I’M not sure if Mark helps usher all his crowds in but it was a blessing that did so for the performance I saw.
Getting the audience in and out ASAP is a must at the Fringe as the next act is all set to come on and the sold-out crowd wasn’t taking their sets quickly enough for one front-of-house staff member.
Her already piercing tone reached incredible levels as she shrieked at a pitch I’m sure only dogs could hear for us to hurry up but Mark’s calming influence made sure we were in the right frame of mind for what was to come.
Just as well, because being at high-doh would not have been at all conducive to the following hour delivered by a man who seemed so ill-at-ease on stage – all scratching his beard, his chest, his hair, mumbled self-effacing comments – that you felt the last thing he needed was Helga from ’Allo ’Allo! screeching at his audience before kick-off.
This stage persona is all bollocks, of course. Watson is an absolute pro at this game, one of the best operators in the business who manages to make a finely-crafted hour look like a shambling act that could collapse at any minute and whose crowd work is second-to-none.
He might look anxious but he has his audience in the palm of his hand.
He was the third stand-up this week alongside Hal Cruttenden and Glenn Moore that I just thought, “This fella knows his stuff”.
As Watson reveals, it was 20 years ago this week that he made his debut at the Pleasance, though he does undercut this somewhat by insisting, “20 years in, it’s not going to get better now!”
That actually made me realise that it was 35 years since I’d been in this room, one of the biggest at the Fringe, but I wasn’t getting gales of laughter from a sold-out crowd, I was looking in panic at the Politics Of The Soviet Union AND Eastern Europe exam thinking, “Brezhnev? We didn’t fkn study Brezhnev!!!”
My own fault for choosing that course the year the Berlin Wall came down, I suppose…
Mark covers a multitude of topics – AI (I think the inspiration for the show’s title), his fear of storms and finding unexpected common ground with men who had spent “a lifetime in the sausage game”.
You want to find out exactly what that means? Get a ticket but be quick, these shows are selling out despite Watson cheekily stating that the venue sells a number of tickets that is “not quite legal”.
Mark Watson: Before It Overtakes Us, 17.30, Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance One) until August 24 (not 11)
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/mark-watson-before-it-overtakes-us
