August 3RD, 2001: It's 11 a.m. and we're sitting by an empty bowling green. Bowling greens: so quintessentially English, we remark. But can we say that here? We're in Scotland. We're here for the Edinburgh Festival and we open tonight.
Last night we crammed a five-hour technical rehearsal into two hours. There are 26 lighting and sound cues in our show and our sound man is Italian. Sandro is a good-looking man but the last thing in the world we need right now is a language barrier. As the only technician in a venue which has eight shows a day, he is exhausted. By the time Sandro gets to us he has already been working for 14 hours. The chances of our opening night going smoothly are virtually nil.
There's graffiti on the clubhouse of the bowling green that says: "Dead horses don't work." We wonder if this is a bad omen. Suddenly, there are omens everywhere: our address in Edinburgh is Hope Park Terrace, but our phone number is 666. The name of our show is 'Tis Pity She's Anonymous and we're beginning to question the wisdom of this title as we search in vain for our posters. Maybe we should have called the show "Snatch of the Day"; maybe we should have worn less. We're women, after all - we could have used that. Everyone else did. We are easily the most over-dressed poster in Edinburgh and we look positively prim beside the Lady Boys of Bangkok.
We think back to less stressful times in April, at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, when the show was as yet untitled. We bounced ideas off our comedy friends. Our first thought was "Indulge" ("Too indulgent," said Dara ╙ Briain). Someone else suggested we use our initials, the DTs (too drunken Irish, we thought). The next thing we stumbled on was collective nouns: what about "An Exultation of Larks?" ("Genius," said Dave Gorman and we thought we'd hit the jackpot. Then we realised that no one else is quite as passionate about collective nouns as Dave.)
Suddenly a wrinkle of pensioners invades the bowling green and brings us crashing back to reality. There are 2,000 shows at this festival, with an average audience of two people per show. We must get them in to see us.
August 8th, 2001: It's 11 a.m. We're on the Royal Mile. Again. We've been flyering the busiest street in Edinburgh for three hours now. This means handing out leaflets imprinted with our details to the thousands of people who have flocked here. The population of Edinburgh doubles during this month. We need to persuade 100 of them to be at our show every night. It's hard to compete with the fire-eating jugglers. If we see another man on stilts, we'll get depressed.
As well as our double act, we're each in another show. 'Tis Pity finishes at 9.30 p.m. and Deirdre O'Kane is Crystallized begins at 10 p.m., while Tara performs in the Dublin Comedy Improv at 10.30 p.m. We're hanging by a thread, but the adrenaline pumping through us ensures that we never sleep more than five hours a night.
August 10th, 2001: Day nine of the festival and we still haven't had a review. It's hard to keep our morale up but the fact that we had our first full house last night keeps us from jumping off the South Bridge. It's midday and all five housemates are gathered in the kitchen. We're sharing a flat with three other performers - Dara ╙ Briain, Donal Beecher and Adam Hills - and we can't help feeling we've ended up in the Big Brother house. Which of us will be evicted from the festival? Who will survive the insanity?
Last night we survived Late and Live, a notoriously savage gig which begins at one in the morning. The majority of the audience has been drinking and are baying for blood. It's akin to throwing Christians to the lions and on a normal day we wouldn't even consider performing here - but we had no choice. We need all the publicity we can get. Thankfully, we were triumphant and couldn't resist patting ourselves on the back. We headed for the bar.
August 11th, 2001: Wake up hung over. Take two Solpadeine, have post-mortem and hit the Royal Mile again. Last night's success counts for nothing; in Edinburgh, you're only as good as your last ticket sale and three people have booked for tonight. One of them is Nicholas Parsons of Sale of the Century fame. He has a live chat show here every night called Happy Hour and tomorrow night his guests will be Susannah York and Deirdre. Things are looking up. We never thought we'd see the day when we wouldn't hear a bad word said about Nicholas Parsons.
August 13th, 2001: The rain is relentless, which means we can't flyer. We're in for a quiet night. Comedy without an audience is almost impossible. But then again, that's what this festival is all about: if you're up for it, you're in for it. The Perrier Award panel is in tonight. We feel we deserve an award just for being here. Keep your fingers crossed and if you're making the trip to Edinburgh, you know where we are.
'Tis Pity She's Anonymous is at the Peppermint Lounge at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh at 8.30 p.m. until August 27th