Mark Gatiss
is, for the time being, the one.
No, not like that! With one notable exception, we’ve never breathed the same air. Nevertheless, Mr Gatiss is the one.
To elaborate: the much-admired actor/writer/producer/etc is the one person I can honestly point at and say: “I saw him on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before he was famous, you know.”
Given that I’ve been “doing the Fringe”, on and off, since the early 1980s, my “hit” rate of unintentionally seeing future talent appears low. Perhaps that’s because, until professional commitments demanded otherwise, stand-up comedy wasn’t my thing. While almost every comedian glimpsed on TV nowadays is familiar from Fringe posters and flyers of yesteryear, that doesn’t make any of them the one.
However, I did see a young, fresh-faced Mr Gatiss perform in a show called The Teen People which – as far as I can now work out – ran during the 1993 Fringe. Co-written with Simon Messingham, it was primarily a homage to – pastiche of – ITV’s 1970s “answer to Doctor Who”, The Tomorrow People.
I can’t really remember much about The Teen People; I’m sure I found it reasonably funny, but we are talking about one hour of my life some 23 years later, and I wasn’t taking any notes back then. If I hadn’t weirdly managed to save a flyer for the show, I doubt I’d have even remembered the title.
Given the year, I should point out that I therefore saw Mark Gatiss in a show on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before he even started – with Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson – performing as The League of Gentlemen. And four years before they won the Perrier Award for Comedy, which gave their careers a right kick up the arse.
Except… perhaps Mark Gatiss isn’t quite the one. After all, if I’m really honest, I didn’t go to see The Teen People completely blind. I actually went to see the show specifically because Mark Gatiss – at that point the author of the Doctor Who novel Nightshade – was in it. So, he was already “known”, if not “famous” – within the small puddle that was Doctor Who fandom.
Sod it. Many millions of people around the world now know his name. Back then – in the dark of Old St Paul’s Church (Venue 45), Jeffrey Street (close to Waverley Station) – they didn’t.
He’s the one.
😉
