Currently I get up at 8, or at least I am woken up then when the guys who are doing building work next door start hammering and drilling into the adjoining wall to my house. After a bit of a swear and an internal conversation about how if I go round and murder them all with a hammer, I'd at least be able to get some sleep before the police arrived, I give up on getting back to sleep as a bad job and get out of bed.
Bethany Black
I feed my cats, I have three, two of whom are named after serial killers after my friend the comedian Martin Mor kindly pointed out the resemblance. My eldest is fussy so will only eat cocktail sausages and chicken slices, what a primadonna. Having made a coffee and got a bowl of coco pops, I check the ground floor for cat sick before sitting down on my couch where my girlfriend and I have our breakfast whilst watching Bob's Burgers.
I'm preparing for Edinburgh right now so after breakfast I go upstairs to the top floor of our house, where I have my office/gym and on the recent warm days wonder what on earth I was thinking putting a gym on the top floor. I have the bullet points for my current show written on my whiteboard and have a cross trainer set up facing it, so I get on and run through my show. Literally. My show's supposed to be an hour long, and in a few previews it came in at 90 minutes. So the elliptical trainer became an exercise in editing it, there was no way I wanted to be on there for 90 minutes and I've now managed to get it down to 50.
If I've got a gig in the evening I'll have a shower and get ready and then spend up to 6 hours sat in the car. The thing people forget is that this is a driving job as much as anything. At its simplest my job is to email people and ask them for money, if they say yes we arrange a time I can come and pick it up, I drive there and then have a chat with some people and come home again. I really get my money's worth from my Audible subscription. When you get to a gig there's usually the panic of trying to find out where the comedy be and then it's a lovely chat with the other acts, often you don't see people for months or even years so you can have a good catch up. Then it's show time. Some comedians get really nervous beforehand, I only do if it's a gig that can go really wrong, I always perform better if me on stage is just conversational me. Nerves ruin my performance. Once the gig's over it's back in the car and drive home, getting to bed around 3am cursing the builders who'll start working in 5 hours.
See Bethany Black: (Extra) Ordinary at the Stand 2 from the 4th-28th August, 6pm. For tickets visit www.edfringe.com
Tagged in Edinburgh Festival Fringe