Fringe Benefits

[00:00:00] Alright champ-olics, wherever you are in the world right now, it's the wrong place, unless it's Lester.

[00:00:07] Get there and be ready for total combat.

[00:00:10] See me live on February 24th at Lester Comedy Festival.

[00:00:17] Champ-tabulous!

[00:01:22] A typical new music can expect to lose one to two pound per week. Individual results may vary.

[00:01:29] Hello and welcome to a special episode of wrestling with a champ from the Edinburgh Fringe 2023.

[00:01:35] Cue the bagpipes.

[00:01:41] So you join us here in our digs, our very auspicious digs I think is fair to say.

[00:02:46] because she couldn't believe, I couldn't believe my eyes I was watching the wrestler, can you believe it Donald? She's French.

[00:02:47] She is. Anyway we are here to perform and we are currently performing our second live show, Smile Driver.

[00:03:01] Which is all about the champ the ginger ninja and his battle with the dreaded cancel culture.

[00:04:05] done this show, it was very similar to last year's show, is we broke it down into to do a 40-45 minute show, 10 four-minute sections, we had a rough outline of what would happen,

[00:04:11] but then you would write the first four minutes, then the next day I write the next four minutes

[00:04:15] and that's how we got the rhythm to begin with. And what's really nice, even though we've chopped

[00:04:19] things around and moved things around, is how much of that comes from that initial writing still, done but I don't think we've ever gone back and changed it. No we don't have time. We do comedy timing, soundscaping and kind of bringing it all to life in a really really rich valuable way. But then that's just done it. But then with this and it was similar when we did Better Ready than Dead last year is it's like having that one podcast episode but you could do it so many times and

[00:05:43] then you on your own as we do all the rehearsals and obviously you're back for year two as a wrestling performer how do you think it compares to last year? I think you spent that much on Link shower gel and washed the wig after a few days. That's the biggest question, right? We were thinking of getting a new line of T-shirts. Because the number one thing we get asked,

[00:08:20] people will cross the street.

[00:08:22] They will risk life.

[00:08:22] And then we're in front of a bus to come over and go,

[00:08:25] is that your really hair?

[00:08:26] Oh my god, it's amazing.

[00:08:27] Is it a wig? We've got to give ourselves that this is going to be a great day. This is going to be a great show. Really psych ourselves into that mindset. I think we relied on a lot of the festival energy last year. But also we've done the festival completely differently. A lot of the places we were out and about last year, we haven't done. A lot of the walking around being really prominent for hours.

[00:09:40] We haven't done mainly because we've been focusing on getting the show ready

[00:09:44] and supporting a lot of other comedians. come and see the show. It's only one word in use to describe it. But it was, was it yesterday we did three shows? On the Bank Holiday Monday, yeah, I did three shows. So we did this one show like two o'clock in the afternoon and they put us on towards the end of that show didn't they? We were supposed to, no we were supposed to be on second because not all the acts had turned up

[00:11:02] and they were like yeah go on second because there's no there's no other actually other than that aren't related to storytelling because when you're doing those tiny spots you just you want to be a laugh a Laughter machine gun right so he just we just concertina'd The audience interaction bit from there in fact the just a tonic show we did a Lester last year so it was a bit of better than dead and a bit of The just a tonic enough, but yeah that that day the bank holiday Monday was

[00:12:25] Cuz we did that show then we went to do

[00:13:24] for Damien Witcher. I'll just leave it as that if you've seen the show you know. No I'll tell you right, you know, Ant has two cock boxes.

[00:13:28] I only have one cock though. Believe it or not and one he wears so because we'd lost

[00:13:34] a prop my penance was to have to inhale. Instead of the stud one it was a real one.

[00:13:43] Inhale the air in and around the one that he'd been wearing for four days.

[00:13:46] Constantly. An experience I shared with an audience member Probably straining in your pants as you got a semi at the thought of being recognised for your wrestling status. And then she says, will you come on and do a bit? Because the show is dying. And it was just another sort of mixed bag of comedians. And that's totally like that can happen. No reflection on any performers.

[00:15:01] That can just happen for some reason or another time of day, weather, first show of the day.

[00:15:06] Oh, I mean, was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. The noom worked for me. Get your personalized plan today at noom.com. Real noom user compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical noom user can expect to lose 1 to 2 pounds per week.

[00:16:23] Individual results may vary.

