I'm in a kind of pre-hibernation before the fringe. My number one rule is: don't start any big projects. This is a very difficult rule for me because I love starting big projects. It feels like I've spent a whole week on little tasks. Last night I was up until 1am using a spoon and some vinegar to scrape off old mouse mat plastic that had fused with my desk over successive heatwaves. Everything feels a lot tidier now but my desk smells like vinegar.

August looms large in my thoughts. I haven't been away from home for more than a week since, well, the last time I did a full fringe run seven years ago. It'll be my longest time away since I moved in with my partner five years ago. Now who am I going to do cryptic crosswords with? Now who's going to say "please pause the show first if you're going to do that" when I say something funny during Coronation Street??

Next month it'll be my twelfth (I can't believe that's how you spell that) time going up to perform at the fringe. But only my sixth to do a full month long run.

In 2010 I went up with a university revue. We stayed in a hostel on Cowgate - a kind of sunken medieval alley posing as a street that has no business being an essential artery to a month long festival with pedestrian density that makes the Tawaf look like the Mongolian Steppe, makes the Kumbh Mela look like the the Central Siberian Plateau and makes the New York Times Square New Years Eve Celebration look like the vast emptiness of outer space. We bought ear plugs for the dance music that poured in through the single glazed windows. The entrance to the building was around a slight corner, so always reeked of fresh piss at night and stale piss in the morning.
Our venue was one of the ones whose raison d'etre is to look sufficiently plausible to first-timers, a programme bursting with newly formed theatre troupes and vanity projects. Our performance space was on the top floor of a tall building. It was never intended to be accessed by the public, so the lift terminated on the floor below and the connecting staircase deliberately hidden around a few bends. This was sufficiently obscure to ensure 5% - 10% of ticketholders never made it into the room in time for the show. The show was not noteworthy - if a student revue sketch comedy show makes any discernible ripple on the surface tension of the largest arts festival in the world then something has gone severely wrong.
In 2012 we planned to go up again, but then the enterprise came crashing down between finalising registration and confirming accommodation. It would be nice to blame this collapse on creative differences, sadly it was the fault of one individual who had started scheming and plotting to improve their lot in the just-out-of-university sketch comedy world. Like pulling an elaborate heist to take over a tumble tots.

In 2013 I was now a stand-up and back in Edinburgh in one of two back-to-back disastrous runs with PBH free fringe. In each instance allocated a venue that was never used again. The first one was just too far away. It was a quarter of a mile from the nearest flyerer. Despite this, the performer before me (the granddaughter of a beknighted colonial administrator) was turning people away on the door every day. I was a timid flyerer. I got too in my head about who would be right, who might enjoy it and how this forced me to profile every stranger who walked past. I remember one occasion where another comic seeing that I was dejected and hoping for some stage time aggressively flyered literally every person who walked past and the venue filled up with an audience of press-ganged po faced blokes who absolutely despised me.
The building was grade 2 listed and therefore they couldn't fix their uneven stone steps which had one attendee crashing to the ground and twisting their ankle before they could get to the front door. The stage faced the back windows, so I performed an hour long set watching them sat on the floor red faced and wincing.
Sometimes the owner would be in and would watch the show stood up at the bar with his arms folded. He would always interrupt my bit criticising the conservative party and bring the conversation (why was it a conversation??) around to taxes. He told me he could remove any show from his venue during the festival if it wasn't a good fit. I wrote another version of the show for the days he was in.

