It only seems like a moment ago that we were at that town centre hotel in Northampton, inventively named the Northampton Town Centre Hotel (I kid you not) to see Gareth Mutch and Tom Stade wow us with their Edinburgh Previews. And we were back there again on Saturday night to see Jo Caulfield and Paul Sinha do the same! Such is the appeal of both the artists and the event that they held two shows on that day – a 5pm teatime affair and an 8pm grown up’s gig – although I’m sure the material was pretty much the same for both shows. That said, you can’t be sure; as these are Work in Progress shows, they might have risked a few lines at 5pm that bombed and were never heard of again – as indeed might have happened at the 8pm show. Basically, you can look on these shows as a helping hand for the comedians whacking their show into shape, and a serving suggestion for the audience as to what the final product might look like.
We started off with Jo Caulfield, a very experienced performer in the world of comedy, preparing her new Edinburgh show, Razor-Sharp. Checking back, I think this will be the 21st time that she’s taken a show to Edinburgh, so I think it’s safe to say she knows what she’s doing – she’s as much part of the place as Arthur’s Seat itself. She admits that all her shows are basically her catching up on ideas and reactions to things that have happened to her over the past twelve months, so you always get a sense of a very personal connection with her material. And much of her material is inspired by the life and times of her husband, of whom I think it is fair to say, she is lovingly critical. She has a hilarious routine about going along to what her husband calls “a night out with the lads” much to their (the lads) uniform horror. Even though it’s a WIP, she’s assured, polished, and superbly caustic. For my own taste, occasionally I find she drifts into the almost cruel with some of her observations, but she does it so nicely that she gets away with it! She also gave a reading from her new book The Funny Thing About Death which I think was in preparation for an appearance at the Book Festival. It doesn’t dovetail into her Edinburgh show but hopefully it helped her decide on which passages she should read there. But if you’re a fan of Jo Caulfield then her new show will definitely be one to watch.
After the interval we welcomed Paul Sinha, previewing his Edinburgh Show Pauly Bengali. We’ve seen Paul Sinha many times before and his is one of the most creative and telling comedy brains on the circuit. This show was like a game of two halves; in the first, we had some of Paul’s classic takes on being a gay Asian with Parkinson’s and his affiliation (or otherwise) with leafy Luton, and in the second, he concentrated on his experience with attending last year’s TRIC awards and his interaction, for want of a better word, with the awards’ sponsor, the one and only GB News. Proudly woke (and why wouldn’t you be?) he’s no friend of KGB News, and there are loads of comedy nuggets to appreciate including why he’s not on Mark Dolan’s Christmas Card list – and probably not Adrian Edmondson’s either. One thing you can say about Paul Sinha, he’s always delightfully indiscreet about people who don’t come up his standard. He has plenty of good words to say about Milo McCabe though – again, why wouldn’t you? Interspersed with all this he gives us some comedy songs on the bontempi and ends up with a comic assassination of someone I’d never heard of but who has clearly been stealing his jokes – which is always a no-no in the comedy world. It needs a little more shaping up and editing but I’ve no doubt that Pauly Bengali will be a big success in Edinburgh.
And there’s more to come – another Edinburgh Preview tonight at The Lamplighter; we’ll be there, will you?