Episode 3 Edinburgh Nights

This programme contains some strong language

Welcome back to Scotland's capital,

where the world's biggest arts festival

may be drawing to a close,

but the city is still partying.

Brexit means...

Coming up...

comedians respond to Brexit, British voters and Boris...

Have a bendy banana.

..ventriloquist Nina Conti on puppets, profound and profane...

SCREAMING

..refugees tell their own powerful stories of migration...

..plus a special performance from The Lemon Bucket Orkestra,

whose Guerrilla Folk Opera has had rave reviews.

The repercussions of the vote to leave the EU

are reverberating around the city.

Spare a thought, then, for some of the Fringe performers who,

in the light of the referendum result,

have had to rewrite their material rapidly.

The political upheaval of the past few weeks has hardly gone unnoticed

by the hundreds of comedians performing here in Edinburgh...

..and one big beast from the Brexit campaign

has attracted particularly close attention.

It's a new world, but I do believe, and I have done, felt strongly

ever since at least March that...

we're better off inside the EU.

I mean, sorry... out, out, outside the EU. Sorry.

You look particularly despondent, sir.

-Have a bendy banana.

-Thank you.

With the result announced just six weeks before the start of

the Fringe, the referendum has very quickly taken centre stage.

Brexit means Brexit.

And Brexit means fuck all,

cos Brexit is a made-up word.

Do you think the referendum

-kind of galvanised things for comics this year?

-Yes, I do, yeah.

I mean, it's the same as any big event, whether it's an election

or a referendum or, you know, a World Cup or anything like that.

Big, major events attract ideas and they inspire people.

It encourages people in the arts,

in music and in comedy to talk about the things that define the eras.

So what was it like for you when the vote became clear?

For a while there was a period where I felt quite emotional

-and then because of my line of work I...

-You went, "Wham, bam!"

I felt very excited, yeah. I said, "Well, this is superb."

Because I've been doing shows for years trying to convince people

that politics is fascinating and I think it's fair to say most

people take a bit of convincing. This referendum has proved it.

Tattoo - probably voted Leave.

Baguette - probably voted Remain.

Tattoo and a baguette - pervert.

When I woke up and saw the result, I thought, "OK, this has happened."

At first I thought about the implications for our country,

-obviously.

-Obviously.

But then about an hour later I thought,

"Wow, I've got 25 minutes

"of absolutely irrelevant stand-up comedy."

The second half of the show wasn't going to be like,

"So we've remained in the European Union,"

but I wanted to do a show about sort of economics and the kind of

-changing nature of capitalism. You know, the fun stuff.

-Yeah.

I wanted to do a show about that but it just suddenly seemed

redundant to be talking about anything in politics

other than the referendum after the result.

Say what you will about the Labour Party,

you have to give them credit cos they've looked across the bench

at the turmoil engulfing the Conservative Party

and reacted like this -

"You call that political disarray? Sit down.

"Let the professionals show you how it's done."

-The referendum campaign threw up some great characters.

-Yeah.

If you imagine, the kind of Shakespearean, you know,

the Gove relationship with Boris, it's... You know.

Yeah, it's absolutely incredible.

I mean, I think that we didn't give the theatrical community

enough time with the vote but I suspect next year we're going to

get a lot of Macbeths with Michael Gove.

I think that that's definitely... that's definitely coming.

-And Lady Macbeth.

-And Lady Macbeth. Boris Johnson.

The look on Boris Johnson and Michael Gove's face.

The didn't look like two men who'd won a referendum.

They looked like two men who'd lost a side bet and one of them

was going to have to fuck a cheese grater.

So you changed your show entirely.

-Yeah.

-That must have been a mountain of work.

It was, I mean, initially,

heartbreaking and very scary because, as a comedian

working towards Edinburgh,

most of the year you start working up material

and because I do political stuff, really,

it's post-January, so I only really have about five or six months

before June and July when I have to preview the show and get it ready.

This time, I had five weeks to start from scratch.

We are living through something of a spicy period.

It's a spicy period, guys.

You want to know how I know it's a spicy period?

There's a lot of people living in this country who would object to it

being described as spicy. That's how you know.

So how did the vote affect you personally?

