Performers: Norris & Parker Photograph by: Lucy Ridges Show: Burn the Witch Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Beneath Promoter: CKP and InterTalent Group Online: Box Office Facebook Website
Tell me about your Edinburgh show.
It’s called Burn the Witch and features some or all of the following: Sex witches, penis cliffs, heartbreak, stag parties, voodoo pussies and us playing a variety of vulnerable men.
Tell me about your first gig.
It was a room above a pub in Manchester. The audience were made up entirely of friends and family and one member of the actual public who thought it was our birthday party.
Do you have any rituals before going on stage?
Parker needs to have three bananas and two large bottles of water and then gags and heaves with nerves until she has to start the show. Norris gets paranoid that she’s pissed herself and makes people check her leotard for wet patches and all this is happening whilst pooing in the toilets next to each other and running lines.
Tell me about your best and worst review.
We got a lovely four star review from the Guardian, “a bed rock of fine, funny writing and skilful comic performance” and were included in their Top Ten Best Comedy Shows of the year 2016 but were brought back down to earth with this brutally accurate tweet, “This is just bitter actors screaming and head tossing”
And Agnus Joyce Wells left this review on our EdFringe Listing,
“Not sure what this was all about really, but the pianist did have presence”
During this Edinburgh run, do you plan to read reviews of your show?
Reviews will be hard to avoid when Norris mum makes a collage book of reviews and frames them on her wall and Parker’s dad sends a family email with good reviews and withholds his love and money if they’re bad.
How do you feel about reviewers generally?
They’re just people trying to make a living. Like traffic wardens and prostitutes.
In April 2018, YouTube comedian, Markus Meechan (aka Count Dankula) was fined £800 for training his girlfriend’s pug dog to do a Nazi salute with its paw, in response to the phrase ‘Gas the Jews’. Do you believe Meechan committed a criminal offence, and why?
Never mind Meechan, what about the pug? The pug should be tracked down to wherever it’s hiding in Argentina and tried as a war criminal. In fact, we actually hate pugs and believe all pugs should be killed in gas chambers. Due to their poor lung capacity this shouldn’t take very long.
Are there any subjects that are not suitable for comedy?
Pugs in a gas chamber.
Have you ever gone too far?
See the pugs in a gas chamber.
Looking back over your time as a comedian, tell me about the best gig of your career.
When we gigged with Bobby Davro and he thought our pianist was the comedian and we were his wives.