Squirrel Comedy don't give stars, but if they did...
By Ron Bingham
The return of the Socks sees our noble heroes performing the Eurovision Sock Contest, in a truly rude and naughty manner. Before the show started, some of the songs from previous shows were being played as the audience arrived and, when that was turned off to allow the show to begin there was a lot of disappointed noises from punters who were merrily humming along. These socks have fans. Like me.
The Eurovision Sock Contest sees six countries vying for the top prize, France (so many stereotypes), Scandinavia (yes, ALL of Scandinavia as a time-saving measure), Germany (techno-Kraftwerkish), a mish-mash of all the Balkan states which I could never repeat, Ireland (a garden gnome as Graham Norton bitching about the conditions Eurovision commentators work under – sounding fairly true to life) and the UK (a filthy song about a political decision made by this country a few years ago).
A lot of swearing, bad jokes, terrible puns, dodgy accents, dubious political commentary, ridiculous costume changes and all the other things one has come to expect from The Socks down the years. Ridiculous, hilarious and totally silly, fun show. I still believe there must be a monkey hidden behind the curtain helping with some of the trickier costume changes. Instead it’s a very sweaty Kev Sutherland performing this insane marathon alone every night. May he have the stamina to keep it up for many years to come.
Eurovision Sock Contest is on at Gilded Balloon Teviot
Having video'd the Socks show twice so far at Edinburgh, we've got two good recordings, though Saturday's video mostly shows the back of an audience member's head. Monday's recording is much more fruitful and that's where these two cuts come from.
The Tik Tok sequence has been opening the show nicely, and was something that I didn't write until after the first night. The ad lib about the Fringe Society, after asking the audience if they're on Tik Tok, only happened on the night of this recording, so I think we'll keep that in. The improv songs have been going very well, Malta being a nice one to have recorded. I also got Portugal on Saturday.
These Gags That Didn't Make The Show videos were the first, and I imagine only, things we've shot in the Edinburgh flat (using Zoom). Let's face it, I was lacking inspiration and had no idea what we could do on Youtube to get the show some sort of visibility. Long gone are the days when I'd go out in the street and shoot a new video every day. Who has the energy? So, here are five clips, making use of the green screen in the flat, with gags that didn't make the show:
Thanks to Jimi Longmuir for these excellent shots from the opening night of our show at this year's Edfringe, and also for having us on to headline his show at Boteca Brasil on Saturday night (our only extramural gig of this year's Edinburgh).
Five nights in to our painfully short run at Edinburgh Fringe 2022 and I'm already wishing we cold have done the whole month (which for various reasons, including the recent house move and other commitments, we weren't able to). Turns out we have a good show, despite any misgivings I might have had. (Did I mention our first 4 star review is in, from edfringe review?) Though a lot of this has come together very much at the 11th hour.
When we opened on Wednesday night (they call these Preview nights, but I've always counted them as the first night of the run) our show was in the state it had been at the dozen preview shows we'd done between February in Leicester and last weekend in Inverness. And it still wasn't quite right. After our opening night I went home and did some rewriting. And it was big and significant writing.
I totally revamped the opening section, writing the brand new Doing A Sam Ryder routine (part of which you can see here) which hit the ground running on Thursday and worked perfectly from the start. After 6 months of an unsatisfactory opening section, we now have a solid opener which involves the contrasting Sock characters rather than just being a string of puns. Hoorah.
I was also unhappy about a couple of recycled routines that were still in the show. They'd been put in as placeholders, way back when I wrote the first draft last year, and I'd not managed to replace them. Then, in a writing splurge on Wednesday night, I made good. So the mistaken words routine that appeared before the penultimate song (Venice, a routine written 10 years ago for a video) got the chop and was replaced by Ventriloquism, which I wrote for Social Club on Zoom last year and have never done live before. It's now taking pride of place in the last third of the show and working. The other replacement was a new mistaken words routine (Uber Alles) which now goes into an otherwise empty space after the German song.
With those bits of new material, and some more trimming and tightening, we've ended up with a show that now flows, feels good and, did I mention, has got us a 4 star review already.
Eurovision Voting & Improv
In every show this year, the audience votes for their favourite song. Which reminds me, one other change to the show, that I only came up with on the opening night, is that just before the vote, the Socks run through every contestant you've just seen - in costume. This leads to an amusing shambles where Sock on the left has to try and get every costume on in record time. Such a simple idea, and it took me 6 months to think of doing it. We also do an improv number based on the audience's suggestions. Here are the results and the improv songs.
