THIS year in Edinburgh I am living with Dan Atkinson. I did a show with Dan in 2006 and on the last night, he got me drunk, convinced me to do my set naked save for a giant, swaying carrot costume and then ran off with my clothes and hid them behind a bin. It was Lucy Porter's carrot costume. And, writing this, I'm not sure if she was aware that her outfit had been sullied in this way. If she wasn't, then she probably is now. Sorry, Lucy.
Who you live with up here is important. When I started out as a comic, the only way I could visit the Fringe was to sleep on the floors of generous comedians and repay them by flyering their shows and replenishing the rapidly diminishing contents of
their fridge. I say contents, it was mainly bacon. Bacon, which I'd eaten.
Rhod Gilbert was the comedian who let me stay on his floor rather than freeze to death in the Meadows and for this I remain eternally thankful. He's kind of like the Doctor Barnardo of Welsh comedy. Unfortunately, his generosity knowing no bounds, he let other comedians stay there too. One of these had a habit of alternating stopping breathing with loud gargling snoring. I spent many nights shifting between worrying whether the guy had finally died with weighing up the benefits of knowing for certain and suffocating him with a pillow.
If you're not paying for accommodation, you can't really complain about such things. One year, I thought I'd lucked out when Rhod told me I'd got my own room. This joy was short-lived. I arrived to discover a glorified cupboard so small that the fold-up bed could only be unfurled when the bedroom door was shut. Despite its size, my room had two doors, through one of which Marek Larwood would repeatedly burst, demanding instant bacon reparations. The other led to the bedroom of a comedian who shall remain nameless. Through this door, I could frequently hear him enthusiastically schtupping his sound technician.
Actually contributing to the rent yourself poses a whole different slew of problems. In the real world, a deposit is something you can hope to get back. In Edinburgh it's more like a down payment for eventual destruction. In 2006 my deposit went towards replacing a cracked window and a mattress damaged beyond all repair. I still don't know who the perpetrator of the mattress incident is, the DNA results proving inconclusive.
Comedians are pretty much like students, but with more time on their hands. Like thieves in the night (or early hours of the morning) my housemates will come home and eat all my food. By week two, I'm little better than a tinned goods squirrel, stashing my grub around the place in the vain hope I'll find it again in a moment of drunken enlightenment. If you come round for tea this year, my beans will be in the washing machine.
Lloyd Langford: Not A Lover, Not A Fighter is at the Underbelly, 6:35pm, until 24 August. For more on festival flat-sharing, see page 10 of today's magazine.
