Comedians on their Fringe Bugbears

Richard Brown: Who Put the Dugs Out?

Mainly audience members that don’t understand subjectivity, reviewers that don’t understand subjectivity, and shows that have a USP and fuck-all else. But above all else, nothing is as annoying as the fact there aren’t enough dog-friendly venues. I could deal with all the other shit around the Fringe if there were more dog friendly venues.

Richard Brown: You Are Not My Audience, The Coffee House, 2-26 Aug (not 13), 7.30pm, Free/PWYW

Larry Dean: A Room Not of One's Own

2012: Gigging in a cloak room every day. Fit 20 people (including comics) and the hooks were still on the walls.
2013: Show was in a tent. Guy shouted out my punchlines because he saw me the night before.
2014: Audience was better lit than the stage.
2015: Room was like a dance studio and audience were facing each other.
2016: Room was too big and my show wasn’t ready.
2017: Mic kept cutting out.
All of these complaints are small when you consider none of these venues had air conditioning.
2018: Doing way too many interviews

Larry Dean: Bampot, Assembly Checkpoint, 2-26 Aug (not 15), 5pm, £6-8

The Edinburgh Revue: A Room with a Revue

Noise bleed, peeling blackout windows, room for an audience of twelve, it was basically like doing a show in an air raid shelter. In the Blitz. And all the time, through my hubris, my own stupid arrogance, I was dressed as a massive Boy Scout. In little shorts. We were also robbed of all our props and dignity by the end of the first week. And that was just last year. [Louis Hall]

People have a flagrant disregard for the direction of human traffic on the Mile. They are clearly signposted with arrows and there's always one spanner who thinks nipping through the counter-current traffic will get them to their show a bit faster. It's all very well one person doing it, until people follow by example and then the whole system collapses. The arrows become purely decorative. It's anarchy. [Amy Matthews]

The Edinburgh Revue Stand-Ups Show, The Beehive, 3-27 Aug, 12.45pm, Free

The Edinburgh Revue is All at Sea, PBH Free Fringe, Canon’s Gait, 4-26 Aug (not Weds), 9.50pm, Free

Joe H: Gone Overboard

Like Schrodinger’s Pirate, the biggest bugbears of the Fringe are those people who are both onboard and overboard. Anyone who treats the month like one big party (drinking, copulating, avoiding intellectual art, etc) is not making the most out of the festival. Yet anyone who has their movements to a tee on an Excel spreadsheet needs to get out a bit more. I’m definitely the latter: my spreadsheet has every act I like, their venues, their toilet facilities (with a star rating), and the nearest benches to have a little cry on.

Joe is teching several shows including: The Delightful Sausage: Regeneration Game, Monkey Barrel Comedy Club, 2-26 Aug, 12pm, £5/PWYW

John-Luke Roberts: All I Wanna Do Is [FX: GUNSHOTS] with a [FX: GUN RELOADING] and a [FX: CASH REGISTER] and Perform Some Comedy!, Assembly George Square Studios, 1-27 Aug (not 15), 5.30pm, £7-10

Mara Joy: New Year’s Heave

My friend and I once decided that the Edinburgh Fringe was like New Year's Eve, but for a whole month. The pressure to have the BEST time and the MOST fun is overwhelming and everyone else is drunk, reminding me of my ten years of sobriety. Sometimes I'm just going to be having a shitty time and will want to disappear into the kitchen for a quiet chat and whatever snacks are left over. Except at the Fringe all the kitchens are bars full of annoyingly excited people and the snacks cost the total amount you made in your bucket today. Also there are fireworks at the end. But at least they’re nice.

Mara is in several shows including: Me Plus One – Improv With Two People, PBH Free Fringe, The Three Broomsticks, 4-25 Aug, 12.45pm, Free

Spontaneous Potter, Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre, 1-26 Aug, 8:45pm, £6-11

Leo Kearse: Don't Have a Cow

As the industry cattle market, the entire point of the Fringe is networking. I hate it so much. Standing in industry bars (which aren’t glamorous, they’re student canteens the rest of the year) braying our successes to each other. Sidling up to conversations and laughing like we’ve been there the whole time. Steering the conversation so we can tell you we know Tim Minchin (obviously we just call him “Tim”). Humblebragging – “I’m exhausted after smashing Hate ‘n’ Live last night and now I’ve got the judges in my solo – eek”.

