Rural Concerns - Bonus | Edinburgh Fringe Special

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Chris is at the Edinburgh Fringe, Producer James is on a Family Holiday and Sunil is vaping.

Hello and welcome to Rural Concerns, special Ed Fringe bonus edition. Woohoo! Hope everyone is well. Thank you for listening. This is just a shorter episode because I am on my own. I am on my own at the minute. Producer James is on a family holiday. Oh God, I don't remember where he's gone. Where's he gone?

It's somewhere nice anyway. He keeps like, do you know when someone calls you, but they make it a video call and you're like, why are you doing this? I don't want to look at you while I'm speaking to you. But it's because he's ringing me from like some sun drenched terracotta, sort of like tavern, little house thing. Do you know what I mean? So he's not, and also this boy, he will not put on a shirt he's just

calling me all hours of the day topless um i don't know i'll tell you what no he's in good nick for an old boy do you know what i mean he's um i can't like nicola my wife she's like suddenly she was with me and she's like james is calling out got a top on do you know what i mean she nearly snatched the phone out of my hand they still managed to sort of like do little edits on the episodes that we've done and get it out. So respect for doing stuff for the podcast, even if you're busy, which brings us directly on to Sunil Patel. He's in Edinburgh. I saw him briefly yesterday. He's just up for three days or something like that. See a few shows. He's on holiday. Everybody's recognizing him as well. Everyone's saying like, are you that guy of that nationwide advert? And he's yeah yeah that's me people are taking pictures with him and

stuff so that's good fun i think we're having good fun um so i'm just going to start tell you like i said we we recorded episodes in the run-up to edinburgh and i think you can hear the anxiety in my voice um in knows the final ones. But now we're, like, getting to the point where we haven't got the – James is on holiday. I'm still at the Fringe, but we're going to be back on track for next week. So James suggested I just do a little, like, Edinburgh Fringe download of what's going on in my head.

I tell you this, it's hard to do this where it's just me. I mean, sometimes it does feel like just me, doesn't it? Because you can hear Sunil tapping away on his iPhone. But anyway, do you know what I mean? We're having a good time. I'm recording this on the 10th of August at 8.42am. So I've been here since the first, this is my 11th day here. Bloody hell, that's come round.

So I'm just going to explain sort of what it's been like. It's one of those things where it's, I'm having a brilliant time, I have to say. I've done these shows and they've been more or less touch wood, like a good time. I'm having a laugh. I did the first couple of shows to a very small amount of people, you know, like nine people. But I've done a lot. I did the first couple of shows to a very small amount of people, you know, like nine people.

But I've done a lot of Edinburgh fringes. I've had bad Edinburgh fringes. I've performed shows. I mean, me and Amy Gledill performed famously to an audience that was called Norman, some horrible guy. Maybe he wasn't horrible. But he came in to get out of the rain and just sat while we did a show next to the projector and read his paper.

Do you know what I mean? Good lad, actually, I think. But I've done, we've done that as Edinburgh Fringe Show. So I've taken nine people, but they've been good.

Like I've been having a laugh. It's nice. I've met a few people from the creamery and people who listen to the podcast in general, and I still can't get my head around that. I met Lucy, who's one of our Patreons. I bumped into her in Monkey Barrel, where I was cutting bits of reviews and stuff like that. So you staple, they call them flashes.

So if you get a review, you snip it up, staple it to your flyer. So when you give a flyer to someone, it looks like there's, you know, oh, this is stuff that's coming in. It's like very like old school, hardcore street sales. Do you know what I mean?

You're managing teenagers. It's like, do you know, like a gang of street kids, like managing 17 year olds to give out flyers with your face on, do you know what I mean? Throwing them paper money. It's like, it's quite full on,

but I think I'm going to speak for everybody at the Edinburgh fringe when I say we're having the best time. Um, no, that's not the case. James just told me to keep this tight he was quite, do you know what I mean he didn't want to edit it too much, he's on a family holiday

do you know what I mean so I met Lucy who's one of our Patreons and just the fact that anyone listens to this honestly still gobbles my mind a bit like that and it's so I find it so exciting i'm so proud of it i'm so happy that people are enjoying it um so i think when i met

her i went like bright red uh and just talked at her i think like for 40 minutes straight do you know i mean without a gap because i was just so overwhelmed. It's not our first date, it's like one of those mad ones you read at Guardian, you know, and they send two people out, and one of them's terrible, and I was terrible. But it was, yeah, thank you, it was nice to meet him. I met Gareth, who's also

one of the Patreon supporters, a lovely gent, so that was nice, and we have Carlos coming on the 23rd. It runs the No Context Rural Concerns account. So I've got something very special for them to give away. So it's like, right. So how do I, if you have a bit, because Edinburgh,

we're in the Edinburgh fringe now, but you do not, it's hard to explain it to the outside here because it doesn't matter to some degree. People don't know it's going. Like, to me, I've been working towards coming here for 18 months, really. Maybe a slightly longer, two years. It's been, like, such a huge thing in my life. It's cast such a shadow over, like, the rest of the year, getting ready.

