Chloe Petts
My worst fringe was in 2012 before I was even a twinkle in the eye of the comedy gods. I was at university and I wanted to be a Very Serious Actor in Very Serious Plays so spent all of my time in drama society productions. I was cast as one of the leads in a terrible piece of new writing about women’s mental health, and me and the rest of the cast lived 13 to a five-bed flat. I coped by going out and getting drunk every night, mostly ending up blacked out with my face in a bowl of plain pasta.
One night I had my first encounter with Buckfast and got to sleep at 7am. I had to be up at 10am to flyer our show; we thought it would be a good idea to pace the Royal Mile in straitjackets to reflect the “hashtag themes” of the play.
By the time it got to the performance I was feeling rough and, moments before I went on stage, I felt the Buckfast wield its power and I threw up. Unfortunately I had to kiss the other lead, my best friend, who’d just seen me being sick in a bucket. As we leaned in, she viscerally communicated “I hate you, you stink” with her eyes while I tried to communicate “I’m so sorry!!!” with mine. She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the run.
Fortunately that production was one of the driving factors in my realisation that acting wasn’t for me and I went and did my first open mic. The rest, as they say, is very boring history.
Chloe Petts is at the Pleasance Courtyard: Pleasance Above, 5 to 27 August.
Ania Magliano
On day one of the fringe in 2019, I had to get up at 4am to fly back to London for my grandma’s funeral, then fly back to perform half an hour of standup at 9pm. Every comedian’s dream way to prepare for a gig. My grandma lived a long and healthy life, and I was glad to be able to say goodbye to her. I was also thankful I didn’t have a sitcom-esque mix-up of scripts and accidentally read out my 10 minutes on bisexuality instead of Stop All the Clocks.
I left the funeral without attending the wake, so I treated myself to an airport grief banquet: one savoury crepe from Crêpeaffaire, a quick cry, then one sweet crepe from Crêpeaffaire. By the time I got on stage in Edinburgh, I was exhausted and full of crepe.
But I powered through, performing 30 minutes of anecdotal comedy to a small but generous audience. At the end of it, I was so grateful for their support that I decided to be honest. “Thanks for coming. I actually went to my grandma’s funeral today, so it means a lot … ” The crowd – is 12 a crowd? The disciples! – looked up at me expectantly. They had, fairly, assumed this was the setup to an absolutely cracking final joke. I realised the miscommunication, explained my grandma was actually dead, and then brought the next act on to baffled, miserable silence.
Ania Magliano is at Pleasance Courtyard, 5 to 27 Aug.
Ed Byrne
There was a thing that used to happen regularly during the fringe: the Reading festival. It was on during August, the same time as the fringe, and they had a comedy tent there. They booked me in 1999 which meant going to Edinburgh airport, flying to Heathrow, getting picked up in a car and taken to the festival, doing a 40-minute set, driving back to Heathrow, flying back to Edinburgh and doing your fringe show that evening.
Of course, the day I was booked to do it, I stayed out drinking all night cos I was 27 and that was the kind of stuff I still did back then. I got back to the flat in the morning, showered, changed, got myself to the airport, checked in, got to the gate … and fell asleep. I literally woke up at the time I was supposed to be on stage in Reading. I’d slept for five hours! No one woke me; my phone had been ringing the whole time in my pocket, and no one even thought to check if I was dead.
Ed Byrne is at Assembly Rooms: Music Hall, 5 to 27 Aug.
Nick Mohammed
The last time I was up in Edinburgh doing a full run in character as Mr Swallow, for the finale of the show, I memorised the name of everyone in the audience. I was using a grid system in my head which relies on me knowing the exact layout of the auditorium, how many people are in each row and so on. I’d been working on this incredibly rigorous system for ages.
And in two shows out of the 25 or so I did, there was a fire alarm which meant that everyone there went out and then came back and sat in a completely different place. Or, even worse, sat in almost the same seat but not quite. The show was called Vanishing Elephant and it was all about having an amazing memory. The Mr Swallow shows have always ended on some kind of stunt so there’d always been an element of spectacle to end the show. People were just genuinely disappointed. Anger you can deal with, disappointment cuts a bit deeper.
Mr Swallow, AKA Nick Mohammed, is at Pleasance Courtyard: The Grand, 15 August.
Grace Campbell
My first run at the fringe was 2019. My show was at 3.15pm which meant that my brand of people – women who are too hungover to do anything before 5pm – were not there.
The show was called Why I’m Never Going Into Politics. I wanted to write about why I’d chosen comedy; politics being the industry I grew up in. But this meant that my show was being partly pitched as being about politics, which meant that a lot of the people who were coming were – how do I say this? – quite a lot older than I’d have liked. They were often disappointed when I would just do five minutes on the politics of fanny farts.