On 24 June, I was doing a gig at the Comedy Store and that night

a man told me to go home, from the audience,

and I just briefly brought up the idea of it being a historic day,

cos I talk about studying history when I was at school, and I said,

"I don't know what's going to happen,"

and he shouted, "You can go home."

I saw politicians and the major figures in the Leave camp

dismiss outright any connection between the Leave vote

and a spike in hate crime and I just thought,

"I'm sick of being told that this didn't happen to me."

So that was when the decision was made to start talking about it.

Aaron Banks is a major figure in the Leave campaign and he said

the biggest problem with the Remain campaign was

that it was too reliant on fact.

-Where this show would be interesting would be Sunderland.

-Yeah.

I mean, in many ways, Kirsty,

that is the most devastating heckle I could have with my show.

It would have been amazing if you'd shouted that at the gig.

"Go say this in Sunderland!"

There's no shortage of material mocking the Leave campaign,

but there is one comic bucking the trend.

We're so delighted to find you because actually finding

a comedian who is Brexit is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Yeah, there's not many of us up here and when I say many I mean any.

I mean it's literally... I believe it's me.

I'm the only one dumb enough to come up here with

a show called Conswervative and then at the end also reveal that

I voted Leave, and it's been an interesting run, to be honest.

Voting Conservative is a bit like

buying a James Blunt album. Know what I mean?

You know millions of other people must have done it

but weirdly, you never seem to meet one.

So when the vote happened, did you go,

"Well, that's fantastic cos it means I can change my show,"

or did you go, "Oh, God, I've got to change my show"?

I think firstly I felt a bit like everybody, like...

-I had a bit of buyer's remorse.

-Buyer's remorse! Seriously?

Yeah, no, I did. The reality of what happened,

certainly when Cameron quit and the markets slumped

and everything seemed to briefly go into freefall,

it was natural to sort of question, is this the right thing?

-But did that give you great material?

-I drew back for a while.

I thought, "Let people be angry, let people be disappointed."

There was quite a lot of comics saying,

"Well, the world's laughing,"

and I was thinking, "Well, I'm a comic so...job done."

My mum would've been great at negotiating Brexit.

She would have said to Theresa May, "Theresa, babe,

"I've got you a good deal, yeah?

"I got you access to the single market, concessions on freedom

"of movement and Jean-Claude Juncker is now called John, all right? OK?

"Yeah. Pain au chocolat, my arse."

So what's the response from the audience been like?

There was one woman who waited for me in this courtyard

and waited till everybody had gone

and said, "Are you a character actor?

"You can tell me." I was like, "No."

I don't know if at that point she thought I was going to go,

"Yes, actually, my name's Tristram.

"Let's go and do some Bikram yoga and let's talk it through."

She just couldn't believe, maybe with some justification,

that anybody would come up

and kind of share these views at a liberal arts festival.

The first day afterwards, first day, I was a racist.

That was the dialogue. Racist.

Second day, xenophobic. Third day, I was thick.

I was thinking, "Thick?

"I'm not the one who organised a march after the vote, OK?"

When I saw on BBC News that we had left the EU,

I immediately had violent diarrhoea.

Just horrible.

Like, "We've left the EU... Oh, God!"

Straight in the... I had a bad case of the Brex-shits, guys.

It really... Seriously.

The Nando's I'd had the previous evening

voted to leave with an overwhelming majority

and article 50 was triggered immediately.

The festival's into its third week but thousands of performers

are still going strong, so here's our final selection of

highlights for this year.

Grandson of comic genius Charlie Chaplin,

the acrobatic, poet, clown and magician James Thierree

leads his audience into a magical world of dance,

circus and physical theatre in The Toad Knew.

Us/Them by Brussels-based company Bronks explores the harrowing

events of the 2004 Beslan school siege with sensitivity and humour,

cleverly contrasting the views of adults and children.

The terrorists have got the school!

But maybe not every terrorist wants money.

Maybe some of them only want peace.

# Cider man, cider man... #

While the Fringe is always awash with keen, new upstarts,

one comic stalwart is celebrating

his 30th year of Edinburgh silliness -

the ever entertaining Simon Munnery.

Joke there. Joke there. Do another one at the end.

