MY EDINBURGH: Rose Heiney, actress and (in theory) novelist
Doing Edinburgh this year has been very different from my previous years up here. Before I’ve only been here as part of my university comedy group, the Oxford Revue, and student revues tend to be greeted with a great deal of bile. You get people sitting there saying go on then, Rowan Atkinson, make us laugh.
This time it’s just three of us doing our own show. It’s been wonderful. Not that things started off well — I had to move out of my flat after one night! There was a woman next door who started staring at us through her window, slamming doors and throwing furniture against the door.
The breaking point came the second morning. She sat there, all of five feet away, pointing a long-lens camera at us through her window. At first it was funny, but then we started to think that we’d come back to find our door covered in excrement.
Last time I was here I was staying in Tollcross, where everyone is shooting each other’s heads off, and it was all perfectly pleasant. This year I move to genteel New Town and it’s a nightmare!
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I’m not very stoical, so I moved out straight away — and into a flat with nine 18-year-old boys from Eton who are putting on a play. They’re very polite.
But it all left me terribly, terribly nervous. Freaked out, really. That afternoon someone came up to me in a kilt, holding a flyer for his show in one hand, but all I could see was the chainsaw in his other hand. I shouted at him: “I’m not coming to your show, that’s such a stupid way to publicise yourself!” I just completely lost it.
My parents (the Times columnist Libby Purves and Paul Heiney) are both in broadcasting. Does that make things any easier? Only in the sense that it gives you a little comfort in leading a freelance life.
I’ve seen some wonderful stand-up that makes me rashly want to do that again. And, in stand-up, no one can help you; there’s no question that you’ve got to just prove yourself alone.
Two years ago I got to the final of the So You Think You’re Funny competition up here. I had no idea what I was doing, really. But being a bit posh didn’t do me any harm.
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One of the happiest moments of my life was when one of the judges, [the comedienne] Jo Caulfield, described me as the bastard offspring of Penelope Keith.
I’m pretty bad at going to see other shows, though. During the day I’m actually writing a novel — or I’m supposed to be. I’ve got an agent for it and we’re hoping to sell it at the start of September. It’s probably the thing I’ve done that’s most closely related to my parents, though it’s not based on them. It’s about a lifestyle columnist who writes about her gorgeous, sexy urban life and all her great friends but whose reality is rather less glamorous.
It’s a difficult situation for me and my parents at the moment [Heiney’s brother Nick committed suicide in June after suffering from depression for years] but I don’t mind talking about it, it’s such an elephant in the room. I didn’t consider cancelling the show. I genuinely believe that comedy was one of the things that Nick loved and that got him through some terrible times. We shared jokes about it before he died. Had he been able to come up I think he would have loved the show.
Of course there are moments, when I’m sitting underneath a giant inflatable cow and when some people run past with fried eggs on their head or whatever and you think, this is just ridiculous. But then Edinburgh is ridiculous, that’s what it’s all about.
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Rose Heiney is appearing in Bite Me at the Underbelly (0870 7453083)