Wed 3: Winner = Germany
Improv = USA/Wales singing about cooking sheep "Home On The Range". (You had to be there)
Thu 4: Winner = Tie between UK & Germany
Improv = Australia singing about kangaroos and dingoes
Fri 5: Winner = Germany (3rd time)
Improv = Australia (again) singing about kangaroos (again)
Sat 6: Winner = UK (2nd time)
Improv = Portugal (as seen in this clip:)
Sun 7: Winner was the Improv song, Lichtenstein singing about Roy Lichtenstein
Mon 8: Winner = UK (3rd time)
Improv = Malta singing about chocolate (video here)
Tues 9: Winner = UK (4th time, narrowly pipping Eastern Bloc & Austria-Hungarian Empire)
Improv = Australia (can’t remember subject, can anyone?)
Weds 10: Winner = UK (5th time)
Improv = Italy singing about pineapple on pizza
Thurs 11: The winner was the improv song: South Africa singing about Wildebeest & Nelson Mandela to the tune of Toto's Africa.
Fri 12: Winner = UK, again
Improv song = Italy, again. Singing about pizza, again. Suggested pizza topping = pineapple. Again.
Sat 13: Winner = UK (7th time)
Improv - China singing about pandas, to the tune of Chopsticks
So, final results, UK won 7 out of 11 times, Germany won 3 times (tying with UK once), and the Improv song won twice - Lichenstein and South Africa.
Improv song countries chosen were Australia (3 times), Italy (twice), USA/Wales combined, Portugal, Lichtenstein, Malta, South Africa, and China.
A fab four star review for Eurovision Sock Contest from Edfringe Review. Not bad.
From ‘Sexy Blonde’ to ‘Deep Sea Diva’, the pun-filled spectacle that is the Scottish Falsetto Socks’ latest performance has enough hilarity to—well, blow your socks off. The well-deserved winners of Edinburgh Festival Insider Comedy Award (2019) return to the Fringe this year with a Eurovision extravaganza, featuring sock-puppet singers from countries around the world.
The performance begins from the first moment you enter the venue, and are confronted by the sight of a wobbly puppet show stand and the piercing sound of punny puppet-themed song covers. Not something to raise your hopes, exactly. What becomes clear as soon as the actual performance begins is that this show is not just painfully cheesy: it’s painfully cheesy and able to make fun of itself, which makes the bordering on obsessive pun jokes totally worth it. With the shadow of the puppet-master bobbing cheerfully against the back wall, we witness two ‘hosts’ (one kilted and one suited) taking us through the stages of the Eurovision Sock Contest final. The sock puppets themselves – bobbly, ragged, and suitably dishevelled, complete the show’s beautifully non-professional image.
After a delightfully sung first song with the refrain ‘I’m a Sooccck’, the hosts begin to introduce the acts for the night. The first scenes hold onto a sense of relative normality (emphasis on relative), with France, Scandinavia, and Germany performing their songs. It’s not long, however, before ‘Soblovakia’ and ‘The Austro-Hungarian Empire’ take to the stage. The show finally comes into its own, bouncing from relatable comedy to pure absurdity. As well as ‘Sexy Blonde’ and ‘Deep Sea Diva’, the audience meets ‘Deconstructionist Collective’ and ‘Johnny Foreigner’, each representing their country(ies) on-stage. The show culminates with Britain’s ‘Brotherhood of Man’ performance, and a final audience vote, as measured on the 'GrahamNorton-ometer'.
The Falsetto Socks were fun-filled and undoubtedly hilarious, but perhaps recognise their own central fault, momentarily acknowledging ‘the law of diminishing returns’. By three-quarters of the way through the show, the punny comedy had begun to wane, as echoed by the audience’s quietening applause. Though the performance came back to life towards the end, its weak spot was, perhaps, its excessively repetitive slapstick comedy.
That being said, the Scottish Falsetto Sock’s 12th new show is well worth a watch. Unafraid to play with the audience, the comedy was beautifully up-beat, energetic, and absurd, and most definitely made for a 55 minutes well-spent.
An unusual item appears in the Artists Welcome Pack from Gilded Balloon this year:
"The general consensus is there will be a lot less hand-to-hand flyering at the festival going forward. Ultimately it’s up to you, but encouraging people to take a picture of a poster rather than take a flyer is what we're advising this year."
Though I can see the argument against flyering, from an ecological angle (suggesting that all that talk of recycling was all made up), when it comes to promoting a show at Edinburgh nothing compares to flyering. Especially this year when, through some cashflow or cockup problem, there is no Edfringe App, meaning no-one knows what shows are coming up next, and when. A question that is answered by me and my flyer telling them "this is the show you're looking for, it starts at 4.30"
My flyering seems to have worked, with Saturday night's show selling 87 - our second-highest opening Saturday ever, out of 12 shows. Tonight (Monday) is already on 89, out of a capacity of 105, so maybe our first sellout is possible? All this is down to flyering.
