Thoughts of Me

I have realised that after 27 years of marriage I may have brainwashed my husband or at the very least wiped out his past memories. He told me that the inner voice that everyone has, you know the voice that reminds you to shut the door or zip up your fly, has been replaced from his voice to MINE!
I now occupy a space inside his head that tells him to ‘Go pee’ ‘Go make tea’ and ‘Don’t talk, she is busy’ that’s a result as far as I am concerned.
How exciting. I hope I don’t tell him to strangle me in my sleep.

Ashley is back to normal and her room looks like Hiroshima post bomb and I believe my entire coffee mug set lives in there with various states of penicillin type fungus growing slowly. I don’t actually want to think about it but I know I must go on a cup hunt and rescue them before they manage to develop a cure for some unknown strain of Asian flu or Foot and Mouth disease. I opened her door yesterday and I am sure I saw a clumpy sad Buffalo stomp around the knickers and bra’s that are strewn all over the floor, it must be eating the left over pizza that is dehydrating on the window ledge beside her DVD collection.

I have no idea what goes on in that room, it’s like Narnia in there.

“Don’t go in there” my husband warned me.

“Was that my voice in your head that told you to tell me that?” I asked him.

“Shut up Janey, stop being horrible” he snapped at me “She is entitled to her privacy” he added.

“Yes she is” I agreed “But she is not allowed to start a bio dome project or city zoo in my flat”

“There are no animals or bio hazards in there, you are being over imaginative” he explained as he led me away from her Door of Doom.

“When she gets a boyfriend she will clean it up” husband said.

“She doesn’t want a boyfriend and never has had a boyfriend and if she did have one he would get lost in there; do you think she hates men?” I spoke quietly.

“I can hear both of you” Ashley screamed “I will never get a boyfriend because of you mum, you scare men way and when they see you do comedy they think I am psycho because of the things you say about me on stage, now go away or I swear to God I will adopt a clutch of scabby disease ridden cats and give you all fleas”

I may to have to rethink my mothering skills, I hope I haven’t stopped her from getting a boyfriend; I was married at her age. She is a beautiful talented young woman and is fed up people assuming she is a lesbian because she hasn’t dated yet.

She did tell me she saw the most gorgeous man in the world in Amsterdam, she watched him walk away and now every man she ever meets will have to be up the mysterious man in Amsterdam’s standard. How hard will that be?
There is nothing worse than having fallen for a man who has never actually spoken to you. Is he gay? Is he a misogynist? Is he married?
She has so much to learn and I think the last person she needs to learn from is me!

I am back to normality

Having spent weeks in Edinburgh at the Fringe I am slightly disorientated back in Glasgow.

I am home, unpacked and have my daughter Ashley back with me.
She was off to Amsterdam halfway though the fringe as she went on holiday with her mates. It’s the first time she has missed a Festival in ten years. I was bereft without her as she is a great support to me.

I woke up today and couldn’t quite work out where I was- it was scary.
The more successful I become the more I seem to leave home and the more I leave home the more I live out of a suitcase and I get freaked out waking up places I am not sure where I am!

I saw my daddy today and it was fabulous to be with him and talk about regular stuff and not how many stars did my show get and how many tickets we sold today. Though my daddy was pleased to hear the show was a sell out and hugged me in congratulations and then asked me to pick a shower from a magazine he had with him as he his getting a new shower fitted for me in my en suite bathroom…well he is my daddy!

Husband slept all day and is coming down with the cold, being on the streets of Edinburgh flyering for the show will probably have given him a virus and eventually will kill him. It will be my fault of course, but flyerer’s are easy to come by.

I miss Edinburgh already; it was amazing for me this year.

I must tell you about the great guest I had on my chat show, it was Kate Adie the world famous war reporter. She was awesome and so funny. To hear of her tales of being bombed in Beirut whilst buying shoes to sitting on the deck of a war ship and watching missiles being launched as she ran for cover… was amazing and she is an inspiration to everyone who meets her.

I want to be Kate Adie, but will never live up to the reality of the situation.

So here I am at home on the sofa writing stuff, I am currently working on a TV idea which will probably not come to fruition as that is the way of the world, but I am living and hoping it will.

I feel very old today, my legs hurt from walking up and down the cobbled ancient streets and I have eaten that much shit that I have spots. But I am happy and home and that’s all I can say today.

