Just back from a fantastic weekend in Edinburgh. Being there was like meeting up with an ex-girlfriend and remembering how much you love her, only everything is fine now and what you really love is just how much you used to love her. Does that make any sense? Suffice it to say that if Peter Ackroyd can write London: The Biography then I want to write Edinburgh: The Love Story.

The purpose of the visit was to put on a special edition of NSN24 at the Bedlam Theatre and meet the current improv team. I'm so delighted that the show I joined at the end of its first year in 1990, is still running in 2006. And judging by the show we saw on Friday, when the current Improverts were performing, it's running better than ever. It was one of the best improv shows I've seen for ages and the current crew is very tight indeed. It was great to meet a lot of the current and recent players on Friday and on Saturday at the open workshop they run at the Bedlam.

The plan for Saturday night was that we (Glen, Andy, James, Briony and I) would do our NSN show at the Bedlam, have an interval and then do a freestyle improv jam with the current (and some recent ex-) players. So we did! And it all went off beautfully. It was a massive nostalgia trip of course: seeing the Bedlam, being on the stage, rummaging around backstage all seemed wonderfully familiar. But more than that it was great to hook up with the current crew and (for me at least!) to share this common bond we have: there's not a lot else I have in common with people born in the mid 80s! The new folks were very generous and seemed to be pleased to see us and there are certainly some rare talents going around there. I thought our NSN format went down well and if the show started slowly it built up and we ended really strongly. Talking about it afterwards we did think that at the start much of the audience (who were mostly other improvisers!) were quietly assessing us and I think things went better once people just started to get with what we were doing.


It was also great to catch up with a lot of old improv friends who are still in Edinburgh. I probably hadn't seen Paul, Stuart or Garry since 1994! And the warmest fuzziest feeling of all came when the legend that is Al Broom volunteered to tech the show. Cheers Al!

Shout outs, props, love and 'nuff respect to: Idil and the rest of the Improverts for wanting to be invovled, James Mitchell for the organisation, Andrew for being very brave and Smarty for putting us up - at least one night out of two ; ) (Cheers Steven for the other night) - Thank you all