Reminiscences of my first Edinburgh Fringe August 5th, 2014 by Arthur Smth

  Reminiscences of my first Edinburgh Fringe  (extracted, and slightly amended, from my memoir ‘My Name is Daphne Fairfax’    In late summer it is the only thing to do. For two of the past 30 years I have missed it and both times I felt like all my friends were having a terrific get-together while I had […]

Ed Fringe 2014 July 28th, 2014 by Arthur Smth

Stage – Ed 2014 The street cleaners have cancelled their holidays, bekilted beardymen are defragging their bagpipes (I don’t know – how do you clean a bagpipe?), retired dames in Morningside are sharpening their pencils and the Lothian police are taking on new recruits – yes, the Edinburgh festival Fringe is back in town and […]

Strange Gigs February 8th, 2014 by Arthur Smth

        No doubt we all consider other lives we might have led. What if I had accepted that offer to train as a teacher when I was 24 and appeared to have few other prospects? Maybe I would now be a head teacher in, say, South Yorkshire with a wife who is […]

I am a stand up January 16th, 2014 by Arthur Smth

I am a stand up (from my autobiography My Name is Daphne Fairfax) I am a stand-up comic. Even now, after a couple of thousand gigs, making this statement gives me a bristle of pride and a bump of self-importance. ‘That must be the hardest job in the world,’ people say routinely to stand-ups. It […]

Adventures en route to Leonard (1) November 7th, 2013 by Arthur Smth

    In February 2014 Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen (Volume 2) is playing at the Soho theatre (see link below). This is episode 1 of my account of the show’s birth…. What is it about? What songs will I sing? How will I sing them? What will I say? How will I say it? What the […]

Machynlleth Comedy Festival May 9th, 2012 by Arthur Smth

Warning: if you are not already wearing one, and are intending to read to the end of this blog, then you now need to go and find a hat to put on. Go on off you go. Machynlleth, you may not be surprised to learn, is in Wales and accordingly takes nearly 150 hundred years […]