every little thing she does is cabbage

Currently undertaking the sudden huge and stressful task of clearing out my childhood home, inhabited by hoarders for 32 years! (Nobody died or anything, just... stuff happened.) I have a filthy cold, the boiler has finally given up the ghost, the thermometer is showing 13 degrees... all great stuff.

Among the tat, however, was a bag of 'souvenirs' from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2007. I performed there in the first of several very enjoyable student shows, and my parents, bless them, were very proud and travelled all the way up to see me (and have their own first ever general Fringe jag). And they were such devoted fans incompetents at managing paperwork that they kept every single magazine, review paper, ticket, flyer, brochure etc they picked up there in a safe place box under the stairs!

Annoyingly, of course, Jacaster didn't do a Fringe until 2008, and didn't do a proper show with actual listings and flyers and things until 2009 - if only my parents' Fringe mania had still been as strong the next two years I went up (they did go, I just don't think they'll have kept All The Things). Even so, I spent a pleasant Britcom timewarp hour looking at photos of Tiny Not-Very-Famous David Docherty et al, AND, making it all worthwhile, I found:



THAT'S RIGHT! Now, whose Britcom day can I make by sending them a genuine, original, mint condition flyer for the grammatically-irritating 2007 Durham Revue show 'Adventure Fantastique', POSSIBLY handed to my own mother or father by Actual Ed Gamble or Actual Nish Kumar themselves?!

Better quality photos of this exist elsewhere, but I was amused by the very small, very faint print at the bottom reading 'Smirnoff is the sponsor of the Underbelly and not of any of the shows performing there'.

My camera is terrible and the back of the flyer is pretty boring but have it anyway.



I will genuinely post this to anyone who wants it hard enough. I'm not enough of a Gamble or Kumar stan to be fussed about keeping it for myself, but I would love for some joy to come out of my parents' ridiculous lifestyle choices.

Either way, I very much enjoyed coming full circle like that, finding a Relic of Great Cultural Importance to current-me improbably retained from a time when past-me had no idea any of this was even happening. :)

(Oh, and it really brought home how much these guys are Of My Generation. At the same time I was up at the Fringe with a sketch show from my first year at A Prestigious University, Gamble and Kumar were also up at the Fringe with a sketch show from their... third? second? year at A Different Prestigious University. SO WEIRD, MAN.)