Maeve is going to Edinburgh again this year and has a brand new show called Personal Best.

Now Maeve doesn’t say things like this lightly but… she has a really funny and good show this year, plus she loves watching other great shows, so the festival is really playing into her hands. Huzzah!

This will be Maeve’s 4th Fringe and she’s thrilled to be in the lovingly battered old dream castle that is ‘The Gilded Balloon” where you’ll find her in the Billiard Room.

Buy Tickets from EdFringe.com or from Gilded Balloon

Time: 4.30pm (1hr)

Venue: Gilded Balloon > Billiard Room

Dates: 4th – 30th August (not Mon 16th)

Before she heads off to Edinburgh for the whole month of August, Maeve is going to be at the brilliant Carlsberg Comedy Carnival with some excellent comics.  She’s playing three gigs over the weekend with Arj Barker, Jarlath Regan, Reggie Watts, Bo Burnham, Dave Hill and Gearoid Farrelly and there a whole host of other great acts on all weekend. Check out the full programme here and you can catch Maeve on Thursday 22nd (with Arj Barker and Jarlath Regan), Saturday 24th with Reggie Watts and Bo Burnham and Sunday 25th with Dave Hill and Gearoid Farrelly

Maeve is doing a brand new show for Australia and New Zealand called A Rare Sight and it’s with the super brilliant Nick Coyle. They’ll go first to The Brisbane Comedy Festival and then the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and then on to New Zealand.

Nick and Maeve realised they had chemistry onstage when Nick stood in one night to play Maeve’s ex-boyfriend in her 2008 Mebourne show Kitten Brides. It started as a five minute routine but stretched out to ten minutes when Nick did it -  the audience loved him, initially Maeve was envious but then realised it was for the best and wished she could do more stuff with Nick.

Maeve’s producer at the time, Mary Tobin, suggested Maeve and Nick do a full show together, but Maeve was too nervous to ask and thought that Nick wouldn’t want to. Finallly, on the last night of the festival after they finished their shows and a few bottles of south Australian cabernet savignon Maeve finally got the (dutch) courage to suggest it. Nick was delighted and agreed to fly to Ireland the following February.

The idea of the show is that Maeve and Nick are married and work together as helpful people that give polite talks to audiences  about how to live their best lives.

After working quite hard on our original idea, a married couple in space, they threw it all out the window (at two o’clock AM) and began again with a brand new idea: a married couple on earth. between writing, rehearsing and performing the show together they  worked so intensely it made the two realise that real marriage is not for them!

Both Maeve and Nick (despite being successful in each of our  in our countries of origin) have dedicated half a year on a project that will not make money. Or will make very little money. Because they both believe our collaboration could blow some minds. They love doing brave new stupid things because they’re international maverick renegades!

The writing process is currently being hampered by the following things:

• Maeve’s undiagnosed Adhd
• Maeve’s adorable/needy pets
• Nick’s terrible tooth-ache
• Irish chat shows where awkward women don’t know which camera to look at
• jet lag
• the language barrier
• staying up quite late chatting and then getting up quite early to chat
• Maeve’s national treasure status in Dublin

But it will definitely all be ready for Australia on the 11th. Definitely.

Buy Tickets for Brisbane (March 11th – 21st) online>

Buy Tickets to Melbourne (24 March – 17th April) online>

RSVP to Melbourne or Brisbane on facebook

Maeve has been having  a brilliant time since Christmas touring up and down (and left and right across) the country on her nationwide tour. She’s loved meeting all the great audiences that have turned up everywhere, and you can get an idea of how much fun she’s been having from her facebook page, which she posts to all the time.

The tour is coming to an end in a couple of weeks though, when she gets ready to head down under for gigs in Australia.  The last remaining dates include a big gig in Vicar Street, and we’d love to meet you along the way. Final tour dates are as follows:

February

Thu 18th -Kenyon, Nenagh, Co. Tipperary

Sun 21st – Spirit Store, Dundalk, Co. Louth   Buy tickets>

Fri 26th – Ramor Theatre, Cavan, Co. Cavan  Buy Tickets>

Sat 27th – Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford, Co. Wexford

Sun 28th – O’Keeffes, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary

March

Thu 4th – Bluehaven Hotel Kinsale, Cork Buy Tickets>

Fri 5th – Vicar Street, Dublin  Buy Tickets>

Sat 6th – Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Co. Dublin Buy Tickets>

(Maeve HQ)

Here’s some Fancy Vittles that has been put up on youtube. It seems to be just bits and pieces online but that’s nice!

My favourite modes of transport are 1.cycling for short distances and 2.getting the train for long distances. Those two aren’t enough sometimes though, and I have to fly. Last week I flew into London City Airport for the first time. It was creepy and handy at the same time, like a boyfriend who drives you everywhere but also goes through your phone. The thing is, you get right into the city and the view at night is great – London actually looks twinkly and manageable as you fly over it towards the airport but I was the only person not wearing a navy blue suit and silently staring at a piece of technology. There was no wide eyed tourists, tearfully reunited families or impatient tannoy announcements, just coffee and robots.  Convenience beats a frightening glimpse of the future though, so I’ll probably fly there again. This week I flew to Donegal Airport. It’s smaller than most train stations, with one little landing strip next to a beautiful sandy beach. I had a gig in Ballybofey, which is in Donegal so I thought I was a genius. When I got to the airport (40mins after leaving Dublin, wee-wow!) I asked the stewardess behind the solitary desk at the airport if I could get a taxi. I assumed it would be a ten minute drive, she just called out ‘John?’ and an elderly man hopped up and told me it would take an hour and €75 to get there. I felt like a fool but the trip was stunning, and of course I did get to see a properly pretty airport for the first time ever.

Now this is tricky – more a grammatical error than a spelling one really. I love it because it could be correct. They may just be being cute with words and using ’sorry’ as a noun instead of the proper ‘apology’. I don’t think so though, I bet they mean ‘you’re sorry’ as in ‘you are sorry’. In any case it’s a funny idea to suggest to people – you always work / sleep around too much but just buy one of these cacti and your wife will  a) wearing a vest top and b) thrilled to see you.

Maybe everybody knows about this radio show/ free podcast already.  Just in case you don’t know, maybe through a combination of bad luck and inability to get along with technology (like me up until two years ago), I’ll tell you about it. Well, it’s hard to explain but it’s totally brilliant most of the time. If you want to really treat the following parts of your body :

1.ears      2.brain     3.heart

then you should totally listen to some of the shows! Start at the favourites page and count yourself lucky my friend. I myself like the shows they make with found material like Accidental Documentaries and also Sarah Vowell’s contributions.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

There are so many ads all over the place trying to sell us things by exploiting our aspirations to improve ourselves.I want to be and often try to be better all year round and that’s good, but I hate being told how and when to do that by cynical weirdos that deliberately try to bust up my self esteem. So this year I’m keeping an eye on them and you can too! Please be aware of what’s going on and do your best to resist it – don’t take diet pills or watch crappy celebrity dvds or buy magazines that knock other women! Try to believe you’re doing fine, like Josie Long says in picture! It’s more than likely the truth. Old ladies often say they wish they loved themselves more and appreciated their strength and beauty when they were young so I’m choosing to listen to them over everything else. Happy New Year!

Three of the saddest umbrellas I came across this afternoon. Poor things.  They are tragic but also a bit sinister – like awful dead ravens or something, eek! Anyway this filthy weather is not all bad, like the stupid phrase – the ducks on the canal near Harold’s Cross bridge seemed to be having a ball in the rain today – so, good for them!