The Stand

I love The Stand. I know I've said it before! I dare say I will say it again!! The Newcastle Stand (our very own!!) will open in October (I knew it would be around then but it's good to know exactly when! I hope very much that it opens on or near my birthday: it will be amazing!).

But October is quite a while away. What's less far away is August - glorious month of Fringe-y fun. And today the Stand announced their Fringe line up: http://www.thestand.co.uk/fringe2011.aspx

It's very exciting! The best things are shows I all ready knew about: Stewart Lee, Bridget Christie and Richard Herring's podcast. Yes, yes and...yes!

There are some people you just expect to play the Stand (but it's still exciting to have it confirmed; some years people don't do the Fringe at all so you never know for sure): Simon Munnery, Andy Zaltman (and his presence means Political Animal too), Bob Doolally (who I don't think I'd ever bother seeing but my dad loves him!), etc.

Phill Jupitus is a nice surprise! I'll definitely consider trying to fit him in to my busy trip. Tony Law (yay), Alun Cochrane, Stephen Carlin, Ava Vidal, James Dowdeswell, Tiffany Stevenson and Susan Murray are returning; I think a lot of performers like to play the Stand every year. Because it's quite simply the best.

The show I got most excited about is Robin Ince/Michael Legge: Pointless Anger, Righteous Ire 2: Back In The Habit. We missed their show last year as they only did two weeks (not the third one when we were there!) but oh, I love them both!!

I would also love to see Lloyd Langford (I still haven't!), Joanna Neary's new show sounds brilliant (Youth Club), I'd quite like to see Francesca Martinez's show What The Fuck Is Normal? I hadn't heard of Lee Camp but he sounds intriguing. I'd be interested to see a Fred MacAulay show. Mitch Benn's doing a short run. Oh, and there's Todd Barry (from Flight of the Conchords) and Omid Djalili is doing a few dates before his UK tour.

I'm very excited indeed. The only thing is there's another month before we'll know the rest of the Fringe line up so we'll just have to hope that nothing sells out or take some risks in guessing now! It's tricky. I would imagine that not many people will be buying tickets this incredibly early!

I wonder how long until the Big Four release their dates. Have fun scheming and dreaming!