5th August 2024
Edinburgh
THE
PRESS sniffily dismissed, essentially, as ‘unoriginal’. I should’ve said something smart and witty in response, but I was honestly so hungover I just tried not to cry or be sick.
Edinburgh has a rich history of death. It is an extremely haunted city. If you go up to any of the locals during the Fringe and ask them about hauntings, 9 times out of 10 the person you’re speaking to will be a ghost. The Fringe itself is also haunted. By the ghosts of dead dads. And, more annoyingly for me, by the ghosts of dead dad shows. The dead dad comedy show has become a cliché in the annals of Fringe history, and that presents a real problem for me, a comedian with an Edinburgh Fringe show and a dead dad. I did my best to keep him out of it. But what started off as a show about work became a show about life and death and life after death and at that point it became harder and harder not to mention the skeleton of an elephant in the room. His death is not what the show is about, but it seemed wrong to not even mention it. Turns out, though, that even acknowledging the death of your father is enough for some people to categorise you as ‘one of those shows’. After a preview in London (at which I was astonishingly hungover) a comic I’d never met before said, ‘another dead dad show I see’. Another dead dad show. It hurt to hear one of the biggest things that’s happened in my life
But then again, the fact that it’s not original is a pretty good reason to talk about it. When my dad died, I was shocked to discover I was not, in fact, the first person in history this had ever happened to. Dads had died before. Quite a lot of them. And I desperately wanted to hear from the others. To then discover that some of those people had turned that experience into a full hour of comedy? Let me at it! I’ll see any dead dad show I can. If you’ve got a dead dad, I’m coming to your show. Same goes for mums. Don’t think you’re safe just ‘cause you’ve got a dead mum. I don’t really care who died, to be quite honest, if you’ve got some grief to get off your chest you can guarantee I’ll be sat somewhere in the dark audience lapping it up like a thirsty little grief dog. So don’t be alarmed if you hear slurping. And, if you’ve ever found yourself rolling your eyes and thinking ‘another dead dad show’, then get those eyes back down to their normal position, please. Don’t go eye-rolling at grief. If you really want to put an end to dead dad shows, then you should focus your efforts on finding out what’s killing all these dads and putting a stop to it. I think it’s probably a werewolf. Rich Spalding: Gather Your Skeletons Pleasance Courtyard - Cellar