Like, because you are working on pulling this together for you like you i'm going to some of you might see me um going around traveling and doing preview performances you know dying on my ass in darlington there's that there's photos there's marketing there's all this like mad stuff that just takes up a lot of time through the year but But I'm well aware that it is an arts festival and a lot of people, it just doesn't even register that it's a thing that is going on. And I'm acutely aware that the world is sort of on fire while I'm like, you know, like delivering over

exactly how I'm reading a line and stuff like that. And they're like, I need to tighten that joke up. There's a better punchline and stuff like that. Some knobhead's just thrown a bin through a W8 Smiths or something like that. But it is very full on. It's a very full on task. I think what happens is, because I've done a few of these now, it's for the entire month,

I believe that your adrenaline in your body is so much higher than it would normally be. Because when you get there, you're tense. You're like knuckles are tense. You're trying to figure out there's so much on the ground logistics to sort out when you arrive. Have my posters arrived? How am I getting into my accommodation?

All of these different types of things. I don't have to worry about the accommodation 1% because I get to stay with my friend, Sean, who lives in Meadowbank, who I used to work with in London and he moved up and he's just like a great guy who puts up with me. And he's washed some of my clothes as well. He's like a good lad. We do have different, you know, it's like a conversation that's been had, Ari, please can you shut the fridge door?

Please can you shut the front door? Do you know what I mean? But with his fridge door, it's like an Ikea sort of um i don't know describe it like a fashion like it's in a cupboard his fridge freezer and the cupboard cover is like it sticks hard so i said to him so that one's sort of 50 50 into do you know i mean he's having a good time do you know what i mean taking two days off and i'm annoyed right now because i was Taking two days off, and I'm annoyed with that now because I was taking two days off so I could go home

and see Nicola and the boy for two days because of my dad on it. The last time I was here, I was very unhappy for various reasons. It's a complicated one, but me and my friend were doing, me and my friend, Amy Glendale, uh, I mean, my double act with, we called the sausage. We had a brilliant year in terms of, uh, like, what's the word? Like in terms of the hard stats, we had a brilliant time. We sold out as one, we had some brilliant reviews, you know, like they started like the hard metrics that tell everyone you're having a good time, but for various logistics based reasons, it was a very full on

year, quite stressful. And my solo show that I also did that year, it was like a toe dip back in the world of stand up after hiatus. And I didn't really love it, to be honest with you. And I found it really hard. I found it really hard to do because I'd done the thing with my friend for so long, which was all I did, largely. And we've done some amazing stuff, which I'm so proud of. But it has been a bit of a challenge to basically step out from behind mum's skirt, you know what I mean, and be myself. So doing this podcast has been good for that, really,

just because I i'm talking i'm not with in my double act i play a character version of myself whereas in this i am myself and i there is no divisible line between these two things it's like a psychological concept but so i bought these two days i'm thinking i need a proper break but i looked at the calendar. I booked it. I can't wait to see you guys looked at the family calendar. They're away. They're going camping. So,

um, I guess that meant fair enough. Fair enough. Have a good time. I'll see you when I get home. What am I going to do? I'm going to, so I'm going to stay up,

I think, and see lots of shows because I'm enjoying that. And normally when i come here like because we do this like massive multimedia sketch comedy stuff it's so labor intensive in terms of like we have to get all this tech sorted we have to and we have to very often write the last third of the show and stuff so we rarely would be watching someone else's show for like the first 10 days or whatever because it's like an intense sweatshop

of like getting the show right. Whereas this time, the show that I've come with is a solo endeavor. It's a lot, like it's done largely. So I feel in a better place to go out and see people's stuff. So I've seen a few shows. If you're up at the fringe,

here are like the little recommendations off the top of my head. I've seen a few shows. If you're up at the fringe, here are like the little recommendations off top of my head. I've seen a few stuff, but I think, I think the three that really stand out, well, I went to watch Ed Knight, who's a young comedian, but this kid has the,

he's got like the heart of a poet. Do you know what I mean? He's yeah, he's got the heart of a poet and his jokes are really funny and he's got the heart of a poet. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, he's got the heart of a poet, and his jokes are really funny, and he's just a very in-control sort of chap. I really like him. The show was brilliant. I saw Elf Lyons, her show about, I don't know what it was.

