A day full of events and people

First of all, a media event I have waiting for ages has finally happened. The Guardian has published (for now online, tomorrow Wednesday on paper) the interviewed I gave to Brian Logan along with other foreign comedians:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/17/edinburgh-overseas-comics

It's a good article and I think I come out pretty well. And it's the Guardian. Wow. Roll, presses, roll.

And at the show I had some very important guests. First of all, my fellow Italian comedian Giada Garofalo and her partner Nelson. Since I did the Brighton festival with Giada she followed with interest and partecipation the development of my show so I was looking forward to her opinion. I wasn't disappointed at all, she gave me a lot a food for thought, for which I'm really grateful.

And Ivor Dembina came too. He is a comedy legend and a personal hero of mine, I loved his show "This is not a subject for comedy". Later I pumbed into him on the Royal Mile and he gave me a lot of advice. In particular he advised me to keep more often the mic on the stand. The amazing thing is that I had just read on Stewart Lee's autobiography how he learned that technique from nobody else than Ivor Dembina. I mentioned that to Ivor and he said: "yes, but you are even worse than he was back then". Well, I can live with that. Here was somebody who remembered when Stewart Lee was bad and taught him to become good and who now was giving advice to me, as if me and Stewart (as I feel entitled to call him now) were pupils in the same class. Amazing, only in Edinburgh. This is one of the reasons why is great to be here, you are fighting shoulder to shoulder with so many good and great comedians that not learning something from them is almost impossible. Especially with somebody as generous as Ivor.

The show itself was not bad, the audience was small but there was an Italian young lady who laughed at every punchline, serving as a cheerleader for the others. The critic must have thought that she was a "plant", but I swear she was "real". Regarding the critic herself, I regret to report that she never laughed and smiled only a couple of times. She spent most of the time scribbling as if she was going to publish a verbatim account of of my show. Let's see.

And my parents have arrived in town, of which I think I'll write more tomorrow.