[00:16:27] An actual minute. you just kind of zone in on something and you're good at hyper focus, but can you hyper focus and deliver in, you're good at hyper focusing and spending a long time in that space. This was really interesting in, you've got five minutes, you know you can do it, but how you could achieve it yourself within that head space was really interesting. Well, what I had to do was effectively what the show was

[00:17:43] and could we just come off the stage,

[00:17:44] the sort of things that we had in the show

[00:17:46] that I wasn't i think we had seven people in across the three shows we'd made and you don't make a lot of money. We are rich emotionally. We are just unable to pay our mortgage today. Mr. Bank manager.

[00:20:20] And then, so we get in the Uber,

[00:20:23] we start chatting to the driver.

[00:20:24] He's very upbeat, cheerful fellow from Moldova. And it so it doesn't surprise me that this this 10-minute drive was all kind of like I'm all dove in this small dev And that just just to illustrate Damien's point that today alone yesterday. I've spoken Arabic. I've spoken Italian I spoke Korean Korean and then I also spoke Portuguese with the Spanish lady

[00:21:41] Yeah, and you're a six foot two wrestler and they think you could probably barely speak English I think I can't get out of the cab quickly because I've still got my costume and I'm making and I just instinctively reach to what he's handing to me and I'm confused as to what it is because it's not what I was expecting. I will tell you what it is after the break.

[00:23:07] Right so what is this Moldova man putting your hands that you weren't expecting? I was confused and I just held it and just sat there for a moment and I said, what? I didn't even say it from my whole sentence. You're probably earning less money than neither of us. You drive in a cab and you got married and you come from all over a little bit. You think what we've experienced is sadder than what you're doing,

[00:24:20] which is dragging yourself up very earnestly through the system.

[00:24:25] He decides to go, you can tip in the story. It's a Norse legend told through wrestling. It's fucking amazing. If you remember Voodoo from Night of the Ninja, we met him because he was in that show, Ken see our show. We don't want to see that. Amazing.

[00:27:00] Very good.

[00:27:01] Very good.

[00:27:02] And one more show then that people can go and see

[00:27:04] or an act that you might want to.

[00:27:06] This afternoon we saw Harry Stokini. because your personality that is the show is built about is has brought them in and we bumped into a woman called Sophie Santos. When she's Santos from the Filipino descendants. So of course I spoke some Tagalog with her. I knew more than she did. But yeah, come up with the cast. Some are some are impressed when he does that. Some go.

[00:28:22] But I'm not sure where Sophie was.

[00:28:24] But we had a good chat with her.

[00:28:26] We went to go see a show a couple of days afterwards.

[00:29:22] lot of time for the Jewish sense of humor and the personality in general so really be a fan of that but also Josh Adelman with the Jew Rogaine

[00:29:29] experience you should go and check him out really funny comedian from the

[00:29:33] States as well so two Jewish comedians to go and look out for so final question

[00:29:39] then on wrestling with the champ from Edinburgh Fringe what's next the champ I am a wrestler. No, no, no, why are you doing this? Because in all honesty, why? Why have you chosen to give up your free time on a bank holiday because it's in gravy. I love gravy Actually, it's not really gravy for various reasons They have something that looks like gravy. The one rule is you can't hold anybody's head under it. Everything else goes

[00:31:03] 16 men eight women two minute matches

[00:32:05] fictional wrestler in a podcast and everyone else has got other reasons for wanting to do so.

[00:32:09] But I'm up for it. I'm just trying to get into the mind of...

[00:32:15] I don't see why you're finding this so hard because we did actually shoot when we got it. We never released it but we did a pilot little TV episode about an actor who played a wrestler

[00:32:23] that then goes to wrestle for real which is basically what's happening now. Wrestling in a giant pie of gravy. Yes. But where did that come from? That came from when you were on BBC Radio Manchester the first time and wasn't there a woman chiming in saying that she did gravy wrestling? No, pudding wrestling. There's a pub she used to go to. Right and I'm sure gravy wrestling got mentioned at the same time.

[00:33:40] So don't tell me I'm responsible for your king. This is your...

[00:33:44] No, look, you sounded like Oppenheimer now trying to pop a pub. Right. Hello. I shall I shall get very angry and tell him that he's made a gravy mistake. That's all we have time for from the Edinburgh Festival today. We look forward to and taking on the role of the ginger ninja in the World Gravy Wrestling Championships at the end of

[00:35:02] August. Feel free to do a little recording while you're there and we can use it in a