What would Edinburgh be without some impromptu performance?

Pop-up Duets is a collaboration between award-winning choreographer

Janis Claxton and composer Pippa Murphy, and brings beautiful

dance to unsuspecting visitors at the National Museum of Scotland.

Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour

raised the roof at the Usher Hall with his joyful fusion

of traditional and world music.

As ever, there is a profusion of puppets at the festival.

The ventriloquist and comedian Nina Conti pulled a few strings

and got us into some of the hottest shows in town.

Teatro Delusio employees breathtaking movement techniques

to explore life behind the scenes in the theatre.

Ada/Ava mixes animation, live action and shadow puppetry

to create an eerie American Gothic tale.

Randy Writes A Novel is a foul-mouthed, philosophical rant

from purple puppet Randy Felt Face.

And in Nina's own show,

audience members are brought on stage and turned into human puppets.

# And my lovely wife tended them with care

# In the garden!

Tonight on stage, you had five people in masks and yourself.

Does your head always stay straight?

No, my head is a rambling chunk of nonsense

and I just get through it moment to moment.

-How you doing, Martin?

-I'm ready!

-You're ready? How you doing?

-I want to be in the garden.

-You do?

How are you?

I... want... to... do... a... painting...

You want to do a painting?

She's always fucking painting!

Always at your side is Monkey,

but Monkey seems very traditional but also incredibly modern.

-So, what's that on your face?

-That's my microphone.

-Where's mine?

You shouldn't get yours. You don't need one.

Well, that fucks up the illusion.

It's a great, liberating mouthpiece for me.

It is like your foul-mouthed alter-ego?

Yeah, it's the unspoken thoughts,

but they're not the thoughts I would stand by.

They're not really like my secret thoughts of what I really think.

It's just all the thoughts that could occur.

Teatro Delusio - three guys, 30 characters,

cartoonish heads and total physicality,

which I thought was so completely different from your show.

A completely different form of action?

I love the beginning when the puppet comes on stage

right at the start and the puppeteer puts a hand through the sleeve

and she looks at it.

That was a very exciting moment, I thought.

These guys have amazing bodies.

They change their bodies so much to match their faces.

Well, the ballet dancers.

One ballet dancer looked like a proper ballet dancer.

Those faces are really enchanting and mixed with that music,

it's just got a great atmosphere, hasn't it?

It's really otherworldly.

I always thought masked acting was a bit of a drag

and kind of Greek and worthy but it's funny, that one, isn't it?

-Really playful.

-It's fantastic.

-Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

It's powerful what you can say without words

and it all happens in the audience's head.

It just gives you that liberty to imagine your own story.

Ada/Ava is a shadow puppet show,

but so much more because you see all the workings.

There is a live band and there's singing.

I've never seen it done like that before. That was amazing.

They chose spooky and tender. Very spooky when the hand...

I know, I know.

It was fascinating to watch the workings of that.

Like the Wizard of Oz or something.

You could see behind the curtain the whole time.

Do you think actually that because you could see the workings,

-it was actually more powerful?

-I thought so.

You can see her face with the profile stuck to it below

and you can see the face she is making.

It doesn't take away from it at all, it doesn't diminish it.

-I think it enhances it.

-You respect it so much more.

Now we're all used to soundtracks and dialogue

and everything fast-cut,

and to just slow it right down and simplify it like that...

It's such a craft. They clearly care enormously about it.

I actually found it profoundly moving.

You have the distress of death, loss, guilt, imagining.

It's extraordinary.

It's so much easier to love a shadow puppet than a bad actor!

Isn't it?

I don't know why that is but it seems so easy to be genuine

when it's just a silhouette.

Randy Writes A Novel is simply a one-man puppet show.

Edinburgh Fringe is one of the few times I really notice

the difference between being a drinker and a non-drinker

because every night after my show I'm like,

I'm just going to go home and have a cup of chamomile tea and read

some Haruki Murakami.

Everybody else in the entire city is like, "Aaagh!"

He's really enchanting, really powerful.

He really kicks ass as a puppet, as a host to an audience.

He's really unafraid.

-He holds the stage.

-He holds the stage.

