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drinks Monday 1 September 08 Edinburgh Reunion in London
Topping And Butch Hit Leicester Square 26-27 September 08
Andy Zaltzman -
Unveils The Great Conspiracy
Verdict: Charm and delight of a master stand-up
Edinburgh - The Stand - August 03
The Stand Comedy Club, York Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3EB, 0131 558 7272
Top-billing London comedians like Andy Zaltzman can pick and choose their venue for the Edinburgh Fringe. Most, understandably, choose the well-known temporary stages set up for 3 weeks in August, where they're guaranteed a London audience familiar with their act. Instead, Andy Zaltzman picked the challenge of building an audience from scratch at a full-time year-round Edinburgh comedy club, with a hundred percent Scottish audience.
The Stand's the kind of no-nonsense club that arose from alternative comedy (altcom). Founded in 1995, it's a basement in Edinburgh's New Town, a hundred yards from Harvey Nicks and a world apart. Part pub salon, part working-men's club, with leopard-skin velour stools, velvet-cushioned chairs, chipped round formica tables; red ceiling, turquoise painted walls, and red lino floor, it could have 'gritty' carved over the door. There's a long queue snaking from the underground entrance. Andy Zaltzman's built his audience from twos and threes at the month's start to packed, standing room capacity - by sheer word of mouth.
The audience tonight's a young crowd - shaved heads, muscular, rugged (and that's just the girls), with a few middle-aged and some quite elderly people. To a person, they're comedy enthusiasts - a tribute not only to the performer, but also to the dedicated people who set up the venue (and its twin in Glasgow) and keep it going all year round.
There's not an English accent to be heard. It's a receptive and eclectic crowd, more Trainspotting than Miss Jean Brodie. The audience is tightly compressed, the man adjacent in the audience scar-faced, a stranger to deoderant, powerfully odoured, generous with anal gas.
There's a lot of shows on tonight; the venue's running late. Expectation builds, and Andy Zaltzman's carried on stage. He's in a green shirt, with red-orange frizzy hair, ragged orange triangular patches, and crudely-constructed potato-face - all pretty normal so far. He's on top form, explains he 'was Left Wing, but I've now seen the light'. He's changed the tone of his comedy: 'I was shagging this bird, right?' Hmm, so this is how Zaltzman's built up his new audience.
No, it's a trick of the light. The real Andy Zaltzman bounds on stage and it's clear as they stand side by side that the first incarnation's a dummy, more of a scarecrow. Shame, he was damned good.
The lights change to green, there's ethereal guitar music, AZ discloses the Great Conspiracy, which arose from a misundestanding over a kettle in his hotel bedroom - and the Daily Mail's involved.
The Great Conspiracy is most accurately Journey To The Centre Of Paranoia, with AZ as expert guide to what worries us most in cold wakeful nights round 4 am, when, according to one writer, soldiers attack and old men die. Well, ostensibly. Because it's blended with AZ's unique discursiveness, the ramble around a magnificent mind - with which he charms, delights and entertains.
Tonight's itinerary includes the fire brigade dispute, mosquitos, New v Old Europe, Dr Harold Shipman, Alistair Campbell, US President Bush, Cardinal Wolsey, Ann Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, royal funerals, evolution from fishes, the Son of God's first miracle, Moses and God's haggling over the Ten Commandments, deep fat fryers, national service, The Peace March 15 Feb 03, Mrs Thatcher's intended clampdown on miming - and a great deal else.
The Stand is a flat-floored room, a longish rectangle, with a tiny dais in the middle of one of the long sides, facing into the short part of the room. Standing on it, the performer's a few inches above the audience - and they're perhaps a foot away on 3 sides.
It's a daunting challenge of intimacy and room-working which Andy Zaltzman delivers impeccably. With his calm voice set at rapid-fire, he delivers some 150 words a minute, each creating convincingly logical neural links between the most apparently diverse material. EM Forster once remarked gnomically, 'Only connect'. Zaltzman's the man.
There remains the question of appearance. It's a topic AZ mentions from time to time. He vehemently rejects comparison with Art Garfunkel - fair enough, Zaltzman's a good deal better looking.
However, from the side, he does bear an uncanny resemblance to Michael Winner.
Credits (alpha order): Written and performed - Andy Zaltzman and dummy. Technicals - Venue Staff.
END
John Park
reviewed Saturday 23 August 03 / Edinburgh / The Stand
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008
