by Henry VIII performs at the Edinburgh Fringe and discovers that August in Scotland shows no mercy to anyone, king or otherwise
I once commanded a room with nothing more than my presence, no flyer required, no venue fee, no five star review from a stranger called Simon. Edinburgh Fringe gave me a room above a bar, nine paying audience members, and considerably more competition than I have faced since the actual Reformation.
The Flyering
Dev insisted I spend two hours daily on the Royal Mile handing out flyers to passing strangers, competing directly against several hundred other acts doing precisely the same thing, a form of public solicitation I found genuinely humbling, having spent most of my original reign in the opposite position, being flyered at, metaphorically, by ambassadors desperate for my attention.
The Venue
My venue held forty seats and typically filled nine of them, a fact my venue manager, a cheerful and entirely unbothered man named Fraser, described as a perfectly respectable Tuesday, a standard I found genuinely difficult to accept from a man who once, by his own account, performed to an audience of exactly one and considered it a personal triumph purely for the story afterward.
The Reviews
A single review appeared on a small website three days into the run, three stars, describing my hour as ambitious but uneven, a judgement I found more wounding than most actual military assessments of my original reign, several of which, in fairness, used considerably kinder language than ambitious but uneven.
The Late Show Circuit
By midnight the city transformed entirely, comedians moving between venues performing increasingly unhinged late night sets to audiences who had, by that hour, abandoned all pretence of sobriety, and I found myself, at one in the morning, doing fifteen minutes of entirely improvised material about the dissolution of the monasteries to a room that somehow found this the funniest thing they had heard all festival.
The Verdict
I left Edinburgh with considerably less money than I arrived with, a voice reduced to a genuine rasp, and a fierce, unexpected love for a city that demands absolutely everything from a performer and gives back, in return, nine strangers a night who chose, entirely of their own free will, to spend an hour with a resurrected Tudor king. I have never once felt more like an actual comedian than I did in that room above the bar.
The Second Week
My second week at the Fringe saw audience numbers climb slowly into double figures, a growth Fraser described, with genuine warmth, as word finally getting round. I have already told Dev I intend to return next August, having discovered that nine strangers a night, freely chosen, means more to me than any audience I ever commanded by decree.
Fraser has promised me a slightly better time slot next year, a small professional courtesy I intend to hold him to with the same seriousness I once held actual treaties. Nine strangers a night, freely chosen, belongs beside Henry VIII: Live at the Tiltyard as genuine spectacle. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: the proper London pub where history finally sat down for a pint, the original account of my own return to Britain, Harlan Coben being formally ordered to stop writing.
