Edinburgh Festival Fringe Day 3

Wednesday 14^th August

Today, in my opinion, was the best of the shows so far.  Triple A (Batteries not included) was not, as I first thought, a sketch group but three immensely talented comedians.
Chris Turner was the compere. The rapport he built with the audience was very strong from the moment he stepped onto the stage.  He was very confident and made the audience comfortable.  He also made some rather amusing quips from questions to the audience.  He also provided us with some background information of his own.  Such as, he comes from Manchester (even though he has a rather posh voice) and he has been doing stand up ever since he left university 3 years ago, where he studied economics.
After five minutes or so Chris asked us to welcome David Elms to the stage.  He seemed to have the persona of someone that likes to write comedy songs solely based on the alphabet. Or that’s how it seemed.  There was a good bit of banter between him and an audience member sat just in front of me.  David asked him for his name and what he did for a living.  When the guy said John, it was in a very deep tone, and with a distinct northern accent.  I think it was Yorkshire or somewhere in that area.  He told us he was a retired fireman.  As David said, it was a much nobler profession than his own.  We all agreed and David then proceeded to do his first song.  In this song he made very good comical use of the phonetic alphabet.  Going all the way through from A to Z a story unfolded of a girl he’d fallen in love with.  This worked really well and as an audience we responded as you’d expect to the way in which he used each letter. He played three songs altogether.  They were all of a similar nature but all very funny.  There was also a point where he broke away from his ‘character’ and suddenly started talking in a high pitched tone.  This turned out to be a very funny distraction from the rest of his set.
After David Elms it was the turn of Adam Hess. He was probably the elder of the three on the bill, but that could have just been because he had a beard, and as Chris had told us at the start of the show was unlikely to ever grow one because he’s so young looking. 
Adam began his set by gauging the audience reaction to certain words.  Unconventionally he asked the kids in the audience what was the worst word they can think of. One, all of 12 years old said bum.  To which he admitted to not knowing there would be any kids in the audience.  Had he seen the posters to the show he would have known it was for all ages.  He then informed us he would have to ditch most of his material due to the nature of its graphic wording.  This of course was part of the act.  Most of his set contained stories of his ex-girlfriend.  This was beginning to become the central theme to this show, but the jokes were good and even the kids reacted with laughter. 
His best story was saved for the last of his set, and concerned a girl he’d seen at a bus stop, who he’d wanted to impress.  The story begins with a woman in front of him at the stop whose child, in a push chair, had dropped what appeared to be a ball, onto the floor.  He thought to himself that, as no-one else in the queue had, he’d pick the ball up and pass it to the child in the push char, thus making himself out to be heroic and cool, and the girl would instantly fall in love with him and his sensitive nature.  Unfortunately this plan went awry, as it turned out, to his dismay, the ball turned out to be no more than a scotched egg.  What made it worse was the fact that when the child had dropped the ‘ball’ Adam had let out a little scream. 
Added to that the fact Adam was dressed in a very dishevelled way due to sleeping on a friend’s sofa in his clothes the night before, he just looked like a tramp picking up a scotched egg. 
We welcomed Chris back onto the stage where he wrapped the show up with his finale and party piece.  This consisted of him asking us to shout out words which he would then incorporate into an improvised rap.  Words included Apricot, Spanner spoon, and circumstantial.  He seemed to effortlessly place these words into the rap and it was extremely funny. It was one of the funniest and cleverest improvised raps I've ever heard.  And that was where the show ended.

After this it was down to the Cabaret Voltaire to see Jessica Fostekew in her show, simply titled ‘Moving’.  As the title suggests this was a show based on the experience of moving into a flat with her boyfriend.  She informed us that they had met whilst she was working in a coffee bar and he in the video shop next door.  She said she loves living with him but hates living with his stuff.  It turns out he’s a bit of a hoarder.  The things she hates most are his ‘collections’ of torches and out of date canned foods.  He says that they are essential if the apocalypse ever happens.  He’s presuming it’ll happen in their life times. 

Jess then went into the story of moving in with Mikey (her boyfriend) and the experience she had with the removal company.  Capital Movers are one of those firms that like to advertise themselves with a slogan.  In their case it’s the spurious claim that they are ‘the friendliest movers in London’.  I say never use any company that awards themselves that kind of platitude. Invariably they will not turn out to be anything like that.  As it turned out they weren’t the friendliest in town but the exact opposite.
Jess informed us that there were just two men in the van, one wearing a hoodie (with the hood up all day), and didn’t utter a single word throughout the day. The other was older, with what she described as a gnarled up face who found every possible reason not to move anything, choosing instead to let his younger colleague carry that burden. Neither a finger nor a hand a lifter be.  I think that’s the term!
She continued by explaining the rivalry between her and her new neighbours.  At one point their neighbours posted a letter through the door protesting at the noise Jess and Mikey were making at certain times of the day i.e. the night time!  The constant one-upmanship got to a stage where, while Mikey was washing up, and the neighbours could see them through the kitchen window, Jess impulsively decided to re-enact the scene in Ghost where Patrick Swayze sat behind Demi Moore at the potter’s wheel.  In this case Jess played the part of Patrick Swayze to Mikey's (unsuspecting) Demi Moore.  As Jess goes onto tell the audience of this unfolding adventure she also lets us in on the way it all began to go horribly wrong as the two rival girlfriends gradually tried to out do each other.
Moving away from this she told us a great story about the time she performed a show in Morecambe.  The hotel that she stayed in was rather quaint and very Lancastrian. However, there were one or two aspects of it she found very strange; namely the Manageress and the waitress.  These two seemed rather unsuited to either running or working in the customer services industry.  The Manageress was weird enough, what with giving out menus for breakfast that only had written on it ‘Full English breakfast’ but the waitress was even weirder with her turning towards the wall while Jess made up her mind whether to have beans or tomatoes.  Those are generally the choices with that kind of breakfast.  And when she turned back around asked Jess ‘what’ll it be?’ and her then saying ‘I’ll give you another minute and a half’ and then returning to the position of facing the wall.  Jess’ decision was to not have either beans or tomatoes, to which the waitress responded with a bemused look on her face, as if to suggest that no-one had ever opted for neither.
Towards the end Jess offered up a few of her own indiscretions by reading out extracts of her first travel journal, as a 19 year old student travelling to Greece with friends.  This pretty much concluded the show, and satisfied the audience.  As is customary I put some money into the collection bucket (it was a free show after all) happy in the knowledge I am supporting the free aspect of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.