Fairly Tales, meanwhile, was getting such a good reception that we decided to put it on for a full-length run at the Etcetera Theatre, where it was critically acclaimed including being Time Out Critic’s Choice. We decided take this show up to Edinburgh alongside the new sketch show, to send the message that the new company wasn’t only a sketch team.

Around this time we also flanged around with a few side-projects including an ill-fated 'comedy scratch night' at the Lion & Unicorn, a reasonably successful string of appearances as 'The Wine Tasters' in various new acts competitions (which mainly convinced us that the act was too bizarre to put on in that context, and would have to be a full length show in order to work), and one memorable performance as 'Professor Explosions', starring a large rusty can of butane gas that we found on the way to the theatre, a terrified audience and us throwing lit matches around. Now that's comedy.

At this point we really needed to come up with a new company name. Ubersausage as a name was a blessing and a curse – very memorable, but very much suggesting a ‘wacky student company’ which didn’t really match the new shows. We came up with The Black Sheep by the simple process of saying 10,000 names until we found one we liked, but as soon as we said it we knew we’d found the right one – a mixture of something dark and something fluffy, and also something that reflected our position somewhere in the hinterland between comedy and theatre.

Having chosen the name, we then weren’t able to use it as a company name for quite a while. Fairly Tales was already a co-production between Charlatan and another company, Outlaw, founded by yet more graduates of our Central course, and squeezing another name in at that point would have confused things even more; as for the sketch show, the C Venues in Edinburgh really wanted us back – but wanted the crowd-pulling name Ubersausage back too. So we went up to the 2002 Fringe as the compromise “Ubersausage Productions”, with The Black Sheep as the name of the sketch show. (This caused a bit of confusion for quite some time over whether the name referred to the company or the show; these days we refer to that sketch show as The Black Sheep Show for clarity.)

We arrived in style, performing Fairly Tales in mid-flight between London and Edinburgh on an EasyJet plane as part of a festival promotion they were running. We got the pilot involved, asking him to look out of the window and tell us what he was flying over (a church) so we could make up a story about it.

The reaction to our new sketch show about death, isolation and abusive relationships was, unsurprisingly, a little less exuberant than in previous years, but the strong writing, energetic performances and open-hearted honesty won it much critical praise and the more mature audience we were aiming for. Fairly Tales also did well in its slot, although performing it at lunchtime did mean we had to keep our improvisation child-friendly. As an antidote, for the last two nights of the festival we staged a special late-night version, Filthy Tales, promising dirty and depraved stories. People flocked in – and even though we’d warned them, were surprised by quite how far we went (including the fastest walk-out I've ever seen, from someone who didn't even manage to sit down before deciding to leave).

Having started the year with a bang and not stopped, and having clocked up around 100 performances over the year by the end of August, we ended the festival absolutely exhausted and took a couple of months downtime. As now seemed to be traditional (it happened in 2000 and 2001 too), one member left the sketch team at the end of Edinburgh, in this case to go off and count monkeys in South Africa. We never did find out how many there were.

Of the many outcomes of our that Edinburgh, three are perhaps worthy of note here. Firstly, as a consequence of our dark, mature sketch show about death and isolation we were approached to write… a kids’ sketch show for Disney. Secondly, our timeslot-enforced child-friendly approach to Fairly Tales resulted in the show being offered a slot at the Hammersmith Lyric – as a dedicated children’s show. Thirdly, an impressively mustachio’d man in a straw boater approached us after The Black Sheep Show and said he wanted to take us to Poland. Of these three things, two of them actually happened in 2003…

SHOW CREDITS
Click on show titles for more details

The Black Sheep Show
Additional performers: Peter Rates, Jules FitzGerald, Victoria Butler
Tec: Rob McWhinnie, Rupert Lally
Music: Rupert Lally
Graphic design: Sam Chatwin

Fairly Tales
Additional performers:
(Etcetera run) Stephen Hancocks, Melanie Wilson, Philip Beaven, Lesley Stone, Kate Lush
(Edinburgh run) Stephen Hancocks, Lesley Stone, Jules FitzGerald, Maggie Gordon-Walker
Design: Mayou Trikerioti
Music: Rupert Lally
Tec (Edinburgh): Rob McWhinnie

SHOW DATES

January 19: Guest slot, Comedy at the Cochrane, London
February 26-March 3: New “Ubersausage”, Etcetera, London
March 18: Comedy Scratchpad, Lion & Unicorn, London
March 20: Fairly Tales, The Gate, London
April 15: Comedy Scratchpad, Lion & Unicorn, London
May 7-26: Fairly Tales, Etcetera, London
May 20: Comedy Scratchpad, Lion & Unicorn, London
June 24, July 1 & 8:
First appearance as “The Black Sheep”, The Black Sheep Show, Man in the Moon, London
July 11: Fairly Tales, MAC, Birmingham
July 13-14: Fairly Tales, Lion & Unicorn, London
July 16-18: The Black Sheep Show, Etcetera, London
July 19-20: Fairly Tales, Etcetera, London
July 29: Fairly Tales, EasyJet flight from London-Edinburgh
July 31-August 25: The Black Sheep Show, C Venues, Edinburgh Fringe
August 1-25: Fairly Tales, C Venues, Edinburgh Fringe