20th August 2024
Edinburgh
THE
PRESS
that say “why don’t you tell me a joke”, like I’m handing out sample cheese bites at the supermarket, and they will grace me with their presence should the sample pass the test. It is always 100% of the time a male person in front of their fellow males, wanting to assert himself as a cool dude who bullies comics.
Jin Hao Li
Sometimes I only drink coke because that shade of red on the can is the perfect look for how it tastes. If it wasn’t for marketing, I might not even jeopardise my health. Flyerers at the Fringe are like the Coca Cola red, inviting us to risk an hour or so of our lives. They build bridges between strangers, like matchmakers, Cupids with hundreds of arrows that pollute our Mother Earth. They are the true heroes of the fringe, and this is a memoir of a former hero. In the Fringe of 2022, we performed sketch comedy in a mouldy cave, and had to lie through our teeth and gums when flyering, I mean the
show was good but it was definitely not in a ‘comfortable setting’, which was allegedly a phrase I used to say. I would go up to someone, hold out a flyer and say “Taylor Swift?”, just to get their attention, which I don’t think she’d mind, since it keeps her name in conversation. Then it was all about retaining that attention. I was a walking tiktok. At times I felt like a fisherman but instead of a box of worms it was a stack of paper with my friends’ faces on it as bait. Sometimes if I’m lucky I’d catch a freshwater trout who's eager to swallow any worm, but on bad days I might come across a dirty dirty eel, ready to zap me with their witty remarks. These are the f*ckers
There was one day we formed a train, or maybe a caterpillar, and just went around saying ‘A flyer’? And if we were rejected we’d make a disappointed ‘awwww’. There came a point where the choreography of our flyering formation was worked on more than the blocking for the actual show. Another favourite memory was when my friend and fellow comedian Qin Wang helped me to flyer the show in mandarin to the Chinese students. She claimed that she was my sister, because we knew our market and selling family ideals is guaranteed to work on international students yearning for home. Flyering is such a big part of fringe culture, it keeps the buzz alive. I hope one day all flyers are edible so they don’t pollute Edinburgh so much. Jin Hao Li: Swimming in a Submarine Courtyard - Below