states. Perhaps their little fingers could be put to good use rolling Daddy a joint. He gets a big fat, round of applause. I loved the material. I’d rather have a cat than a kid. But I know sexism when I see it, sisters…

• THE ghosts of all the Most Reverend the Church of Scotland can muster must have been in an uproar on Wednesday night as Baby Wants Candy took to the stage of the Assembly Hall for 50 Shades Of Grey The Musical. Created in just a couple of weeks and produced by Fringe stalwart Marshall Cordell, it was a huge success. “I was being high-fived all over the place,” says Marshall (no, that is nothing sexual). There is now talk of it going to Vegas. Sadly the chances of the musical being seen elsewhere in the UK are almost zero. The laws on parody are a deal tighter here than in the US and the show narrowly missed being banned as Cordell and William Burdett-Coutts spent Wednesday in legal talks. “It was like being hit with a flame-thrower,” said Cordell. However, lawyers for EL James’s agents very decently allowed a one-off showing with the proviso that proceeds go to charity.