Then one day I was told that Sadiq Khan was coming to the show. His security detail had to come and check the room before the show which felt intense and dramatic but also understandable. The first half of the show went great. Sadiq, who I could see as he was under a spotlight, was enjoying it. And then at around the halfway mark I looked at his security detail, and became suddenly anxious. It reminded me of a paranoia I used to feel as a child being around politicians. I had a completen out-of-body experience: an anxiety symptom I’ve had before but it had never happened on stage, and I couldn’t work out how I could finish the show. Stopping the show didn’t feel like an option. How could I when Mr Mayor of London was there!? Somehow, I went on autopilot. I finished the show, mid-panic attack. I came off stage and asked my producer Roxy if she could tell that I wasn’t quite there and she said: “That was the best show you’ve done so far.”
Grace Campbell is at the Gilded Balloon Teviot: Debating Hall, 12 to 17 August.
Adam Riches
It’s hard to pick a worst one as I’ve suffered so many shockers, from multiple walkouts and single-digit audiences to lame promoters and supposedly “career-threatening” reviews. I was once told a “one triangle of one star” review was coming out, but “on the plus side, they were going to be printing a photo”. The fringe is like the shark in Jaws: a cold, brutal killing machine that sleeps badly, eats worse and makes little fringes.
But as with the end of every episode of He-Man or Jerry Springer, two of my big comedy heroes, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. So with that in mind, I’d have to say the worst fringe I ever had was the one where I almost died.
I’m just kidding. I only broke my leg. In three places. Live on stage. The audience thought it was part of the show. The best part, in fact, as I’d been royally tanking that day. I distinctly remember lying on the floor and calmly asking a member of the front row if he could find a member of staff to call an ambulance as “I think I’m really hurt”. He just looked at me and smiled. SMILED. He hadn’t smiled for an entire hour but, for that, he smiled.
I broke it on the Sunday, had surgery on the Monday, and was back on stage by the Thursday. I don’t remember much about the remaining 20-odd shows I had to do as I was seriously tripping my balls on morphine. But I do remember my profile getting a huge boost the next year when I returned as “the guy who broke his leg”.
Adam Riches is at the Underbelly, Cowgate: Cow Cafe, 5 to 27 August; and Monkey Barrel 4, 17 to 27 August.
Viggo Venn
The first time me and – fellow comedian and clown – Zach Zucker did the fringe in 2015, as Zach & Viggo, we were so naive. We were performing at noon in the cellar of a bar. We hadn’t sold any tickets, so we were handing out flyers to people in suits going to work in the morning, like: “Hey, do you want to come and see a clown show?” And the reply was, “No, I’m working at a bank, what are you talking about?”
We persuaded one family to come, so we had four people watching us doing things like imitating claw machines – the kind you win teddy bears with on the pier – or pretending to be lifeguards. Then we found out that the family didn’t speak any English. One of the kids then ran out of the room, and the mum followed, so at that point we were performing to a Costa Rican dad and his daughter. Then she fell asleep, leaving two clowns entertaining a dad for 40 minutes. There’s a moment in the show where we bring an audience member up on stage – can you guess who we picked?
In 2019, after we’d climbed up the Edinburgh ranks, the dad came back and was like, “Do you remember you did your show to just me?” He was so happy to see us again because he had seen the most unique show. A private show, basically.
Viggo Venn is at Monkey Barrel 4, 16 to 27 August; and BlundaGardens: BlundaBus & Magical SpiegelYurt, 5 to 7 August (work in progress).
Olga Koch
My debut year, I arrived late July 2018. I had yet to go to my flat, the one I was staying in for the whole month, so the production company very generously let me stay on their couch. I already felt I was imposing and was so stressed out. We all had this big takeaway, and I woke up on the couch about 4am and realised my body was going to explode from every direction that you can possibly think of. So I went to the bathroom and tried to be as quiet as humanly possible. But once it started I realised it was not stopping, and that it had gone from an inconvenience to a medical emergency. I was thinking: “One of the producers is going to have to take me to the hospital”, but also, “I don’t know these people well enough for them to have to carry a leaking body.”
I went and laid completely naked on the cold kitchen floor to cool myself down, just screaming: “Help, help!” At some point someone found me and took me to the hospital. It turns out I had food poisoning. It was one of those classic white-people-don’t-know-how-to-reheat-rice situations.
The next morning I woke up in the hospital and went back to the flat, the scene of the crime, and was greeted with my first ever death threat. It was one of those really creepy ones with cut-out newspaper letters. This was completely unrelated to the food poisoning, but it was really scary! Anyway, I did all the shows as scheduled. You know when you’re drunk and then you vomit and you feel fine? That’s how I felt. There was nothing left in my body, basically.
Olga Koch is at Monkey Barrel 1, 5 to 27 August.
John Robins
It was my sixth consecutive show at the fringe; people who saw them liked them, but for whatever reason in 10 years of performing not much had happened. Confidence was running low, and towards the end of the month an important critic was in. I had a chance to at least come away with a decent review. The room was an 80-seat shipping container, and was next to the place where they emptied bottles from the bar into a wheelie bin at regular intervals, which is the loudest sound on Earth.
