Team GPB

The post box. Iconic, a masterpiece of design and the start of a journey for letters and cards and post-cards that bring joy when they eventually fall onto the welcome mat of their intended recipient. And red. Not just red but Red, post box red, heritage red, institution red.

Not any more, in a stroke of paint and absolute genius, the Post Office is painting one post box in the home town of each British Olympic champion gold. They look stunning, more stunning still is that such has been the success of Team GB that the Post Office are reportedly running low on gold paint.

Three things must immediately happen.

Somebody will have to be the first person to visit all the golden post boxes and post a letter in each one.

This will then be the Golden Post Box Challenge. Like Monroe bagging or acquiring STDs you can eke this activity out for years if you so wish but records could also be set in doing them all in the quickest time, by public transport. I can already see the need for at least three different guide books and also a book that you get stamped every time you post a letter from a GPB. Purists will wish to visit them in the Order in which medals were won.

Finally a celebrity, preferably a comedian such as Al Murray, needs to front a television series where he visits each GPB. The format will either be Al on a bicycle wearing a flying helmet and taking a sideways look at whatever town he's visiting, or Al on a tandem wearing a flying helmet with the Olympian in question on the back and hearing Their Story. The flying helmet is, however, crucial.

Review - Al Murray The Pub landlord's Compete for the meat

Flogging the format...to death.

Al Murray has, for years, being doing exactly what it says on the tin, with the added recent development that the shows are now filmed, meaning he can turn a live show into a handy pitch to Channel Five executives, saving valuable time for coke and hookers or wherever else it is that television executives do when not listening to pitches from comedians.

This was essentially the Christmas version of 'Compete for the meat'. If you are actually competing, as we were last year, then there is the fun of a quiz and the edgy titillation of possibly being humiliated by Al. If you are an audience member, the show is not so immediate, you are essentially just watching a live version of a tee vee quiz show based on a pub quiz.

But they do work hard to make it fun. Al has raised his game from victimising individuals to victimising whole tables at once, and there are sing-alongside for the whole audience. If you go along to this with a sort of ironic detachment, you'll be miserable. If you grab hold of a 'thick and slow' foam finger and join in the abuse, rendering the whole experience not unlike some beery version of 'Lord of the flies' then you'll enjoy it.

Was it fresh? No. Was it slick? Very. Was it funny? Yes. Al did enough, in particular with his attempted wooing of one young helpless woman, to make an established format one has seen before seem fresh. What one was watching was essentially a comedians greatest hits, and, as anyone who has ever been to a gig and observed the audience reaction when a band announces that they are now going to play some of their new material will tell you, that's no bad thing.

Postcard from Edinburgh – Reviews

Al Murray the Pub Landlord’s Pub Quiz

Fucking. Genius. The cheapest ticket bought you the funniest show. Al Murray rebooted the format of his show (casual racism, sexism and remarks about pork scratchings) by incorporating an actual pub quiz. The audience are placed in groups of six and named after pubs (‘horse and plough’, ‘rose and crown’) and ‘compete for the meat’, a frozen chicken that the quizmaster rotates under the spotlight like the rotisserie from hell. Or Asda.

Laughed my arse off. As always the audience were part of the show. High point was when he noticed a woman drinking coffee and confiscated it (artificial stimulant), low point, shouting ‘oi, bloke with boffin hair’ at me and, on impulse, I turn around ‘No, don’t fucking look behind you’.

Jo Caulfield

Saw he last year accidentally, their year intentionally. Very, very good. Fairy Tales To Prepare You For Life = genius. Also, exactly as bitter as her audience about getting older.

Sarah Millican

Went based on radio performances. OKish. Do women still have to make jokes about M&S and cakes and chocolate? And being fat? Is it the law. Last twenty minutes dragged.

Laura Solon

Stone cold genius and really interesting to see in the flesh. Had the funniest joke of the festival (I still giggle randomly at it now every time I think of it and confidently predict I will continue to do so for a few months).

Reginald D Hunter

Oh. My. Starry. Eyed. Surprise. I love comics like this. Essentially, some comics in Edinburgh have been on telly shows like ‘Have I got news for you’. They are funny. They do not swear. RDH comes on stage and explains ‘television is business but stand-up is art’. This translates to: ‘I will now effbomb and ceeebomb’. Then he does.

He was good. True to his word things got a little uncomfortable at times and occasionally he was obviously trying out new stuff but hey, that’s OK.

The couple in front of me did not laugh once. I think that they were expecting the fellow from HIGNFY. Not some sweary fella. Reminded me of Eddie Murphy’s concert film ‘Delirious’ where half way through he acknowledges that a lot of people might have come along because he was quite funny in Beverley Hills Cop and that, frankly, he’s scaring the hell out of the children in the front row.

BBC Comedy presents

The outstanding show of the festival and the place where you see next year’s crop of fresh talent. We saw comedians coked off their head, comedians who took ill-advised loo breaks and comedians who were so good that while they were on stage entertaining us they were winning best newcomer elsewhere.

But be warned, we have sat in the front row before and been picked on. Then we have sat in the front row and not been picked on (a combination of ‘fuck off’ vibes and looking like you’re eager to chat). This time we set a record. Six rows back and we were picked on, after my wife pointed to me in a ‘who’s the tallest person in the room’ survey. I had to remain standing for a couple of minutes. The chap behind me was thrilled.

BBC comedy presents starts at eleven at night. Everyone is just getting warmed up. It’s great, it’s cheap and you can start dropping names NOW to show you are cool and hip. If you can remember the names.

The Tattoo

The second best show in Edinburgh. See that bloke with the pipes and the kilt. See the medals on his chest. Right, last week, he rammed those pipes up the arse of some child-raping teacher-killing al-Queerida scumbag. He is a piper and he makes the word safe for children. Crying yet?


You would be when the fireworks went off. I’m still picking bits of gunpowder out of my hair.

Impressionist gardens

The show of the festival. A blockbuster exhibition in that the queues for the tickets went round the block.

Until paint and patrons both became cheaper, the gardens that were painted were along the lines of commissions, many of which seemed keen to have the artist capture the strength and power of the landowners fountain.

As paint became cheaper and the middle class started to have the money to but paintings that they hadn’t commissioned, painters started painting the formal guardians that were springing up under the reign of Napoleon. The gardens may have been formal but the people were not.

The impressionists appeared to happen because paint got cheap. Especially green paint. Especially cabbage coloured green paint. The impressionists weren’t interested in registering the power of your fountain, they were more interested in conveying the frost on the cabbages of the allotment of the bloke who was too poor to buy their paintings. Cabbage green must have been a cheap coloured paint, or, possibly, cabbages were attractive to painters because there are a lot of paintings with cabbages.

But, to be honest, allotments and kitchen gardens are places of industry and passion, who could resist setting up and easel.

Edinburgh Reviews - Al Murray

Sat in the front row. Audience participation mitigated on my part by me being too dull to be really worth picking on. I had sat next to a fat bloke and it was the comedy equivalent of firing chaff. Not suitable for children.