The Great Big Comedy Picnic ***

Having seen Ashley Frieze perform at Shaggers the night before, I was keen to see more of his stuff and my 5th trip to the dentist in two weeks meant that I would be walking straight past the Meadow Bar at 5.30pm on Wednesday, more than slightly hungover on the last day of my holidays.

So, in I went.

The audience was somewhat different to the previous evening. Instead of being around 2/3 full I was joined in the audience by an Auzzie bloke and a girl from South Africa who worked together, a family of four from Manchester and towards the end of the show a local couple. That was it. 7 people rising to 9 for the climax of the show!

One thing you need to make a comedy show any good is an audience. Unfortunately the torrential rain scared a lot of people away, and it was still pretty early days in the Fringe.

So when my favourite comedian from the previous evenings late show repeated the material that had gone down so well the night before, he was met with a few blank stares (although I still found it funny the 2nd time round). The afternoon was summed up when Ashley realised that having got all 7 audience members to introduce themselves, that only 2 at the most would have actually heard of the TV show Rainbow....

Unfortunatley I can't recall the name of the 2nd comedian who went on after Ashley. He was pretty average.

I'm giving it three stars because it has the potential to be a good show, even although it didn't work on the day.

http://www.laughinghorsecomedy.co.uk/freefestival/gbcp.htm