Being an absolute lad I get invited on a huge amount of stag dos, sometimes as many as one a year. A lot of people I know are pretty nerdy or don’t have much personality so inviting an absolute legend like myself really helps to increase the levels of fun and unpredictability of what might happen on a stag do and I see it as my duty to play into the “wild card” stereotype of how my friends perceive me. This year’s token stag do was in Edinburgh, a place I rarely go to when there is no fringe festival happening because it takes ten hours to get there and I find it hard to understand what Scottish people are trying to say to me. This stag do was for a friend of mine called Andy who I love with all my heart, the same way one might feel towards a beloved pet or an ornament you have particularly fond memories of. Andy is, and I don’t think he’d mind me saying this, an absolute nerd, so it was important for him to have someone like me, a total legend, on his stag weekend, and due to his best man being almost completely useless, I managed to be able to help plan a number of legendary activities. So, some backstory about Andy (and in fairness, this one story could fill up an entire article on its own so I may skimp on some of the details). Andy, at one point in the early noughties, tried to do standup comedy. He did maybe ten gigs before he claimed that he didn’t have the time or energy for it anymore, which I think was just code for “I wasn’t very good at it”. However, at the time (around 2011) myself and my then comedy partner Sid Wick, needed a third person for a joke at the end of one of our Edinburgh Fringe shows and, knowing that Andy didn’t have a job or a life, we asked him if he wanted to come along. He was available and did the job admirably. Because of the nature of his role though we couldn’t tell everyone that he was a part of the show so we told everyone he was a comedy manager and had a lot of fun with complete strangers (many of whom were comedians looking for management and attempted to schmooze him). Whilst in this creatively charged atmosphere, though, Andy started to have a little inkling of a dream and said, more than once I might add, that he would love to do his own Edinburgh show. A year or so passed however and he had made no headway towards this dream and so, on one drunken evening in 2014, Sid and I decided to take matters into our own hands. We made an application to the Free Fringe on his behalf. We didn’t tell him about this but we thought it was a pretty good pitch. We put it into the spoken word section of the guide, we applied for one weekend, and we told them it would be Andy reading from his autobiography giving advice on the rollercoaster world of comedy management. Remarkably, this was accepted and Andy’s show, which we named Andy Routledge: Can’t Manage, was a go. At this point we were faced with a bit of a dilemma. We were quite drunk when we'd pitched it so we had forgotten we had done it - and we weren’t 100% sure if he would do it if we told him about it. Following the advice of many criminals, “Its better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” we decided that we would maximise the chances of him performing it by writing the entire show, taking care of marketing and accommodation costs (and every other cost apart from transport) and then asked him if he could come to Edinburgh to help us film something on that particular weekend. Andy agreed. The weekend came, we got him to the venue, gave him the script for the first time and then announced him onto the stage and to his credit, he performed the show admirably. The audience mostly knew that it was a prank apart from one man who arrived expecting a seminar on comedy management and was actually quite disappointed. This show, by the way, was ridiculous. We had put more effort into writing this show than we had into our own shows, but as Andy was reading it for the first time he couldn’t really prepare for anything to come or skip any sections. He entered the stage to the song I’m The Leader Of The Gang (I Am) by Gary Glitter and throughout the show we randomly threw in various Elton John numbers for him to sing. There were four pages of him listing various retail stores he had been denied employment by in alphabetical order. There were two recipes and several points where he would attempt to serve drinks to the audience. You can find this show on YouTube to this day though, spoiler alert, some of the jokes have not aged well. Andy afterwards said that he had enjoyed the entire experience but made me promise to never make him do it ever again. This was 8 years ago and for his present day stag do we were returning to the scene of this crime. Andy knew that I had planned some things for him and I could tell he suspected something. On the car on the way up I prepared a playlist which contained all the songs that he had sung in the initial performance of Andy Routledge: Can’t Manage. As each one came on, I looked into his eyes and he went into a solemn silence. You could see the cogs turning. The evening came and we decided to go to the Banshee Labyrinth, a fantastic bar and famous venue during the Edinburgh Fringe. Andy sat in a corner looking very nervous and uncomfortable. As we were drinking, random local friends of ours showed up who were not part of the stag do, claiming they were there to see a show that evening. I turn to Andy with a huge wild card grin and he looks at me like a man who has lost all hope. Eleven o’clock arrives and I move the group into the cinema room of the venue. Without asking him to, Andy sits in the front row, ready to meet his fate. The audience filters in, bubbling with excitement, and eventually I get onto the stage and make the announcement: “For the first time in eight years, you are going to see a performance from a very special individual. A man who has been described as ‘unmarriable’. Members of the public, for one last time in Edinburgh, please give a round of applause for… Andy Routledge: Can’t Manage!” Andy stepped onto the stage and took the book that I offered to him. There are a few moments of silence as he waits for Gary Glitter to start playing and then on the large screen behind him, the video we took of that fateful first performance started to play. I grabbed him and sat him back down on the front row saying, “Andy, what are you doing? No one can see the screen.” I’ve never seen a man look so relieved without needing the toilet for several hours beforehand. Yes, I may be a wild card and a legend but I also keep my promises. We spent the rest of the evening watching that performance with much joy and laughter and Andy finished the night off by giving a live rendition of the final song, Rocket Man by Elton John. This is just the first example of what happens when you invite James Fucking Bennison on your stag do. There was of course a second day of activities but they will have to wait dear readers.
