11th August 2004
FESTIVAL NIGHTMARES: HAVING TO TALK A MAN
OUT OF KILLING HIMSELF
by Janey Godley
I was walking
to the Smirnoff Underbelly through the sunny Grassmarket at last year’s
Fringe when I saw people point up to the top flat of an old tenement. There was a
young, dishevelled looking man hanging onto to the drainpipe. My brain
tried to make sense of why he was up so high and hanging onto the metal
pipe. Beside him, a big window was open, but he seemed to be ignoring
it and kept dangling. To make matters
freakier, loads of people were shouting “Jump, jump!” Was
this a weird Fringe show? Was it stunt? I stared hard at the man and
saw pain in his face. His hands were bleeding and he started crying. I stood beneath the building, threw my head back and screamed my best projected voice ever. “Don’t you dare jump! I have two shows to worry about and you might land on me!” The man turned his head down to me and then laughed. |
“Don’t
go!” he screamed to me. The man slowly and perilously descended the
ancient grey building, a foot on a window ledge, a hand on a black drainpipe,
until he was finally there above me on the first floor. “Come down
mate. Don’t jump. Never be a crowd pleaser!” I smiled. He finally dropped onto the pavement. He never spoke, just put out his bleeding hands and held mine. After he got cleaned up, we chatted a bit. “I was having a bad day,” he told me. Later that week, he came to see my comedy show. Afterwards, he told me: “You made me laugh; I was worried your show would have been crap and I would need to jump out of the window at the Underbelly." |