Elf came to my show on the first day. She's a friend from the past. I mean, we've started doing open mic comedy sort of those rooms together so she came to my show on the first day which meant so much because there's no one there so like a few days later like when my wife was up we went to watch uh her show and i don't like it i can't i don't want to like anything, but it's basically her largely pretending to be a horse for an hour. So I was like, oh, this is going to be good silly fun. But inexplicably, I'm in tears by the end. Do you know what I mean?

I was like, totally blindsided there. So I thought that was beautiful. Ed and I, and I also think one of my favorite things I've seen since I've been up here was Lara Ricote. I don't think that might be naturally how her name is produced with these Yorkshire vowels, but a Latin American comedian. She lives in the Netherlands, she says. I missed her debut show, and this is her second show,

and she's just got funny bones. She's just like, the show is brilliant but just what she does in between that and you can just see this is not what we are watching is not an affected uh well rehearsed monologue it was just so interesting um and so funny like i that i think yeah that really blew me away that um i've been telling anyone who'll listen. So there's that. I'm also like, I've got two shows that me and my friend are helping produce this year, which is just a fancy word for slapping stars on a board. But Tom Lawrenson, who's a comedian from Manchester,

and he does sketches on the internet that you've probably seen with my friend Sam O'Leary, which are massive. They're huge. But Tom's doing a solo standup show and it's just brilliant. He's like, he's one of these standups that like he's written this show and it's great. It's great. He has this real skill of like veering a tangent away from the script in a way

that I find it's so unpredictable and exciting and very funny and he has like I really like his stage persona because he's like I'd describe it as almost malevolent like he's um they called him I think he had a review they called him a menacing heart throb and I think that sums him up exactly he's just an interesting guy um the emotions on his face it's like it's either like uh nothing really registering or like a maniacal laugh like yeah i just think he's great i'd check that out and i think there's a general thing of like because i'm producing a new other show that i'm producing show by a young uh comedian called hannah platt from liverpool who she's on at the place and she

should check it it's just it's amazing it's a debut show but she's on at the place and she should check it. It's just this amazing, it's a debut show, but she's hit the ground running. And I don't think I've ever seen a debut that's quite as impressive, polished like as that. It's really something to watch and she's having a great run of it because I'm like helping produce the show. And all of a sudden, I think, you know, you didn't quite realise, but I'm a fringe veteran, which still feels mad to say,

but like, you know, you just blink and best part of a decade's gone by and I've done, I think this is my eighth fringe or seventh, maybe I need to check. And that's happened. And it feels like, it feels good, I think, in general, because I think there's like, when you're just coming into it, there's a lot of, like's so much pressure on new acts like there's a real crazy energy um that can like the pressure cooker of what it's like to do with a fringe and the money it costs to get there so

basically if you don't know what to expect and stuff it's just very intense whereas now i feel like that's a bit of that's lifted to some degree not that i'm not smashing it to a level where um i'm like in any sense comfortable for any single second but i know the lay of the land i know what's going on i'm having a good time and i can't really ask for more and i feel like my friends that we were all sort of in that era of sort of starting at the same time, we're now suddenly slightly elder statesmen. And it's a bit calmer and it's nice. And particularly after COVID, it's just nice to see people. And I think there's more camaraderie maybe than there might have been.

I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. I'm just saying it's nice. I'm full of going, Oh, I've ran over the allotted time that James gave me to do. I'll just, I'll just sort of wrap it up.

God is probably, otherwise he might have to put a shirt on. Do you know what I mean? I don't think that's been, so I just, um, turns out I didn't think I needed the other two at all, but it is quite hard talking solidly on your own. So I might have to see whether Sunil wants to come back,

but I just want to say thank you for listening. We'll be back at full pelt, like full pelt, like a bullet. Do you know what I mean? Probably next week, I think. We're just going to, James is going to get back

of his order. We're going to go from there. I might try and do one with Sunil. And if you see us, come and talk to us just because he's not convinced that anyone listens to this at all.

I also showed him the Discord group and he was like, fucking hell. What's that? Do you know what I mean? So I said, if you you see him don't mention anything about the discord group so thank you so much for listening um you know james put some

stuff here put so put some music in this one put that in there um and then we'll have, it was produced by Egg Mountain for Lovely Time Productions. It was starring Chris Cantrell on his own, doing his best. Other things that were going on, you know the things, Patreon supporters, Discord, you know what time it is. And here's an inspirational quote from me. Why can't everyone just be mates and not so much to think about?

Okay, now it's been Rural Concerns, Edinburgh edition. I should talk. I feel like I want to say so much more about Edinburgh, but also not so much more. Come on, it's an arts festival. Get a grip. Get a grip. Get a grip.

Bong. Like that.