Aside from navigating the bottle alarm the show was going OK, when after half an hour a man came in, walked across the stage and sat down in the front row.
In this kind of space the room is the stage so this kind of interruption immediately destroys any kind of atmosphere, but I’m desperate to not interrupt the routine in case things go wrong in front of the reviewer. Fifteen minutes later, I’m approaching the denouement when the guys gets up and walks across the stage again. All hope of getting any kind of momentum has now vanished. I ask if he’s OK and he replies, “I just wanted to get out of the rain.”
It might sound like quite a small event among the drunken, chaotic mayhem of the fringe. No one was sick, or passed out, or got arrested, but I will never forget that moment. I had worked for a year on that show and it completely knocked the wind out of me. I sat down in the seat he’d vacated and said, “I give up” before looking over to see the reviewer scribbling on their pad.
John Robins is at Just the Tonic Nucleus: Atomic Room, 5 to 27 August.
Paul Sinha
No comedian ever forgets their first solo show at the fringe. It’s a giant leap into the unknown. My first show was in 2004. I unwisely eschewed the option of cobbling together my best jokes, and instead themed it around my disdain for the film Love, Actually. The gamble never came close to working. Not enough people had seen the film; my room was a small, overheated lecture theatre; my show time was far too late to attract the curious; and the two shows that were cancelled for zero ticket sales should have been the ultimate humiliation.
But the nadir actually came in the form of an eye-wateringly expensive PR man who failed to hide his lack of expertise or comedic soul. The morning after the first cancelled show, he arranged an emergency meeting to discuss his big idea to salvage the run.
“As you’re a GP, Paul, we’ll get an audience member to fake a medical emergency, and you can step in and save them.”
I knew immediately that I was not going to be the toast of the town. Like all comedy disasters, that meeting is now filed under “educational”. I never heard from him again.
Paul Sinha is at The Stand’s New Town theatre: Grand Hall, 5 to 27 August.
Robin Ince
My worst fringe moment was when my arm was broken by the clumsy comedian Howard Read on day two of the festival in 1999. I did nothing about it for a few days until it was very purple and stuck in one position; this limited my onstage gesticulation and also the agony really interfered with my ability to sleep. I learned that saving all your painkillers and taking them in one fell swoop before going on stage can begin to affect your sanity, especially if you drink heavily, too. Also people are suspicious of a comedian in a sling, and there is a sense that it is a ruse and you’ll throw it off at the end and do some complex juggling as opposed to some minor wincing.
That experience hasn’t changed how I approach performing live but it has changed the distance that I walk from Howard Read. Actually, I think I would handle performing with a sling or cast much better now, but I have no desire to try it. So if you see me in Edinburgh , please do not think you are helping by throwing me down some stone steps.
Robin Ince is at Gilded Balloon at the Museum: Auditorium, 5 to 27 August; and The Stand’s New Town theatre: Studio, 5 to 27 August.
Mark Thomas
I once did three gigs in a day during the fringe; two in Edinburgh and one at the Reading festival. The timings meant I did an early show in Edinburgh, flew down to Reading to do a set there, and flew back for a late-night show at the Edinburgh Playhouse with Julian Clary.
Richard Morton was on before me. I’d already done two hour-long sets that day, I got back to Edinburgh for this late one and I was just all over the place. I was booked to do 20 minutes and I ended up just doing a rambling 45. I was the last one on; Julian’s feather boas were wilting in the wings. He was furious.
I was so tired. A fringe hour, then fly and drive, and an hour at Reading festival … and I think, if I remember correctly, it was really fucking awful. Poor Phil Collins doing Live Aid; I always used to look down on him. The thing that I learned is never let your manager and agent do the bookings: they were on 20% of everything and had me charging around the country.
Mark Thomas is at The Stand 1, 13 to 24 August
Sooz Kempner
In 2016 I decided to do not one but two Edinburgh solo hours at the same fringe: a standup show at midday and a character show mid-afternoon; two shows a day for the whole month! And I had pretty much no fanbase so I played to single figures more or less the entire festival. My smallest audience was two people. And they weren’t a couple. It was a man who sat right at the back and, in the second row, a producer from a major TV company … The silence for that 60 minutes was deafening.
Just after the show I could feel tears forming in my eyes as I smiled far too broadly and thanked the producer very much for coming. She awkwardly said: “Oh yeah, we really wanted to come and check this out because we love your brother.” My brother is the then-much-more-successful-and-popular Luke Kempner. As soon as she’d said this it wasn’t that I started sobbing or anything; I kept up my much-too-big smile, but tears just started free-flowing down my ashen face. It was like a tap had been turned on full, extremely fast. The producer was very kind, we parted ways and didn’t mention my wet face. I never saw her again but I hope she knows I now play to literally tens of people.
Sooz Kempner is at Underbelly Bristo Square: Buttercup, 5 to 27 August.