I recognise that struggle

of the puppet not being able to actually see

but you feel people ducking out of his eyeline,

but there's no eyes there, and that is the power of the thing.

I love that.

I wrote a book!

Wooo!

Yeah, don't get too excited, I think it might be shit!

I can't tell any more. I'm too close to it.

I'm concerned that it might be like an ugly baby,

that I'm looking at through the eyes of a loving mother.

What I was experiencing was thinking, you're just

a mouthpiece for the guy under the table, which is fascinating.

It's just stand-up.

At what point do you think you are looking at the stand-up

and you just forget he's a puppet?

I never forget he is a puppet.

I love thinking of that sweaty guy underneath,

hunched with his hand held high with the blood draining out of it.

I actually, yes, that's quite sadist of me,

but I enjoy the struggle that must have gone into this illusion

and I don't really forget it.

I'm going to read bits of the book out.

You are going to react, and then at the end,

we'll all collectively decide whether or not I should kill myself.

You at least, we see you, the hand is in Monkey but we see you,

but what must it feel like in Randy Writes A Novel?

You never see him.

-He is just that puppet.

-I know.

I think in some respects, it must be hugely facilitating

to just be completely free, but it must be pretty sore on the back.

I mean, I couldn't do it for an hour.

I can't imagine how he does it. But Randy is so alive, isn't he?

The power that comes through him. That's fantastic puppetry.

You know my favourite bit of that whole story? I just made it up!

Nina Conti is at the Pleasance until Monday

and dates in London next month.

Stories of migration are never far from the headlines these days

but at this year's festival,

refugees are bringing their own stories to the stage.

The writer and broadcaster Bidisha

has been hearing tales of struggle and survival.

I've been working with asylum seekers and refugees in the UK

for several years now and I'm always struck by the difference

between the way politicians and the media speak about them

and the daily reality of refugees' lives.

To me, they are the victims of the world's biggest humanitarian crisis

and I've come to Edinburgh

to curate some events at the Book Festival here,

which will hopefully enable audiences to

see the world through refugees' eyes.

In 2006, Gulwali Passarlay fled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

He spent 12 months crossing eight countries to reach the UK.

Six years later, he was selected to carry the Olympic torch

in the run-up to the 2012 games.

"If I have made it this far, I could make it now.

"A survival instinct deep within me spurred me on.

"I didn't want to die. Not here, not like this.

"Not gasping and choking for breath in the cold depths of the sea.

"How would anyone find my body?

"My mother's face flashed before me again.

" 'It is not safe for you here, Gulwali.

" 'I am sending you away for your own safety.' "

Gulwali, I've read your book,

which tells the story of an incredible journey,

but it begins when you are just 12 years old,

when your life changes completely.

I was forced to flee and leave my family, leave my home,

everything that I loved, everything that I knew.

I now was heading to the world of unknown.

What kind of risks were you in danger of?

I saw death on many occasions.

But at one stage where I was very certain that death was happening,

it was imminent, was when I was crossing from Turkey to Greece.

The boat was designed for 20 people.

There was 120 of us in it

and for about 49, 50 hours, we were in the sea.

So when I saw that death was happening,

the boat was sinking, I was having this conversation with God

because faith and hope was things that was keeping me going.

What was your expectation of Britain?

When I first arrived,

I felt relieved I was finally here, but that I would be treated better

than how I was treated in the rest of half of the world.

But ultimately, it was another battle,

another journey, another beginning.

This is not where my journey ended, it's where it actually restarted.

The authorities and social services, the immigration services,

although they were trying to help me,

they did not believe my age, they did not believe my nationality.

It was actually more harder than the journey itself,

being in the UK for the first year or two.

What would you change about the current system?

It took me five years to get refugee status

and that's not acceptable.

We blame the refugees or the asylum-seekers,

when they have risked everything to come here.

We don't give them the second chance in life,

we treat them as unworthy human beings

or basically that doesn't deserve to be here,

that doesn't deserve the peace and security

and opportunities we enjoy.

"On so many times on my journey to freedom, I had felt hopeless,

"despondent and afraid.

"But at those moments of weakness, one thought had kept going.

"My mother sent me away to save my life.

