Friday 14 August 2009

Getting on the telly, the big conundrum

With the Edinburgh Fringe feeling like it's halfway through (though in fact it's only a third of the way in), I've got the show up and running, the audiences building, and our first very good review (which subsequent reviews may now try and detract from but I hope not. Did I mention I made our 4 stars from The Scotsman into a t shirt and wore it all day yesterday?), now is the time when you start asking yourself why you're doing this.

And I don't know why everyone else is doing this, performing at least one show a day for a month (and I'm the lazy one in the comedy camp, most people are pushing to do extra gigs, and Marcus Brigstocke who I spoke to yesterday is doing three shows, Early Edition, School For Scandal and his solo show, every single day), but I think I know why I'm doing it.

I have a comedy act, the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, that I've been developing for three or four years now, and I think it's funnier and has more potential than anything I've ever done before, and the audiences agree by coming in bigger and bigger numbers (a little later today we will have sold as many tickets as we sold in the entire month last year) as do the reviewers. So I want to promote that act.

And the obvious direction in which I want to promote them is the telly. Our touring shows have been doing increasingly well, bigger audiences and more venues year on year, and I aim to repeat that process in 2010, as well as doing more shows in London, which we keep failing to do, simply because regional theatres pay good money and dingy clubs in London often don't, especially if they've not heard of you yet. But telly remains the prize.

I know it is for everyone, so I know the competition is stiff and has possibly never been stiffer, there being an exponential growth on the number of comedians on the scene and a well known contraction in the TV industry and its budgets. But dammit we're good, we already prove how well we work on the small screen with every one of our YouTube videos (which reminds me we still haven't filmed anything while we've been up here), and we're cheap.

It's not like we're a four man sketch troupe that'll need a set as big as the Banana Splits to do their show, or a three man sketch troupe who'll need to recreate the Goodies set to do theirs, or a double act who insist on their whole first series taking place in a zoo. We're two socks. We're cheaper than animation to make, all we need to spend the money on is writing it and filming it.

So all I have to do is meet and impress the right people from The Telly and make sure they know what they're missing. Anybody know where to find them?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

No idea, but good luck! Always enjoy watching the Sock Puppets.

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