It’s a fact that sometimes things do go wrong. It could be technical; it could be break down in communications, it could be any number of things but let’s face it occasionally things do not go according to script.

Saturday night was one such occasion. Scottish comedian Rhona Cameron was booked, as part of the Gilded Balloon Comedy Circuit tour, to appear at Dunfermline’s recently reclaimed Alhambra Theatre. It was thought that like her stable mate, the if.comedy award winning Phil Nicol the previous week, Ms Cameron was to play the Alhambra 2, the bar space, albeit with a temporary stage and not the best shaped room in the world.

However on her arrival, and discovering that space was not to her liking the gig was switched to the main theatre that was not prepared for the show, hence it was not the warmest as it was not expected to be used, nor was the lighting set. The Alhambra ‘volunteer’ staff did their utmost to remedy the situation as quickly as they could and the audience was rather forced to endure a longer sojourn in the bar while the debate raged on as to whether the performance went ahead or not.

However, the show did go on, and the main theatre space, somewhat sparsely populated, occupied in preparation for the performance. Following a pre-recorded intro of a discussion with a telephone booking system, Rhona took to the stage and for the next ten minutes berated and belittled the entire unfortunate circumstances that had delayed her performance. Only one person was immune from the criticism, Ms Cameron herself!! It was somewhat reminiscent of her award winning rant on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’ some years ago, when she was dubbed by some as ‘Rhona The Moaner’. 

Once she had got this out of her system and back onto her set I thought she would settle down, and a lot of her stuff was well observed, written and delivered, however numerous call backs to earlier problems and delays did not endear her to a fairly large percentage of her eighty or so audience.

I have seen her perform a few times before and have thought her a very funny performer. She was obviously upset by the earlier circumstances and I feel she did not give of her best on the night. However, given the decision to proceed with her performance, her professionalism should have kicked in. I’m afraid for me it didn’t.

I feel it was unfortunate for all parties; no one likes to see upset performers, less than happy punters or the negative vibe that was being experienced. Let’s hope we can draw a line under this and move on.