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\f0\fs24 \cf0 Well, I'm here, for I think the fourth time doing a solo show and my show
this year is called The Moon On A Stick. It's a show that's pretty much about everything
that's gone on for me since the last Edinburgh that I was here which was last year. So that's
why I'm here again this year, I come to the festival every year. I called my show The
Moon On A Stick because The Moon On A Stick is quite an old English expression about wanting
it all and wanting everything, wanting the unattainable and I was talking to a friend
of mine who is a rapper and very good with words and I was talking to him about how a
lot of my show is about how I separated from my husband this year and I was talking to
him about how it's really difficult because I was working and I had a child and all of
this and then he said, "Look you wanted to work and have a baby, you didn't want the
moon on a stick" and I loved it and used it as my show title and then I started to get,
I got an email from someone going, "Oh is that a homage to Lee and Herring" and I had
a gig with Stuart Lee and Richard Herring and I said, "What's the story with you and
the moon on a stick?" and they said it was like a sketch that they did when they had
their TV show which I hadn't seen and it's an English expression, they didn't coin it,
but I think they popularised it. I think audiences are different throughout the country. Scottish
audiences tend to be what we comedians call "comedy literate" which means they are very
conscious of their sense of humour and the bar is very high with what they like and what
the get and what they want from you. I think culturally its much more, perhaps less reserved
than the English so you have a laugh with people much quicker. I did a show in 2006
called "Asylum Speaker" and that was a show that kind of, I guess, kick started my career
in a way because it was a show about why we moved to Britain and it was quite heavily
based around the Iranian revolution which is not always a subject for comedy but that
show was a sort of seminal show for me. After Asylum Speaker the most significant thing
that happened was that I got a publishing deal which meant that I wrote a book based
on the show called, I will tell you the name of my book when it comes to me, my book is
called The Beginners Guide to Acting English and it's a childhood memoir and so I started
to write my book and then I did The Secret Policeman's Ball. I think that was the first,
sort of, high profile television thing that I did. For ten years of my career I was kind
of treading water and everything all of a sudden happened in the same year and it all
went by in a bit of a blur because I also had a baby that year. This is the first time
in a couple of years that I'm sort of taking a bit of a step back and going "Oh wow, there
we are that was all good" and what it's meant is that I feel like I have, with my book and
other shows that I have done, I feel like I have done a lot about my cultural background
and this year I am really enjoying the fact that my show isn't anything really, very much,
I'll always touch on it because it's such a part of who I am, but it's really nice for
me to put a lot of that kind of stuff to bed in my book and now I feel able to really enjoy
stand-up and I feel like I'm just starting you know, I feel after ten years I am just
starting and it's a very exciting place to be, I think, creatively I am enjoying it more
than I ever have done. I've had some of the most incredible times of my life in Edinburgh,
the city itself. I think people in Edinburgh must tire of hearing people talking about
how beautiful it is, because you look in one direction and you can see the sea, or is it
an estuary? I don't know, but there's lots of water and then you look behind you and
there's a castle and there's a volcano in the middle of the city, how incredible is
that? It's an intense place to be during the festival. I have been to Edinburgh outside
of the festival and its, if it wasn't so far away from London I would live here, and I
only say that because my mother would be devastated if I moved more than, if I live more than
half an hour away from her house she can't cope. \
}