So after 25 shows in Edinburgh, a small run at The Royal Opera House and many previews before all of that Chris is now resting Mind Over Patter, but only for now. He’ll be bringing it back to the stage over Christmas and in 2010, and will be announcing some very exciting television and international news very soon, so don’t worry, you’ll still be able to get your Cox fix.
Chortle: Mind Over Patter Review
Sparky Chris Cox tries way too hard with the ‘patter’ part of the show’s title. His cheery banter often slips into the cheesy – and never more so than when he’s rattling though another batch of tediously juvenile puns on his surname.
But you just never know, they might be important. As a mind-reader who can’t read minds, Cox relies on magic tricks, misdirection and subliminal suggestion to manipulate his audience. Could that eager-to-please repartee be planting vital messages?
There’s no doubt that some of his Derren Brown-like stunts are properly impressive – he seems genuinely able to predict the unpredictable. The finale, when he second-guesses the randomised choices of six volunteers is astounding, if not impossible.
At a youthful 25, Cox employs devices earlier generations could never have dreamed of: an iTunes library full of untitled songs or a Facebook profile – although such technological reveals are never going to be as remarkable as the simpler ones, as there’s an inherent distrust that some backstage shenanigans is doctoring the data.
Correctly guessing what another volunteer will choose from the array of items of clothing scattered around the set is much more impressive, yet he gets it spot on. In a couple of other tricks he gets close, but no cigar… but maybe that’s deliberate, too. This is a show when you can never be sure all is what it seems.
It’s all great entertainment, often amazing, though there’s probably a more distinctive way of presenting it away from the sparkly jollity more normally found on TV’s Saturday-night shiny-floor shows.
And I’m Done
Well then, that’s Edinburgh done for another year and reality once again rears it’s ugly head into view.
I’m now on my 2nd day back in London after leaving stupidly early on Monday morning. After Sunday nights show I had to pack up all my props, and eventually got to bed just before 3am. I got a taxi to the airport at 5am. This was not fun. I ended up having a lovely day seeing my sister, her husband and my nieces, relaxing in the sunshine, talking stuff through and going to a Maize Maze with them. It was plenty o’fun.
Now I get a chance to reflect on Edinburgh and at some point I will read my reviews. Professionally it seems to have been a very good month, I’ve had great audience numbers, won an award and saw lots of stars appear on my poster. Personally it’s been a slightly tougher month, but I’m not going to go into that as it’ll just bore you. It has however made me think of Edinburgh in a slightly different way, for me it wasn’t the usual fun month, but a rather gruelling one. That said, the times when I enjoyed it, it was the best place in the world. Highlights for me include taking part in Mark Watson’s 24 hour show, my parents coming to see the show, being chased around and ‘fired’ from The Hotel, and 8 year old boy having a swear word on stage, The Loft Bar with the Axis guys and Philip Escoffy, regular bed times of 4am, reading Denise Van Outen, Jimmy Carr & Dara O’Briens minds, and socialising with some friends who came up to see me on a Saturday night in Brookes. Show wise some stand out highlights include Stefan Golaszewski , Pappys Fun Club, Axis Of Awesome, Daniel Kitson, Philip Escoffy, Bristol Revunions, Princess Cabaret and Out Of The Blue.
I thought I’d copy the wonderful Tiernan Douieb’s idea and try and work out some stats for this years Edinburgh so here goes.
Number of hours performing my show – 24
Number of hours performing The Hotel – 21
Number of hours performing in everything I did – 52 and 12 minutes
Number of times the ferret was thrown – 162
Number of Cox puns in my show – 24
Number of Cox Badges given out – 3000 (ish)
Number of Awards won – 1
Number of Shows seen – 18
Number of Shows I wanted to see – 56
Amount of Rum drunk – 3 bottles
Amount of Wine drunk – 12 bottles
Number of Cocktails had – 12
Number of evenings spent in Brookes Bar – 25
Number of evenings spent in The Loft Bar – 7
Number of times I visited my favourite Indian after I found it in the last week – 3
Number of books brought to read – 4
Number of books read – 1
Number of DVDs brought up to watch – 15
Number of DVDs watched – 0
Number of cheese and crackers eaten – 4 packets of Jacobs Crackers worth
Number of Xbox games played – 0 I forgot I’d brought it up and left it at my promoters flat all month
Number of things broken – 1
So for now this is the end of the blog. I expect I’ll try continue it though to let you know of my exploits, if you’ve read any of it thank you, if you’ve come to see a show, an even bigger thank you.
Chris x
Award Winner
Chris Cox wins FestBuzz’s Twitter of the Year award at Edinburgh Fringe 2009
FestBuzz have awarded Chris Cox, the comedy mentalist magician, the first ever comedy Twitter of the Year Award at Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe.
Cox has been given this prize for his creative and prolific use of Twitter which has helped garner him almost 3,000 followers on the site, and ensured his popularity at this year’s Fringe festival with his show Mind Over Patter. He has tweeted around 300 times this August, conversing with fans and fellow comedians about comedy, the internet and his show. Chris’ online name is @bigcox, and his mind-reading and magic show combines other new social media such as Facebook to create some excellent tricks for his audience.
FestBuzz is a new way to find cool stuff at the Edinburgh Festivals. It’s a project from Affect Labs, a data processing company based in Edinburgh, and is supported by Channel 4’s 4iP fund. FestBuzz aggregates “tweets” about shows and then uses sentiment detection to create a star rating for the act: reviews are crowd-sourced directly from the people who are seeing the shows, rather than critics.
More information can be found here.
The End Is Near
Hello,
I realise I’ve not blogged in ages. Sorry about that. I’ve had a pretty rough and tough few weeks. I can’t believe that I now only have two shows left till the end of this years festival. Pretty incredible really, it has certainly flown by, and now thoughts turn to plans for the coming few months and such.
I had a horrible dream last night that I fell in a swimming pool with my iphone in my pocket and as such have woken up feeling very anxious. So let’s try re-cap some of the last few weeks on things we’ve missed out on. As a rule it’s been very quiet this week in Edinburgh, audience wise it’s been hard work, but equally rewarding. Had a really fun show the other night when a little lad came on stage to help me with a trick, having to wear a t-shirt that was way to big for him, then having to read a swear word out… very awkward but utterly hilarious. Not many other show mishaps really, although I keep accidentally saying something I don’t want to when I come to my big date trick so I’m going to try not do that so much.
Last weekend some of my friends came to town, it was very nice to see them and show them bits of Edinburgh. I went up Calton Hill for the first time, Edinburgh really is a beautiful city, especially from up there. At the moment my good friends the Bacon’s are up in town so I’ve been socialising with them. Richard did his first ever bit of stand up, I urge you to listen to his 5live show to hear it, especially the moment where he was in the wings before going on, truly incredible radio. I also took part in an event at the TV Festival yesterday doing some mind reading with Amanda Holden, Ant & Dec, Jimmy Carr and Lois Walsh. Twas terribly odd but fun all the same.
Excitingly I’ve won an award. It’s the Mervyn Stuters Pick Of The Fringe Twitter Of The Year, so a huge thanks to the guys at festbuzz.com for that. I feel very flattered to have won such a thing. Look here is a photo of it for you. Horray to me.
So now just a few days let to see the final few shows I’d like to see… I’ve seen nowhere near enough shows this year, I hope lots of them come to London.
Ta-Ra
Chris x