Hello
Tonight’s show was pretty much all about a ten year old called Lenny. And my amazing sign interpreter Catherine.
Basically, I started the show by explaining to the crowd that I’ve never done Mess Around with an interpreter before, because I wasn’t sure how hard it is to interpret the madness of adlibbing. I asked the crowd if there were any words they’d like to see signed, and one woman shouted out “doggy style”.
So Catherine signed it. And Lenny in the third row applauded a lot. So I dragged him on stage.
In the next half an hour I pretended to be a ventriloquist with Lenny as the dummy, negotiated a fee for him with his Dad/manager, and was clearly the straight man to the wise-cracking Lenny. To the point that I used Lenny to re-enact one of my favourite jokes:
A travelling salesman goes up to a house and knocks on the door. The door is opened by a ten year old boy in a smoking jacket, holding a pipe in one hand, a glass of brandy in the other, and wearing sunglasses. The salesman says “Hello little boy, are either of your parents home?”. The boy looks back and says “What do you fucken reckon?”
Of course, Lenny played the part of the boy, and looked like this:
It was then time to move on to Honker-related issues.
Honker is the name of a stuffed toy given to me on opening night by an audience member. It was intended for my baby daughter, but is now fronting a campaign to raise money for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children.
Since last night’s show:
Audience member Laura created a facebook page for Honker here – www.facebook.com/honker.adamhill
A Twitter account has been created for Honker here – twitter.com/honk4honker
And the Just Giving account for the Sick Kids set up by Tom here – www.justgiving.com/AdamHillsHonkerSickKids
has already raised 580 pounds.
Brilliant.
I asked Lenny if he and his family would take Honker for the day tomorrow, and photograph him in front of a variety of Edinburgh landmarks for the facebook page. They agreed, and promised to return for my next show on Tuesday night with Honker and the photos.
It seems that a journalist from Edinburgh Spotlight was also in the show, cos they collared Lenny and Honker afterwards, wrote an article, and offered to take them around Edinburgh tomorrow. You can read the article here – www.edinburghspotlight.com/2010/08/fringe-fun-honker-adam-hills/
I have a day off tomorrow in which I plan to a) contact the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and let them know what I am doing b) contact Anne Marie from NHS Lothian and drum up publicity and c) contact Irn Bru to see if they can help us out with sponsorship.
I’ll let you know on Tuesday how all of it goes.
Honk
Adam
Jenn Greig
09.08.2010 at 09:38Hi Adam!
I loved the show on the 7th Aug. I’m already trying to get tickets for another show before the end of the festival. Fantastic! We tried this afternoon but weren’t lucky.
I’ve been spreading the word of Honker and I’ve been trying to get all my facebook friends to add him! It’s going well so far. Will try to keep it going. We can get Honker way more popular than that shyla lassie! hehe!
Im going to Australia next feb for 6 weeks. I’m most excited as I’ve never been there before and I love anything and everything Aussie!!! Saturday night was my first time to see you and I loved it! Thank you so much! I’ll defo be keeping a close eye out for you in the future. One of my friends in Melbourne posted me a link of you telling your Irn-Bru story. I thought it was pure genius! I was sold after that one link.
All the best with the rest of the fringe and with wee Honker. Ill keep harassing my friends to join 🙂 Hopefully will get another ticket soon!
Many thanks again
Jenn from Uddingston, near Glasgow 🙂
Laura MacDonald
09.08.2010 at 20:55Sounds like another good show last night :)!
As Honker has become very popular – can someone please provide an email address so that I can send over the login details and responsibility for the facebook page!?
Cheers,
Laura
Martin Aker
09.08.2010 at 20:59Hi Adam,
Great show last nighty. A couple of things though:
1) Your show has a 14+ age designation – Lenny is 10. I am not sure he should have been there.
2) You paid his dad £20 to allow him to use the F*** word on stage.
Yes it was funny but it made me feel uncomfortable. I would prefer to hear the jokes with F***, C***, doggy style etc without the presence of a 10 year old child. Not you problem perhaps but his parents should have known better.
– M
Lisa
09.08.2010 at 23:47Hi Adam – just welcomed Honker to The Real Mary King’s Close! You’ll see the pics on Twitter @marykingsclose. We need to get some money to you (or straight to the Sick Kids) – we’re donating £1000 of Annies Money to the campaign – the Sick Kids is our official charity! Get in touch and let us know what to do (we can’t give the money online!).
Looking forward to seeing the show this Friday!
Alison
10.08.2010 at 00:10Honker was given a cheque for £1000 by Mary King’s Close and visited many other tourist spots, pics to follow
Annette Ash
10.08.2010 at 09:18I didn’t “shout out” Doggy style! I quietly whispered it to the person sitting next to me and you made me repeat it to the audience!!!
I am chuffed that I now know the sign for Doggy Style though, and the sign for F*ck you, f*ck the lot of you! I intend to use them as much as I possibly can!
Cheers, great show.
Cesar
10.08.2010 at 20:36Hi Adam,
Cesar here from your Saturday 9th August show in which you picked me out to know exactly the “Arthur the pizza man” accent you were trying to describe.
Great comedy with the comparison of myself in Oz to a Barry Smith is Spain too!
Great show!
Tom Curry
10.08.2010 at 21:47Double checked on JustGiving and donations can’t be made offline unfortunately. The amount can be shown as offline donations. Might be the best idea for the Close to just put the donation in as they normally would. I can update the JustGiving site to show the donation.
Slainte
Tom
Raqui
13.08.2010 at 19:35I saw this show and I have to tell you that I laughed so hard, it was fantastic. just a thousand points for Honker. you were great as well.