Clowns take themselves very seriously. Watch them bumble about on stage and you might not realise that later they will be loudly discussing the benefits of Lecoq's training over that of Gaulier with faces sterner than a slammed door. You have to take your clowning seriously though if you want to make your mark in the world of comedy.
Never is that clearer than at the Edinburgh Fringe. What began as an adjunct to the International Festival has grown into a behemoth of over 2000 shows. Nearly half of these are comedy acts. How to emerge from amidst this crowded field? How to grab the attention of reviewers and punters? It is a cruel Darwinian world of flyering, gimmicks and empty theatres. Household names like Russell Kane and Dave Gorman compete against complete newcomers. Had I known how tough it would be I would never have dared to come.
This is my first time visiting Edinburgh as a performer; indeed, The Brandreth Papers is my first show. I blush now at the hubris I exhibited when talking to veterans of the Fringe before I arrived. I knew the Fringe only as a carefree audience member. I thought it was all about dashing from hilarious hour of comedy to harrowing new drama interspersed with extensive use of Scotland's liberal licensing hours. I did not know then of the long dark nights of the soul that were to come; the rain lashing the windows as I refreshed Google Alerts waiting desperately for reviews.
I am a barrister by day and a comedian only by night. The Brandreth Papers began as a series of short monologues done at a story-telling night in a pub in Kilburn. The idea to take it to Edinburgh only came at the end of last year. Inspired by the intellectualism of Woody Allen's comedy, my love of pulp adventure fiction and wanting to devise a piece that reflected my own, albeit much heightened, interests/pretensions I wrote an hour-long monologue. In it a bumptious version of myself saves the nation from a threat to its very existence. It wasn't stand-up and it wasn't drama. I hoped its very uniqueness would be its selling point. It could just as easily be its downfall.
I also set myself a challenge: to make people laugh at consciously high-brow material - the funeral speech of Pericles, Frederick the Great's troop dispositions at the Battle of Leuthen, the noumenal philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This decision reflected both my desire to stand out from a crowded field and the fact that I am nothing if not open about being pretentious.
In the run-up to Edinburgh my mood fluctuated wildly - one moment absurdly confident, expecting to win awards and snap up lucrative film roles in the aftermath; the next moment, convinced that I would be critically damned and play to houses consisting solely of the usher and a man who had wandered into the wrong room whilst drunkenly looking for the loo.
Even with the huge advantage of the following wind gained from a mildly famous surname I opened the show in Edinburgh to an audience of 16 in a room that could take 80. Half of them were there as a result of free tickets I had given out that morning. Unfortunately I had given most of these to some foreign students. A show that features Thucydides and references to Jilly Cooper novels is not destined to fare well in front of an audience for whom English is their second language. The best I can call the outcome is "a respectful silence". Fine for a drama; agony for a comedy.
That first week I hovered around a quarter full. Some nights I came away high from the excitement of people laughing at material I had written. Mostly I sat in gloomy solitude wondering if I would ever get more than a handful of people or if I would be reviewed. To cheer myself up I saw some other shows that were on in the same room as me. Mistake. I was surrounded by fabulous comedians: Hannah Gadsby, on before me, was quirky and brilliant, Vikki Stone, on at eleven, was a more polished performer than I could ever hope to be and hilariously filthy. Amidst such quality how could I ever emerge or compare favourably?
I hungered for reviews. I came to long for a single star - at least to know that someone had responded to my work. I handed out flyers with gusto. Like a man desperately asking for a date I watched passers-by recoil from my fixed grin and over-eager demand that they accept, "a personal recommendation for this excellent show".
Then on the Sunday of that first weekend I got my first five star review. Two days and several positive reviews later, I sold out and have been ever since. My Edinburgh show transformed overnight by the good fortune of getting a stellar write-up early in the run. Now instead of watching the clever and versatile performers around me with envious eyes I can admire and try to learn from them. Instead of standing in the rain attempting to lure in an audience, I can have a pre-show "cabaret nap" to be as fresh as possible. Edinburgh has turned out to be a fabulous and learning experience for me. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.