Rear view
Causing a commotion
Last time he was here with Harry Hill. Twelve years on, ANDREW COLLINS (left) is performing with his ex-colleagues from the NME.
like to think of myself as the 'Edinburgh veteran' of Collins. Maconie
and Quantick. You see. it‘s not my first time performing on the Fringe
(although of course every time feels like the first time). I was tip in 1989. a fresh-faced youth jtrst out of art college and stowaway with — eek? — a medical school theatre group based out of Tooting called Renaissance Comedy Associates. Among our happy number was a trainee doctor called Matthew Hall. better known today as doctor-tumed-funnyman Harry Hill. Then he wasjust plain Matt with a full head of thick. lustrous hair. and the two of us had written an ambitious bttt essentially glib comic play called President Kennedy '3 Big Night Out.
‘Silliness and bizarre logic make for an entertaining spoof on investigative stories about the assassination of JFK.‘ wrote The Times — which. if you add it to a rotten slag-off in The .S'mrsmun. represents our entire press file for the run. Still. we won that year's poster competition and it was up in John Menzie‘s window and everything.
I spent the next eleven years pursuing a career in rock journalism and media prostitution (while Matt became Harry and tickled the nation‘s funnybone — he never writes. he never phones). And rock joumalism is what lies behind this year‘s expensive return to Edinburgh. Myself. Stuart Maconie and David Quantick. all graduates of the New Musical Express (circa late 8()s/early 90s). have decided to turn our best hand-me-down anecdotes into a minimalist three-man
John Fardell FESTWQL DREAMS o a may.
Datiid once reviewed three gigs for the NME and only actually saw three songs
meditation on the existential conundnrm of writing about rock music. like Herman‘s Herrnits arriving in America for the first time in the mid-60s and singer Peter Noone being dismayed to hear over the airport Tannoy the following message: ‘Paging Mr No One. paging Mr No ()nel'
For aren‘t rock joumalists all. in a sense. paging Mr No ()ne'.’ Probably not. but we‘re here in Edinburgh looking for all the world like 'the gay Genesis' anyway. hoping that our show. Lloyd Cole Knew My Father. will suck a few last drops from the teat of pop nostalgia. None of us has worked for the NME since about I993 - like recovering addicts. we only write about soft rock now. having put the hard sttrff behind us — btrt the experience scarred us all deeply and we feel the need to share. David once reviewed three gigs for the NME and only actually saw three songs. all of which were by Elton John. ( )f course. out greatest thrill would be for someone front The .S'mrsnrun to review our show without seeing it. Poetic justice.
There's enough hacks in Edinburgh getting pissed and cluttering up the place. at least we will be off the streets for an hour each day. Clearly. now that some of us are pushing 40 and at least one of us is a Radio 2 1)]. we will be living in a small castle and getting helicoptered into the Pleasance courtyard every day. with handrnaidens present to peel our grapes and ttrrn the pages of our scripts. then towel us down after the rigours of sitting on a chair and talking for 55 mintrtes. It's all a far cry from my first trip back in 8‘) when Renaissance (‘omedy Associates slept three to a car. subsidised on pharmaceutical heroin and had to cart our big President Kennedy face around with us wherever we went. Of course I was just a no onethen.
Lloyd Cole Knew My Father, Pleasance, 19-27 Aug.
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