It's been a long festival; there have been ups and downs. I've had some great reviews (Chortle certainly enjoyed the show), but I've also had Twitter abuse from people claiming I'm unprofessional (an outrageous claim). I've had some good publicity, such as a mention from The Scotsman, but I've also had a slight publicity disaster when it comes to my posters! It seems some vandals took it upon themselves to go around Edinburgh spray-painting almost every one of the posters advertising my show. The graffiti ranges from the bluntly negative ('no') to the crudely negative ('doodle this' + penis), as you can see from the photo-documentation below.
So who did it? Was it the Twitter abusers? Probably not, you'd have to be pretty stupid to pre-empt your illegal vandalism with some comments on a public forum. Maybe it was a rival comic? Probably not, if a comedian had a serious beef with me they'd probably just write a snarky comment about me online. I have no idea who did it, but I'm going to theorise that it was some kind of overly excitable street artist who was 'inspired' by the title of my show ('Truth Doodler') to doodle some things on my posters themselves.
I've had no end of people asking me questions about it (for which I have very few answers). Many of my friends have been quite outraged on my behalf - which is understandable; after all I did spend hundreds of pounds on those posters! It's not cheap putting on a show at the Fringe, those posters are meant to try to claw back some of those costs by bringing people into the show.
Though to be honest... I'm not actually that bothered about the graffiti myself. If anything these vandals have actually given me more publicity; after all you're more likely to stare at a poster with graffiti than one without! So I decided rather than dish out more money to get replacements, I'll just leave them as they are.
But then, having contemplated the whole affair for the last week, I thought I probably should be doing something in response. If they want to play ball, then fine, I'll play ball! Hence I have done my own anti-graffiti (which looks a lot like graffiti) to counteract their heinous defacing. The video below shows my response in all its glory. I hope the vandals watch it and realise they haven't won! The main lesson we can all take away from this is that red paint beats black paint (but ultimately all obscures).
Gareth Morinan - Truth Doodler @ 13.30 Underbelly Bristo Square