I've witnessed a couple of shows trying to get by, outside the venue, without flyers to hand out. I honestly don't know how well their shows are going as a result (remembering that a lot of shows promote in a lot of ways, many have already found their audiences through social media and advertising long before they've even got up to Edinburgh). But the one thing I definitely have not seen yet is punters taking pictures of the QR code on your posters and flyers and using those to make their decisions by.
I pride myself in my flyer having the information and images that'll sell my show, if you've never heard of us before, or that'll remind you of our existence, if you're aware of us from previous years. I see little to compare with that, in advertising terms, on the streets of Edinburgh. But, that said, I'm not selling out like 2019 (being in a 105 seater rather than a 50 seater means I won't see the 75% sellout I enjoyed that year!) so I can't get smug about flyering.
I may just be attached to a "legacy" method of promotion that the kids will continue to try and eliminate. Whatever, I love doing it and, damn, I am good at it.
Are you a fan of Eurovision? Because despite basing a show on it, the Scottish Falsetto Socks are not.
“Eurovision Sock Contest” is the new show in sock puppet related comedy (there’s a niche) at the festival this year. The Scottish Falsetto Socks provide the audience with Eurovision based comedy and songs from all corners of Europe, everywhere from the Eastern Bloc to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The musical value in the show is very good, and the content of the songs for each area is humorous but too heavily reliant on stereotypes. The man who controls the singing socks is very good at playing his two characters off each other, and he is also very good at getting them to play off the audience. However, if you are a big time Eurovision fan who takes it seriously, don’t let the title fool you, this may not be for you.
Even though the musical quality of the show is up to scratch, a lot of the jokes are quite cringe-worthy. There will be people who can go all in for the cheesy puns and one-liners, but collective gorans from the audience can become tiresome after a while. For an hour of music and comedy, the show is lacking a bit more in one department than the other.
“Eurovision Sock Contest” is a very easy watch that seems to be enjoyable for the audience, at the end of the many musical performances the audience vote for their winner of the competition. However there are aspects to the comedy that feel a bit tired.
Scottish Falsetto Socks: Eurovision Sock Contest, 16.30, Gilded Balloon Teviot, August 10 – 13
This was quite the last minute job, considering it was also nine months in the making.
I've done a few jobs with the Milton Keynes Islamic Art Foundation, including two 8 page comics on migration and local communities, both of which seem to have been well received. So this job was to be more of the same. The method is that the pupils at MK schools do oral history interviews with locals, and I come in with my Masterclass and get them to turn the interviews into comic strips, which I then polish off, colour up, and assemble into the printable comic.
The slight snag this year was that, when I arrived at each school, the kids had no transcripts of the interviews, or even notes from them, and we had no visual material to begin with, no photos of the interviewees. Added to which some kids in the class hadn't been involved in the interviews so they had literally nothing to go on. No words, no pictures, and no idea what had been said in the interviews. Quite the raw material to work with.
However I got them producing imagery, in one session at Shenley Brook End last December, then another at Hazeley Academy in May. But I still had no interviews. These were sent me me as video clips, with the idea being that I'd transcribe them. And that remained an idea, floating in the air, while I got busy with lots of other work.
Then I get a phone call, on the Thursday before we go to Edinburgh, asking where the finished comic is! I spend Thursday working out how to transcribe these interviews, then I spend Friday and Saturday morning flying up to Inverness and back to play at the Belladrum Festival. Then i spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday transcribing, writing and assembling this comic. I get the black and white version delivered to the client on Sunday night, before we drive up to Edinburgh on Monday morning.
We arrive in Edinburgh Monday afternoon, and I find an email telling me they like it. Hooray. I just have a couple of logos to add and, oh yes, I have to colour all 8 pages. All while settling into Edinburgh and preparing for my tech on Tuesday and my first night on Wednesday.
And what do you know, I did it! Hooray. It is such a satisfying feeling to get an 8 page comic written, lettered, coloured, delivered, and approved by the client in such a short time. I send off the coloured printable version on Wednesday morning, did one tiny amendment in between flyering and show, and bingo it was done.
This has been a self-satisfied pleased-with-myself comic artist post.
Kev F's Comic Art Masterclass- make a comic in a couple of hours. Suitable for kids age 7 and older, Taking bookings now