Festival Round up

I am sorry I was late so here is a run down of my fringe 2007. The chat show was an awesome experience and some of the guests were a delight, Edwina Currie, Julian Clary, Ray Wyre, John Smeaton ( The airport hero who fought off the terrorists in Glasgow), Brendon Burns, Tom Robinson, Paul Provenza, Mick Miller, Jim Bowen and many more all made me intensely happy.
The chat show got a great five star review and I was over the moon with the format, the people were great who came along and asked interesting questions and my daughter Ashley stood in for a few late comers and made the show even funnier as she impersonated their persona!

Ashley’s best mate Bobi, came and stayed with us and it was her first fringe ever, she flyered and did some PR and stage management.
My baby niece Abi came along and flyered as well and she is only four, she actually did a mic check as well and did a sing a long at the Stand Comedy club!

We are a family of entertainers, Abi’s mum Ann Margaret was amazed to see so many people who knew Abi from my videos on MySpace and YouTube…Abi is famous!
The comedy show was the best I ever did, it got rave reviews and the run sold out, the first time I ever had a full sold out run at Edinburgh, it was wonderful.
I had a great team and love everyone who helped me this year. Ashley really pulled out her finger and made the biggest effort to make sure things went smoothly, she is my absolute pride and joy.
Writing for the newspaper The Scotsman has been a bit trying for me during the fringe and it took some stress to get through it all.
Ok enough of the nice stuff, I was a grumpy cow at times and drove everyone mental.

The flat we stayed in had a washing machine that broke down and the estate agent took my clothes to wash and ended up screaming down the phone to me “I cant touch the bra’s” he is the GAYEST man in the world, he actually screamed and stuffed them into a bag with salad tongs rather than touch them…he is THAT GAY!

So that was funny.

The John Smeaton special was a great day. John is the accidental hero who tackled the terrorist when Glasgow Airport was attacked in June and that day sold out, Bobi was great at herding the audience and press into the room and arranging the photo call and she had never done that before. John was an awesome guest and such a wonderful guy to chat to, I loved him. I took John all around the Fringe after the chat show and he was greeted like a hero by all the comics that met him on the night.

I slept like a baby this year as our flat was outside the main busy part of the city but the fucking seagulls followed me and screeched into my window every morning at 5am coz they are bastards of hell.

Life is good today I am stress free and happy, I met some amazing people who came to the show and it lifts my spirits every time they hug me as they come out and shared a smile with me, it makes me feel awesome that they enjoyed the show.

My big talking window went into the Pleasance Dome main window site; it is the very first of its kind.
It was basically a huge screen that has a projected film and promo of me and the window ‘talks’ and as people went by they were amazed at this new technology and stopped and watched me then went off and bought tickets! Motomedia were the people who installed this window and they are an awesome company and helped me out great. Go check the out their website www.motomedia-uk.com and see the product in action.

I am onto my last few days here in Edinburgh.

I will talk soon.

Is this the end of me?

Dear all my Blogging mates, I am so very sorry I haven’t blogged in a week, this is the longest period of abstinence since I started Blogging in 2004.
The Edinburgh Fringe has me in its cast iron grip and I haven’t had complete access to the internet and what with working lots…well…I am tired.

So it’s not the end of me because I am here aren’t I?

The Edinburgh Fringe is great so far, selling out at the Pleasance every night has been a joy to behold and so far I have got two five star reviews (one for the chat show and the stand up) and a clutch of four stars for both.

As you may well all be aware that the Scottish airport hero John Smeaton is coming on the chat show, he is the bloke that helped the police when the terrorist tried to explode their car at our wee airport back in June.

The weather has been shitty and cold in Edinburgh this year but I am having fun. Husband has been strangely helpful and Ashley my daughter is just a wee worker bee for me, as is her mate Bobi, both of them pulling together to get the flyers out.

The Green room where my chat show is on is almost finished being built now that the fringe is almost over! We had problems with the radio microphones but have had on some amazing guests. I am loving the Green Room despite the hitches.
Last night at my comedy show up at the Pleasance Dome, a wee woman shouted out when I had finished “Excuse me we have two minutes left, please talk more” which can only be a good thing right?
So I did.

I am also getting the comedy show and the chat show filmed and it will be up on the website as soon as humanly possible.
Thanks for sticking by me…talk soon.

