By Laurence Clark
Time Out London 26.3.09
My first show at Edinburgh Fringe was a tongue-in-cheek charity fundraising show for celebrities fronting charity fundraising shows. As a disabled comic, I presented appeals on their behalf in the same patronising, sentimental way that they’d used when doing disability charity appeals. Although I’d got good reviews and plenty of laughs, one particular performance was met with stone-cold silence for the whole hour, punctuated only by polite applause every so often. By the end I was distraught and ready to quit. Then I took a peek at my departing audience, discovering that every single person was from overseas – French, Japanese, Italian etc. They probably hadn’t laughed because they’d never heard of the likes of Terry Wogan, Esther Rantzen and Gaby Roslin. I felt envious!
