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It’s a mystery to us why the world’s greatest literary festival runs a sideline in stand-up comedy. However, it did give SSP a great excuse to spend a weekend in the wet majesty of the Welsh countryside. Here then is our take on the comings and goings at the Hay Festival – the only festival we’ll cover this summer where you’d see people reading books for pleasure…
Hay Day Five
We arrive, all sweaty and flustered only to find we're early for David Starley. We've blown the last remain shreds of the academic dignity we achieved in Day Three. Still, we uncover another non-comedian comic as The Great Historian™ prooves to be a real hoot. And then we get Matin Amis talking about gulags. With that sombre thought in mind, we head off for the long trek home. Now, where's that beer...
Hay Day Four
We bravely face another day of intellectual wallowing and self satisfaction all in the cause of comedy. We go in the hope of scoring an interview with Armando Iannucci, enjoy Rodin Ince and his merry band of people, and sit next to Rory Bremmner (we think). Finally we brush alongside the ever foxy Emma Thompson in the loo. There is a God.
Robin Ince's Bookclub
After eight days of intelligentsia gleefully feeding a salivating audience snippets from their latest prose (priced £25 from a book shop, handily, in the tent next door… and I’ll be doing a signing rah, rah etc…) Robin Ince and his band of merry individuals swing into town to read the rich snippets from the poorly written.
Hay Day Three
Rejected by Harry Hill we finally find common ground with all those proper journalists that swan around Hay looking intellectual. Splashing out a tenner, we sit on the grass, open our brand spanking new copy of Tim the Tiny Horseem> and join all those literary types. Finally, we get up to that rarified atmosphere, which is just as well becasue can't afford many more beers.
Dara O’Briain
You never know what you’re going to get when you plunge into the cultural pick and mix that is the average Hay audience, but you’ll normally be party to some surreal blathering or other that is well worth the ticket price alone. This time round it's the "very Irish, but very funny," smug-buster O’Briain.
Marcus Brigstocke
Brigstocke adds a little bite to his act and goes down rather well with the middle-class armchair liberals who like nothing better than a little Blair and Bush baiting. Everything's a little more edgy than his regular Radio 4 material, provoking laughs from the Hay-ite crowd It may be political, but you can tell he cares. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Jason Byrne
"Hay tradition" Byrne is at his motor-mouthed best, ripping through the festival like some caffeine crazed child at 5am on Christmas morning. "He’s very aggressive" says a lady next to me before the show starts, eyes wide with expectation. And she’s right, he is. In his deceptively capable hands, obvious material is transmuted in to original comedy gold.
Making Hay with SSP Day 2
Up early, we find A.A. Gill giving the best comedy performance so far: talking Chicken Fat, Jeremy Clarkson and cunnilingus; the ghost of Martin Amis (quick RUN!); and David Mitchell with a comedy beard. We also manage to score an interview with Marcus Brigstocke and finally, Finally, we find the Holy Grail, and the sole purpose of our odyssey...Free Beer
Sarah Kendall
45 seconds. That’s how long it takes Sarah Kendall to point out that a) she’s an Australian, b) this isn’t Australia, this is Wales and c) ho ho ho aren’t they different and isn’t she a fish out of antipodean waters? Let’s just say that if the beer at the Hay Festival was as cheap as some of Kendall’s jokes ssp would have enjoyed her set a whole lot more.
Making Hay with SSP Day 1
Such Small Portions' first day at the most intellectual of festivals. We meet Edwina "Soul Sister" Currie, feel out of our depth, gawp at beer prices, check out Gruff Rhys and Sarah Kendall and do our best to avoid nocturnally aggressive sheep.
