The Socks Do Health & Safety (& you can't see it)

The Socks have been busy writing and trying things out on video over the past couple of weeks. Some of these you've seen (and I hope you're enjoying Minging Detectives works in progress like The Sweary, Broadchurch, Ian Rankin & Reservoir Dogs), but most of the videos they've produced are not for public consumption.

We're in the middle of writing a series of health and safety films that, if the client likes them, could be used for training purposes. In the past week we've produced 10 demos, ranging from Hazards In The Workplace to Bribery While Working Overseas. They're fun to do and a challenge too. If they like the direction we're taking, we'll do more as the job progresses. And you never know, someday you might get to see them. It depend who you go to work for and what training films they happen to show you. (We've also written some cracking crime skits which aren't going on Youtube and will get their first airings on stage, starting next week).

See the Scottish Falsetto Socks Live In Leicester Feb 13 - first glimpse of brand new material, and the best bits of And So Am I.

The Sweary - new from the Socks

As work continues on the Scottish Falsetto Socks' new show Minging Detectives, I'm delighted to report we've written a good few things so good they won't be appearing on Youtube, but instead be saved up until they're unveiled on stage. This piece (click to play) straddles the divide, and you never know it might find its way into the show. For the time being however, do please enjoy it in its studio performance. The Socks have a look at the 1970s most popular TV cop show. You slaaaaaaaag.

Chelsea Tractor - new video from the Socks

Brand new video from the Socks, with a spruced-up recording of Chelsea Tractor, commemorating the snow which is, allegedly, hitting the UK this week, but which in our case has amounted to a bit of drizzle and some wind. Enjoy.

Reservoir Dogs - new video from the Socks

Purely because Reservoir Socks is one of the most suggested guesses for what the title of our new show could be, the Socks have dug out and dusted down one of their very earliest scripts (which was on Youtube in a very ropey lo-res form once but has long since disappeared) and given it a new production. Here is their version of the entire film of Reservoir Dogs in less than 8 minutes.

You'll be doubly delighted to hear this won't be included in their new crime-related show Minging Detectives, which is coming your way later this year. Watch this space for details.

The Socks new crime show - Final rejected title

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's brand new show, rejected title Number 10 - Shin City. (Tenuous footwear-related pun, but nifty poster, no?)

The final few guesses that came in (once we'd pointed out the title would reference our Scottishness as well as our footwearocity) included:

Ian Ellery A Dame to Kilt For, Natural Born Kilters, Kilt Bill, The Kilting,  and The Girl With The Haggis Tattoo (brilliant)

Milady ‏@macelven  The Sock with the Edinburgh Tattoo (equally brilliant), The Ochils Have Ayes

Pete Renshaw The long good Paisley, Godfather part tweed

Alan Woollcombe Loch, Sock and Two Smoking Barrels, Sock Ness, A Sockwork Orange

@BrianTeles Asockalypse Now, Silence of the Lambswool

So enough of the guessing, here's a last look at the rejected titles and fan suggestions that we've illustrated over the past week:

 

And what title have The Socks chosen? We'll make you wait no longer. It is....

Leicester Work In Progress Festival

Hooray, we're appearing at Dave's Leicester Work In Progress Festival

On Friday 13th the Socks are playing in Leicester, and you'd better move fast if you want those tickets cos we'd (genuinely) sold more than half of them, before the programme came out.

And it's great to have the programme in our hands for this year's W.I.P.Fest. What, hadn't you heard about the change of title? Yeah, it used to be the Leicester Comedy Festival, but now we comedians have decided to stop pretending that we're all giving you complete and finished shows each February, and instead we've come clean about it.

A record-breaking 64 shows have the words Work In Progress, as part of their title. Well, a few have been circumloquacious about it. So...

Nick Helm's is Masterwork In Progress
Lost Voice Guy's is Walk In Progress
Both Brennan Reece and Diane Spencer have called theirs Smirk In Progress
Getting There is Jerk In Progress
Tony Law's is Nonsense In Progress
and Erich McElroy's is Candidate In Progress

But that still leaves 56 shows with an unabashed Work In Progress as part of their listed title.

Leicester, being the first comedy festival of the year, has established itself as the perfect opportunity to begin work on the shows which will finally flourish in August in Edinburgh. We've done the same with it ourself, in particular with 2013's Socks In Space where we unveiled an hour of almost entirely new space-based stuff, most of which we'd junked six months later. Usually though we offer a mix of old and new.

This year we'll be giving them the best of last August's satire show And So Am I, none of which was written as far back as last February, and we'll be mixing in a few new pieces from the 2015 show Minging Detectives, and what's the betting most of that's history by August.

Leicester's Comedy Festival has its biggest line up ever, with over 700 shows taking place (so, in context, not even 10% of those are Work In Progress, or at least not in the titles), making it easily the biggest comedy festival in the country outside of Edinburgh. Did I mention the first ever Edinburgh Fringe programme we got, in 1984, with its single page of comedy show listings? Ah (over-repeated) memories.

Book now for Scottish Falsetto Socks 2015 (which was the work-in-progress title when we booked the show into the programme late last year). Now if you'll excuse us, we still have to write it. (Think of this rushed scribbling as a blog in process).

Socks Crime Rejected title No 9 - Get Shortie

So we're one day away from finally finding out the title of the Scottish Falsetto Socks new crime themed show, and here's Rejected title Number 9 - Get Shortie.

We've had some trememndous #scottishsockcrime suggestions, though most people have been concentrating on the footwear puns and hardly anybody's made anything of the Scottish part. One last clue for you, the finished title incorporates socks and Scottishness. Your guesses are still welcomed, here's the latest trickle:

Amanda Taylor ‏@Minnimand has someone already suggested "The Name of the Hose" or "Memento(es)" ? Knitcliffe? Murder She Wrote with Jessocka Fletcher? The Sockford Files? Ok, stopping now . . .

Milady ‏@macelven Marathon Sock. Socks on a Train. Sneakers?

‏@BrianTeles Socky

Mark Clem ‏@real_mtclements brogues church?

Simon Beckett ‏@LordSiBorg Roboclogs

Marika Tiainen Reservoir Socks?
 
Simon Shaw Mid-socker Murders?  

Sally Hinkley Sock IsShoes

Derek Guy  Un-Ironedside
  

So what title have they chosen? Stay tuned...