Let it be known that I am not a heckler.
I do live with one, a man who seems to be able to throw out, as if from the ether, strange, surreal, and sometimes prescient yelps.
What I am talking about here is not the individual, lone voice in the crowd, but the rumble of the mob, the kind of mass heckle that I have found frequently at the Edinburgh Fringe's long-running stand-up session, Late and Live.
This year's festival for me started with one of those random nights in which you find yourself standing in the Teviot box office after midnight, and saying, "So what have you got on?" At this point you know there is only one thing coming.
Soon, you will be sitting in a theatre with a drunk audience, braying and mooing at some poor stand-up till he or she walks off the stage. As it happens this was one of the worst. When I say "worst" this is with a certain relish. Several performers experienced slow painful "deaths" as the failure to illicit laughter is called. A Swedish magician act sent the audience into a wild, delirium of laughter. And one stand-up, from the USA, walked off because of the heckling.
The acts aren't what count. They are not the real show. That is the man who keeps making dumb comments about the comedians' sexual prowess from the back row, the football stadium-like chants that rise up calling for "Sweden" or "USA"; and the real fight that took place in the aisle, and left an audience member, sadly, out cold.
It's a taste I developed back in the days when I had a comedian boyfriend, and I am a little ashamed of it – particularly given this actual violence. But the fact remains that, if I ever say I like stand-up, then this is what I mean. It's not the comedians so much, as the barbarism of the crowd.
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