Fringe Favorites: Up The Arts at The Standing Order

One of the benefits of doing The Standing Order in Edinburgh at 9-10 was having another show to go to afterwards, Paul Ricketts and Verity Welch's Up the Arts is a club in Camden and they had a late night show, the Up the Arts Comedy Lock In for the whole run at the fringe.

See them in action here. ...lovely

It was really cool to meet them and also see the acts they had performing including Paul Foot and Daniel Simonsen (the guy from Norway that won the so You Think You're Funny competition) Imran Yusuf, and Otto Kuhnle and Frank Sanazi
One of the best was seeing Patrick Monahan who got a room of about 20 people really going after alot of people died.
There was a nice commradie with Paul and Verity as we were in the same venue in similar time spots in Wetherspoons including Gloria, what you've never heard of Gloria?! He was a guy who claimed to be a millionaire with a mansion in Soho. It this could have been true, but he had two bottom teeth missing and was in Whetherspoons every night, it could be true? John Kearns snapped a pic of him a the assembly rooms...viddy...

Anyway it was good to have people to chat with about such loons everyday, I also got too slots at Up The Arts which I can use as claims to fame, one night Shazia Misra couldn't make it because she had to Mock the Week or something and I got a slot and then on the last night on the Standing Order there was a space so I got to do a slot last on the bill on the last night which was really cool and Paul gave me the nicest introduction.

They also took me out a couple of nights to the Loft Bar which was really cool. It was strange to think that this building that's just a university building or whatever, for three weeks becomes this tendy bar that's it's hard to get into. P&V introduced it like fight club or something...don't stare, don't flyer and act like you are meant to be there, which was enough done, but exciting all the same. Is that Andrew Maxwell? (yes) is that Roy Walker? (yes) the end. One of favorite bits was talking to Kev F. Sutherland who I met a the Birmingham Comic Show, (his main site here) he is an artist for the Beano and does the Falsetto Scottish Puppets show, a fringe favorite. V had mentioned her son loves the Beano and he was really cool in doing a drawing, I had the A3 paper he had the markers, he carries them round too. A lovey Edinburgh story. Another night up there, I heard an Irish guy sitting beside us being called foxy, and it turned out to be the younger bro of one Alan Pollock's best homie Rob Fox who writes for the Observer.
Here's Jon Brittian at Up the Arts so you can see the madness of our Whetherspoons room: