This week I got to chat to my guilty pleasures appearing at this year’s MICF. I see what they do as often as I can, often alone, at nighttime, regardless of whether they’re doing a show or not...
My delights are:
Twice Barry Award Nominated, Moosehead Award Recipient (they give them to everyone, myself and Asher included) Lawrence Mooney with this show: 'An Indecisive Bag of Donuts.'
Comedy institution, another Barry nominated individual and the a women I’m planning on having a drink with at The Vic Hotel after her show Denise Scott - 'Regrets'
And EDINBURGH COMEDY AWARDS BEST NEWCOMER AWARD NOMINEE and Barry Nominee as well (I only noticed the pattern AKA I have good taste) Asher Treleaven. He’s also doing a show called 'Matadoor' (and being half-Spanish myself it’s Latino law I pimp his show).
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So here we all are, together...
AT: ... on the Internet.
LM: Under the vast big top of comedic talent annually convened for the MICF. There's musical comedy, slapstick, impersonators, characters, theatre, stand up and precious audience discerningly thumbing the guide trying to make a decision whilst hired gun publicists yell pick her, pick him - she's cutting edge, he's from overseas.
DS: in one room…to see Denise Scott performing her new show ‘Regrets.’ Isn’t it exciting and oh so refreshing to see a performer with such a lived in face, up there on the stage, making us laugh uproariously at things that happened way back, in the days before pantihose were invented and communication involved two tin cans and a string.
In a nutshell, what’s so good about your show? Honestly, how can your work get any better than it already is?
AT: This year my new show is called Matadoor I think it could just be the best vaguely Spanish themed post-modern show about racism that you’ve ever seen.
LM: My show speaks to everybody about the delicious absurdity of procrastination. Postponing life is how procrastinate translates in Russian. We all know what we should be doing but we find myriad distractions to avoid it. Procrastination is like any seriously destructive addiction, drugs, booze, gambling, over eating, sexual obsession; it helps you to avoid your reality. Well I make that funny.
DS: You’ve no idea how often I have asked myself that very question whilst lying by the lap pool, drinking a morning martini, talking on the phone to my Hollywood agent and being given a rub down by my privately employed masseuse. In a nutshell, seeing a fifty five year old woman on stage banging on about regrets, including a sexy regret, surely makes for an irresistible and unique night out.
If could have anyone in the world attend your show who would it be? Or who has been the most amazing person to attend one of your shows?
AT: I would like to have Nick Cave at a show and make him laugh at least once, I saw him a few years back lurking about at the comedy festival, riding on ferris wheels alone and eating cotton candy. I’m hoping I can lure him in this year, or at least one of the Bad Seeds.
LM: I'll go for someone living because I hate it when people answer these sorts of questions with a dead person. It ruins the conceit of the question. Julian Assange, I'd love to hear him laugh.
DS: I would love Madonna to attend and explain to the press that she wanted to see my show because she wanted to learn about the sheer magic that can be created by a lone woman on stage with nothing but a microphone.
Who do you think could benefit from seeing your show or from advice from you in general?
AT: Young blinkered types on the cusp of becoming centrist right-wingers and avid Alan Jones fans. Last year I met a young woman at the absentee voting office in Edinburgh who was about to vote Liberal and preference the Climate Change Sceptics Party. By the time we had driven from the office back to George IV Bridge I had convinced her otherwise.
LM: At the beginning of the show I ask are there any self confessed procrastinators in the audience and nearly every hand goes up. 99% of people think they are procrastinating. Which means everybody has an important project, maybe the important life-changing project that they are putting off. Anybody involved in the creative process seems to embrace this show like a long lost friend.
DS: I have to be honest and say no one BUT that’s no reason not to attend.
How long have you been around? Why persist?
AT: I’ve been in showbiz since 2001 and I performed my first solo comedy festival show in 2008, I’m now unable to do anything else.
LM: This is my 13th Comedy Festival and I have been doing Stand Up for 17 years. Why do I persist? Because in the words of Richard Gere in An Officer and A Gentleman, "I got nowhere else to go." He then weeps and keens like a trapped animal, which is what I do most days under my desk.
DS: Re first part of question: “Mind your own business.” I have to maintain some sense of mystery. Re: Why have I persisted? The answer is because I can’t stand giving up on anything I start until I feel as though I’ve mastered it. And I’m still a long way off achieving that goal.
Why do you think I, Lou Sanz picked you guys are my guilty pleasure favourites?
AT: Because you’re a comedy ponce with excellent taste.
LM: I think that you see something of a like mind in me Sanz. We both have pretensions to high-minded concepts and the art of it all. That and I think you fully dug the show.
DS: Because, as young lass, you have respect for your elders and because you want to think and believe that there’s hope for you to have a long lasting career.
If you could fan-pash any other comic attending the festival who would it be? And why?
AT: Ewww, comedians are not for fan pashing.
LM: I take it fan-pash is a metaphoric pash or is it just a plain old adolescent, shopping centre tongue swirler. Either way I would always fan pash Daniel Kitson. He's fooocken amazing.
DS: Fan-pash? You kids are crazy! What’s a fan pash for fuck’s sake? (Thought I’d throw in a swear word in an attempt to connect with the young folk.) Don’t you understand there are over 380 comics in the festival? If I pick one to fan pash, that will leave 379 comics feeling wretched and crying out: “What about me?” No, I won’t be coerced into such insensitive shenanigans.
If you want to add anything here... go ahead
AT: “Uproariously hilarious” ***** - The Mirror (UK)
LM: I had a dream... I did have a dream the other night but it wasn't about Black Civil rights so I feel that it would be trivial to even talk about it right now.
In fact it was the opposite of civil rights, I'd tied somebody up for my own pleasure and I'm not sure if it was consensual... I had a dream.
DS: “Big hearted. Shamelessly entertaining” - The Age.
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