Juggling

As a performer, the fringe is always about juggling, and only occasionally in the literal, street-performance sense.

For me, this juggling has been between my show, Frances Ruffelle's show and the various projects that I've got on the go back in London. I've been doing lots of nice extra gigs in support of my show, including a couple of great gigs at Robin Ince's science-themed show where I shared a bill with actual scientists (as opposed to Philosophy and Literature graduates such as myself) like Richard Wiseman and Simon Singh. Lovely stuff.

Frances' show is going well, though unfortunately I'll miss performing with her at the various promotional gigs she's doing around town as they sadly clash with my own gigs. Sadie Frost was in last night and we accompanied her and Frances singing a duet, which was fun. It looks like it might be another year where I don't manage to appear on Nicholas Parson's show, though. Damn.

Juggling stuff at home has been trickiest of all. The band that I run, the Hackney Colliery Band, is on a kind of summer holiday as lots of people (myself clearly included) are away from London in August, but we have lots of potentially exciting enquiries coming in off the back of our single release in July, and that combined with various other gig offers means that I seem to be spending as much time managing my diary as I do doing festival things. My poor acting agent has also trying to pin me down for a week about whether I want to take a job that doesn't start until next year, and it's been very difficult to make a decision  because it currently feels like I'm going to be stuck in Edinburgh forever, trapped in a kind of groundhog day, only with more pints of Tetley and pies.

In fact, this weird intrusion of the outside world has sent me into a bit of a spin. My show went well enough today, but I feel like I've not been in full festival mode since spending the morning on the phone to London. It seems that reality and festival reality do not coexist happily.

Anyway, off to do another show with Frances, then on to perform an improvised musical about crabs taking over the world with Robin Ince, Stewart Lee, Bridget Christie, Kevin Eldon, Josie Long and goodness knows who else. That should get me back in the festival spirit.

- by Steve Pretty

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