Author: Sam Freeman
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Hitting the target – Brochures
I hadn’t written any particularly niche marketing-centric posts for a while so I thought it was high time to inflict a glazed expression on all your faces, make you wonder where it all went wrong and how life had led you to read this, look around the office and consider whether you can end it…
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Game Review: Fifa 12
I hate to say it, but I’m here now, and, well, I have a problem, an addiction. I don’t like confessing it, maybe it’s churlish, pathetic, maybe it isn’t, I don’t know. All I know if it’s here to stay and there’s no escape. I’m addicted to losing. It started in the late 90s with…
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Donkey Still Recovering
I was sat, as is my will, on my laptop drinking mocha in a cafe on Friday afternoon. A rare afternoon off and an opportunity to catch up with some writing – continuing with an increasingly epic monologue about the NHS and Clinical Care Psychosis – it’s a laugh a minute. Unfortunately I wasn’t catching…
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On The Edge
It’s a weird experience I’m going through this week. I’ve had an odd ‘career’ as a writer so far to date. Produced work includes a show in a restaurant about cous cous, and a studio show with a panda suit, necrophilia jokes and, quite naturally lots of eerie silences. In common with everything I’ve done…
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Small Scale Segmentation
Part of the role of any arts manager is to examine and develop the way resources are used in the most efficient way possible so as to address and interact with the widest possible audience. Theatre’s have a historical attachment to the printed programme of events. The what’s on guide / brochure is a staple…
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The Failed Writer – Chapter One
Chapter One – To Edinburgh There is, I suspect, nothing more pleasurable in the entire world than travelling by train. More specifically travelling in a massively overcrowded train where, against the odds, you’ve managed to find yourself in first class (paying only for a standard fare ticket) with a cold beer, tray of Bakewell tarts…
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Comedy Review: Edinburgh 2011
Glenn Wool – Brilliant stand up from Canadian stand-up Glenn Wool. A little known comedian in the UK his subject matter is all that stands between him and the nicely polished pleasantness of “Live at the Apollo” or “Comedy Roadshow”. And thank god. If ever there was a comedian born to talk about anal examination in…
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Comedy Review: Andrew Bird’s Village Fete
Edinburgh Festival 2011 The measure of success for any performer should be their ability to effect an audience, manipulate them and create an experience that is unique but also managed with intent and conviction. Andrew Bird works hard from the start to get his audience on his side an succeeds epically. There are few comedians I…
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Comedy Review: The Axis Of Awesome
Edinburgh Festival 2011 One of the great things about the festival is the contrast in performances, styles, venues and atmospheres. Surely there are few other places where you can go from an underground basement room with six other people watching a Geordie comedian flogging his comedy heart and soul out for little noticeable effect to…
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Comedy Review: Bridget Christie
Edinburgh Festival 2011 – Housewife Surrealist I was standing, as is my will to do, yesterday at the Virgin half-price ticket desk looking for festival bargains while tirelessly trying to avoid the endless repeats of Puppetry of the Penis, Titanic 2 and the many many productions of some second rate Sarah Kane show by undersexed…
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Film Review: The Guard
Sometimes as you get to the end of a long week at work, mentally exhausted, desperate to leave the reality of working life behind as you head into the weekend, tired of tension and stress you need to relax, sit back and laugh. I found myself at the end of a very long week in…
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The Failed Writer – Preface
The preface of any book is usually written after the book has been completed. It’s the section where the author thanks his loyal audience for purchasing this “essential read” and for embarking upon an “emotional rollercoaster” with this the sole occuping project that has filled their lives for the previous few years. They also usually…
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Shared Houses
I’m 26. Now when I became 26 i realised that it meant that I am, as my good friends kindly informed me “closing in on 30”, “life ends after 25” or as one more pessimistic friend, and I use the word friend conditionally said, “getting ready for death.” I’ve found it weird to be honest…
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Film Review: JCVD
Some actors are born great, some acquire greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. However for some the road is less easily trodden, they glimpse greatness, come crashing down, appear in Streetfighter the movie (alongside Kylie) before being seemingly cast away on the scrapheap of actors who we laugh at for their previous errors.…
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Facebook (Part 3)
Now around that time my work life was collapsing in around me, that’s not to say that I was made unemployed, that simply was not the case. In fact it was considerably worse than that, I was spending too much time at work, because I liked it. Now I’m aware that is not a phrase…
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Facebook (Part 2)
So essentially this is how it begins. It’s three and a half years ago and I am sat in the kitchen of a house I don’t like, have never liked, yet, for reasons unbeknownst to myself I found unable to leave and I am unhappy. I should also mention that perhaps it wasn’t entirely the house I…
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Facebook (Part 1)
Enter to applause. Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you very much that’s very kind, possibly excessively kind some might say, but I won’t say that as I’m aware that there are very few jokes in the next 60 minutes and I need to take all the ego-boosting possible to get through it. In a…