The Fringe is over. Yes, despite the misgivings last week it does eventually come to a dramatic end. And as the comedy and theatre world depart from Waverley SSP asked the mischevious cabaret starlets Bourgeois and Maurice to come up with a plan to help you re-adjust to the real world.

They did one better and provided us with their musings on Life. Enjoy!

Yo yo yo. We’re Bourgeois & Maurice.

We are, to all extents and purposes, a cabaret act. We don’t always like that term but it’s what we’re lumped with.

We don’t do covers and we don’t wear nipple tassles but if you squint your eyes and block out your optimism, we do have a passing resemblance to Liza Minelli & David Guest at the divorce court.

We write songs about the fun stuff in life – kids on Ritalin, death and scat, amongst other things.

We are writing this from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival – the largest Escapist Fantasy Experience in the world. Up here, for one month, life is sensitively screwed up and shoved through a paper shredder as flocks of egos swoop down upon the city and feast on the rotting corpse of reality.

You might detect a hint of weary bitterness to that opening paragraph but we mention it for a reason – we have set ourselves the task of writing a guide to life but we are so removed from the truths of the world right now, that we’re really not very well equipped to be handing out advice.

What occurs below is merely an argument for a better quality of life – we can’t be held responsible if you end up covered in white greasepaint, delivering physical interpretations of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry whilst mumbling through your Burberry scarf about the awful white middle-class-ness of your audiences and how you just can’t wait to get back to the urban glory of your parent’s flat in Muswell Hill.

Love
Love is a fickle friend, and it is perfectly acceptable to fall in and out of love with people within the space of five to six minutes. Who has time for anything more? Love should also be judged on four levels- money, success, fame, glamour. If your intended love interest has not achieved at least two of these, then they are not ‘the one’.

NB the use of the number one in this sense is not entirely mathematically correct. I.e. there can be more than one ‘the one’. Free your mind.

A good measure of a person’s worth is how large a harvest you can reap from typing their name in Google. If they can fill a whole page – go for it, they’re for keeps.

Work
Work is the enslavement of humanity, break free from your shackles and emancipate yourself. Except those that work in Tesco, we still need to get our bread and milk. Oh and the young Chinese children, who make such beautiful garments, yeah we still want them. And of course the plumber who fixed that strange pipe noise.

And firemen too actually, if you could stay employed that would be great. In fact fuck it, shackles and imprisonment is sooo in right now.

Money
Mmmm. Sexy. Aim for it at all costs. We did a tour of local primary schools in order to increase our intake of this. We can’t say it worked out for all parties involved, but it helped towards the purchase of a lovely pink gimp suit for Bourgeois, which was actually inspired by a pair of leggings available to buy from Primark Kids.

The youth are so inspiring. Sell them stuff – they totally buy any old shit! Morons!

Play
With yourself. Nobody else can ever give you the love and encouragement that you can bestow upon yourself. You should also ensure at all times that this element of life is your top priority.

Without play you will dissolve and disappear, and nobody will remember you. You must be remembered.

Follow these rules and you’ll have a great life. Much better than your grandparents, with their stupid brown photos and glass milk bottles and home-made preserves. Better than some charity worker, whoring themselves around the streets in their high heeled shoes and low-cut anorak.

Better than a dog, probably. Hack into this web domain and delete this link and then you’ll have the best life of all, because no one else will get this advice. It will all be about you. You’ll be at the top. You will have won.

We love you, now love us back.

Bourgeois and Maurice x

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