JOHN SMEATON IS MY GUEST AT THE CHAT SHOW

The amazing John Smeaton is the man who kicked into the terrorists who tried to explode Glasgow airport back in June. He is my exclusive guest on my chat show on August 23rd at the Green Room venue.
I spoke to him today and he is a lovely big guy and mine is the only show he is appearing in at the Edinburgh Fringe, so tickets are selling like hotcakes today.

I am so loving my time at the fringe this year, the reviews have been great and the venues are wonderful- aside from the ticket problems we have been having. It seems some people cannot get a ticket as the show is showing up as sold out when in fact there are some tickets left.

The rain in Edinburgh is making everyone mental but we did have some sunshine last week.
Everyone in our flat is going mad, door slam loudly due to some technical design, there are mousetraps but no mice as yet, the boiler makes a humming sound all night and the seagulls caw loudly at 5am...nice.

Talk soon…

The Reviews are in

Well after letting in the press on the first days on my shows I have so far got a 5 star review in the Glasgow Herald and a 4 star review in the Three Weeks Magazine!
I am well pleased like you cannot imagine.

Ashley is having all sorts of artistic differences going on at her play, nothing to do with her, but she is suffering the fall out of others being difficult. I empathise with her. I cannot seem to help her as I am so busy, though I wish I could.

The private bars here in Edinburgh are so packed, they all give you a wrist band and the fucking things take forever to rip off, I feel TAGGED like a prisoner. I am so annoyed at them but the private performers bars insist you have them on.

Life at the flat is mad, having that many people stay with me is making me nuts, and I keep tiding others people’s possessions and they can never find them. But they should keep their stuff tidy or I will stuff it under a table. Ashley’s room is a complete swamp.
I am sure there are five Romanian orphans, two broken bikes, seven smelly hippies and two racoons camped in the corner. I even think I saw a Buffalo run past her en suite toilet yesterday. What the fuck is she doing in there? How can she live in that mess?

It is starting to resemble Hiroshima, post atom bomb.

My room is tidy and organised and all my clothes are on hangers, Ashley’s clothes look torn, raped and abused. How they look ok on her is an amazing feat of magic.

Meanwhile husband is cooking more food than an old Irish housewife and keeps making me sit down to dinner, has the man no idea how life at a festival works?
“Eat your roast beef and have some cabbage” he shouts. Cabbage and stage time do not work together, its like mixing heroin and brain surgeons- bad things will happen-I am farting like a sailor.

He may as well give me a whoopee cushion and a megaphone and let me loose on the crowds.

My manager John, spends most days surrounded by computers and printers, he looks like the head of Jodrell Bank Space Mission, what the fuck is he doing?
Working on the next flight to the moon?
Printing out the transcripts of the Oliver North Trial? Contacting the entire national staff of the NHS to inform them I got a five star review?
I have threatened to wrap him in crepe paper, hang him from the light fitting and invite angry Scottish children to use him as a piñata and let them loose with sharp sticks.

Meanwhile husband thinks that despite working like a fucking coal miner down a smelly dark pit for hours a day, I am up for gymnastic type sex!…at night my calves are so sore from walking up and down cobble stones I feel like one of those Egyptian slaves who carried slabs on their back up a pyramid and then died on the way back down the hill.
I need SLEEP…not sex…or cabbage…or…tidying up, I need sleep.

Talk soon.

Here is the News from Edinburgh

Well we are all manic. Ashley’s play has started down at the Ego venue and my two shows are going great guns. The ticket system is a pain in the arse. Firstly, the Fringe Box office and the Pleasance can’t decide how to work out and sell the tickets and then they are varying accounts of how many have been sold. It’s so annoying.

My chat show at the Green Room has been such good fun, the venue is still a bit up in the air and they have yet to get proper signs to let people know where the place is and that’s making me insane.

My comedy show ‘Tell It Like It Is’ up at Pleasance Dome is selling well and we have had reviewers in from day one so I am eagerly anticipating them.

I did a video promo with Paul Provenza for my show, I stand there and chat to camera and Paul sexually assaults me basically, well I say assault, he gropes me and I ignore it and keep chatting to camera as if nothing is happening. It’s funny, but odd.

Then Paul does his promo and I come on camera, bend in front of his flies, unzip them and pull out a banana then start eating it at his crotch. It looks mental.

Then I almost killed someone by accident. A young guy at the Green Room hurt his back and I gave him co codamol painkillers, then I went into my show and when I came out people were running about trying to find me as he had taken a reaction to the painkillers that I had gave him.

All is well and all is mad, but I am getting there.