It doesn’t seem like five minutes since I first saw Mark Watson. As a completely unknown comedian, at least to us on the Manchester comedy circuit - he played the Buzz club in Chorlton having hitched a lift with a fellow London comic. The other comic drifted into obscurity but even back then there was something about Watson. Something in his geeky, nervy style and, despite growing up in the west country, he’d decided to perform with the Welsh accent of his South Wales relatives. These days he’s dropped the accent but that wonderfully edgy, breathless style persists.
It’s fitting that he should be a part of our festival line up, he’s a festival kind of a guy. He made his name at the Edinburgh Fringe and in particular by performing his innovative 24 and 36 hour shows. Tonight he was just doing the two though keeping up the hard work by providing his own support. As ever it was a poetic couple of hours weaving deftly though fatherhood, latecomers and advocating that we’re all generally a bit nicer to each other. And taking that spirit on board I went up after the show and said hello to Mark as in all the times I've interviewed him we'd never actually met face to face.