"As I run through the street of my adopted second home,

"the torch burning brightly, with people cheering and taking photos,

"I thought of only of one thing - her."

"At that moment, I knew beyond all doubt that I hadn't failed her.

"I had made it."

Gulwali is just one of countless individuals who risked their lives

crossing the Mediterranean to seek safety in Europe.

In Cast Away,

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson explores what's driven them to make

this perilous journey through the stories of five refugees

who've arrived in Europe since 2011.

Charlotte, why did you want to tell these five individual stories?

Well, I've been reporting on the refugee crisis for a long time,

since the Arab Spring, really, in 2011, when we really first started

to see this movement of people coming across the Mediterranean,

making these incredibly difficult journeys and coming to Europe.

I wanted to find a way to tell these stories, to expose what was going on

in this place, in the European Union, which is held up as a beacon

for human rights for other countries to follow.

"David was beside Sina on the deck.

" 'Don't worry, we'll be safe,' he said.

" 'We're very close to the beach, you don't have to worry.

" 'We will not die, I promise you.'

"At that moment, Sina felt the wood beneath her feet give way

"and slide into the water, taking her with it.

"First she went down, then up again,

"desperately trying to keep hold of a slippery rope.

"Then there was nothing to hold on to any more. She was in the water.

"Sina heard a voice.

" 'Please help us, we have a nine-month pregnant woman,

" 'help us, she's here.'

"Then everything went black."

Sina's an extraordinary young woman, so she's from Eritrea.

It's got one of the most oppressive regimes in the world,

it's a dictatorship.

I find her story extraordinary cos it's a story of survival,

of a mother and child, set against the backdrop of all these

news events we're familiar with - the closures of the borders,

the shipwrecks, the massive arrivals on the Greek islands.

How important is it,

given that these are huge global trends and we're so used to seeing

these pictures of refugees crammed into boats

or detainees in detention centres,

to humanize this crisis?

It's absolutely crucial, because when they're viewed as "others",

it's the otherization of other peoples.

There's no empathy, you have no empathy.

Everybody, they're just like us,

they have the same basic motivations,

which is to find the best life possible for your family,

to find somewhere safe where you can build a life.

It's not just the Book Festival

that's focusing on forced migration this year.

At the Fringe, Dear Home Office gives a voice to

eight young refugees as their right to remain in the UK is tested.

Tell me how this project came about.

I manage the housing project that most of these guys live in,

so in the day, I'm kind of sorting out their day-to-day business,

and in the summer, Awet said to me that he thought that he had

a story to tell and that he thought it was quite funny

and could kind of interest an audience.

Actually, when I was young, I was, like, acting in school

and I love writing kind of stories, so I thought, like,

this is going to be helpful if we make drama or stuff.

And what story did you want to tell with this?

You know, our story, like, our journey.

So I find a man who would take me out of there.

It was a little car with about 15 other people.

They made us throw out our water

so we could hold big cans of petrol.

I was crushed and hot.

The petrol made me sick. THEY RETCH

There are some really dramatic moments that I think lots of people

don't understand about being an asylum seeker.

Like, one question they ask you, like, more than 30 times,

they repeat again, again, again...

So they make me, like, the other people or me or my friends,

they make feel sad, really.

How old was your mum when she had you?

Did you go to school?

Did you work?

Did you help in the house?

Did you have a girlfriend?

How long did you go to school?

What year were you in when you left to come here?

-Do you have any qualification or degrees?

-How long ago?

Can you be more specific?

What do you want audiences to take away from Dear Home Office?

I want...

if I'm capable of changing their opinion, if some people,

like, they have different kind of opinion about refugees,

I want to show them, like, you know, we are good people,

we are the same like them, we can do, like,

good things for the people, for the society, for the world.

I just want to work hard and have a peaceful life,

is that too much to ask?

I'm studying GCSE, I want to be a psychologist to help kids like me.

Our story has only just begun.

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

That's about all from us, but there's plenty more at...

We leave you tonight with a stunning performance

from the Lemon Bucket Orchestra, who have been picking up praise

and prizes for Counting Sheep, a powerful and immersive piece

at Summerhall, which recreates Ukraine's Maidan revolution.

Goodnight.

Ah, ah!

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

Ah, ah!