Fringe Favorites: Robin Ince.

Don't worry, this Edinburgh lovefest is nearly over, it's all becoming a distant memory as teaching starts again and the spectre of Christmas is upon us (and besides you wouldn't believe the geek backlog out the back wait until I start on No Heroics and the Robocop remake.)

As an impoverished performer, I could only afford to go to the free shows (blah blah change the record etc.) and Robin Ince did a whirlwind weekend of shows including His Book Group that I was too polite to get into because I thought it wasn't fair to go into the show because I was also performing at the Free Fringe when there was loads of people waiting, His Bleeding Heart Liberal show which I hung out with Georgina before at and just stayed there until it was on with a sort of 'I'm staying, I'm finishing coffee air', and the great Carl Sagan is My God oh and Richard Feynman Too, which fits in with the below post on the Golden Record.

Ince is amazing at combining very intelligent comedy that involves a lot of intellectual references but combines it with sets, or elements of sets that have elements pure observational stories that have the whole laughing in unison with recognition (e.g. the sleeping lout on the train story, amazingly executed). There is an element of preaching to the converted but would you rather be sitting in a Robin Ince audience where he is preaching to the converted, or in a major standup gig that preaches to the 'I'm being racist and sexist and homophobic, but I'm not really, I'm being ironic and postmodern but you love it anyway but hey postmodernism...shut up' crowd.

Carl Sagan is My God oh and Richard Feynman Too was a great show too with Josie Long, Peter Buckley Hill, and A.L. Kennedy MC's by Ince with an impressive stack of books which was good sign for me, just an excuse so I read aloud from this more often. In fact he was a bit of an ispiration have an idea for a show someday called Lorcan McGrane's Perversions where discuss the bizarre and amazing writing on gender and sexuality in the last century so, at last all these mucky books have a purpose. Robin seemed like a really nice guy too I introduced myself and mentioned the blog and gave him a card with Schrodinger's Cat on it, and told him my story of Schrodinger's Arsebone for his sins he listened and laughed, he could have told me to feck off, so he's also a cool dude.

I have a thought in the back of my head that one day I'll end up being the Robin Ince to Tom Moran's Ricky Gervais...

Some Incetube stuff if you haven't seen it already:

With Ben Moor:

and as If you don't know already...all comics are geeks...