In 2014 when I reapplied to PBH with a desperate plea for a more central venue. I was allocated an outdoor marquee newly erected outside a budget hotel between Cowgate and Chambers Street. Imagine the kind of thing you'd see at a street market, covered on three sides and long enough to seat about 20. This caused me enough issues because its openness felt like performing on the street, people would stick their face in and lock eyes with me. This was back when ADHD was just a fleeting plotline on television shows rather than an official diagnosis on the nhs records of most comedians. I knew I was a distractible performer, but not that there was nothing I could do about it. Conversations would drift past inches away from my ears through the billowing PVC lining and I couldn't stop myself from momentarily tuning into them instead of recalling the next section of my show.
But I'm burying the lede here: the marquee was the designated smoking area for the hotel bar. Anyone wanting to smoke was sent into my venue to light up, whereupon I'd pause my show and say "excuse me what are you doing" and they'd respond, understandably, that they'd been instructed to come here. This was a policy set by the manager and nothing any of the staff I could access had any control over. The audience would complain, actively, as second hand miasma drifted into their hair. It was easy to leave my show. There was no door.
The show was still bad, I should say. I was still pretty young. The last fringe was overwhelming in more ways than one, I had too many inspirations and no voice. I was attempting something more sincere and confessional. I was looking for something. I wanted to cry on stage like I had seen Rob Auton do the previous year with The Sky Show. I was digging aimlessly into myself. I was unwell. I couldn't handle the people poking their heads in. Sometimes I'd stop talking in response which they'd take as a cue to ask what was going on and I'd explain the whole situation and get upset. I got one review for that show, my first proper fringe review, two stars. The exact wording is lost to the convection currents of the internet, but the sentiment was something like: this performer has potential but the venue keeps blowing around, people keep coming into smoke and he can't handle it. It was the kindest reasonable thing anyone could have written. It's so important to understand that I wasn't some genius obscured and held back from their potential. I was a shit idiot excessively punished for mediocrity.
In week two I scrapped my intended show and did my best to make the problems a central feature and focus rather than something I was supposed to try and tune out - which I had by this point realised I was simply incapable of. However, news of me using their sound system to criticise the hotel finally let me meet the manager who threatened to kick me out of their venue. I responded by hiding all the ashtrays. Things escalated until he would specifically come to watch my show to see if I misbehaved. Some shows devolved into Mexican standoffs between me and him. I wanted him to kick me out. I wanted to stop doing the show. He never did. He just stopped turning up one day. Then I stopped turning up. For the last week of the fringe I just didn't do my show anymore. In a way, I never did.

I stayed away then for three years. I really tried to draw a line under it. I look at what I do on stage now, how the focus is not really on monologues and stories like other comedians but on centralising an evolving problem and it's hard not to see the contours of that brain-shattering month. But I don't think this is a tale about what doesn't kill you making you stronger, it's just about making hay with whatever illness the world decides to give you.

It was Adam Larter who cajoled me into giving it another shot. He told me it would be different. And I've always been grateful for that encouragement. They were different, and remain different. Every experience I've had since then has been uniformly wonderful. But I've always felt a little wary. Like how a guy who loves working with elephants never looks at them the same after one broke his leg, flinching when the beast moves unexpectedly.

Anyway, all this is to say I'm doing my first full fringe run in seven years to Edinburgh next week and you should tell your friends. I'm also doing a late night WIP for my new gameshow/quiz/variety show Sean Morley's Normal Game on the 9th (the night of the 8th).

I've really let August take over my life and bandwidth so there's not as much as I'd like booked in for later in the year. But I will emphasise a couple of things in September in Sheffield (sorry people who live elsewhere).

Truth Seekers International BYO Conspiracy Night - 11th September

This is nothing to do with me. This has the sticky fingerprints of my friend Thom from Square Hole Comedy in Sheffield. I don't understand what Truth Seekers International is and their website only makes that lack of knowledge more exciting. This is a mediun/high concept night of micro conspiracy lectures with a non zero chance of being a death cult taking place in a small DIY music venue on 9/11. Sounds good. I'll be there.

Tickets here

The World International Wooden Block Stacking Championship - 19th September

This year I've made it to the finals of The Giant International Wooden Block Stacking Championship. As regular readers will know I didn't quite manage to take the trophy home last year but this year will be different. This year is my year.

TGIWBSC is something like a modern day pantomime with an offbrand jenga competition in the middle. It's completely different and significantly better but I mentally link it with the annual rice cake eating competition. It's got a similar unadorned absurdist performance art energy about deciding to take a profound interest in a repetitive action. It's transformative. It could be the future.

OK that's it goodbye.