Asking a question then lighthousing around to see if there’s anyone more famous instead of listening. Genuinely funny people are bad schmoozers. Last year after dying dismally in front of us at an industry showcase, this actor wannabe comedian was dealing out his business cards to the other comics. My mate spat his chewing gum into the card, folded it in half and handed it back to him. Funny, but it’s getting him nowhere. You don’t schmooze, you lose.

Leo Kearse: Right-wing Comedian, Laughing Horse, Espionage, 2-26 Aug, 7.30pm, Free

Stuart McPherson: Beer vs Bucket

So many:

1) Watching entitled middle-aged people who clearly have a lot of money drop £3.50 in change into your bucket, after you’ve sweated over your show all year, then walk past you and pay £5 for a Heineken in a plastic cup.

2) People saying they’re gonna come to your show even though you both know they’re not. More annoyingly, me saying I’m gonna go to someone else’s show even though we both know I’m not.

3) The Guardian publishing a list of 50 shows to see at the Fringe and grouping all the Scottish acts in one entry under Limmy’s name.

4) Seeing amazing shows not get the audience or acclaim they deserve.

Stuart McPherson and Donald Alexander, Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre, 1-26 Aug (not 13), £6-9

Stuart McPherson: Role Model, The Coffee House, 2-26 Aug (not 13), 3pm, Free/PWYW

Julia Sutherland: Flyering High

The absolute worst thing about the Fringe is the relentless, soul-crushing experience that is self promotion!! When you’ve got 27 days worth of tickets to sell, to paraphrase the great Ms Spears, ‘You gotta flyer, bitch!’. And I find it so hard!! I love performing SO much, I love interacting with an audience, and I’m so excited with the show I’m bringing this year because it’s going to be the most fun thing I’ve ever done... but flyering sucks. And I don’t think anyone really enjoys having a leaflet thrust in their face every 5 seconds, either! It makes you almost nostalgic for a chugger. And that’s besides the mess they make and the poor old environment!

So I guess what I’m trying to say is – please, spare me, spare YOURSELF! Just book a ticket – get all your friends to book one! – and let’s avoid the whole sorry business altogether..?

Julia Sutherland: Exposed, Gilded Balloon Teviot Row House, 1-27 Aug (not 13), 1.30pm, £6-9

Mr. Twonkey: Safety First

One the things I don’t like are power cuts which in past has meant I’ve had to pull shows. The last thing you want is a fault at the substation overloading the electricity mains just as the curtain goes up. However, sometimes the power cuts for different reasons, like the time when a tense Twonkey sound check was cut short when a chandelier became loose and smashed into a thousand pieces all over the stage. Thankfully nobody was killed but one of my puppets did lose an eyeball. It’s important even during the Fringe that safety is put first and fun last.

Twonkey’s Night Train to Liechtenstein, Heroes, Dragonfly, 3-26 Aug (8 & 22), 6pm, £5/PWYW

Douglas Walker: Front Row Seat

This August the front row of my show will be empty. People know to avoid the front row. You get picked on, they say. And the fact is, that’s true. Brash stand-ups with too much confidence and not enough jokes will make fun of your job or your name or your beard. People know this. But I’m not one of those, and I don’t want the audience to start three rows back. So what can I do? “It’s not that kind of show”, I tell them on the way in. But they’ve been burned before. So what can we do?

Douglas Walker Presents: Of Christmas Past, Underbelly Bristo Square (Clover), 1-26 Aug (not 13), 10.50pm, £6.50-11

Celia Wilding: The Sandwich Splatter

The Fringe for me means no sitting down for meals, walking the mile in a rainmac and trying to flyer with your mouth full of sandwich, being in Pleasance Dome at 3am cos your friends want to network with people you've never heard of and don't care about your comedy show – and the army of agency flyerers ready to dish the goss on all their comedians as they come off shift. Ahhh, there’s nothing else like it!

Celia Wilding and Krystal Evans: Cheese!, The Coffee House, 13-19 & 25-27 Aug, 11am, Free/PWYW

Planet Caramel: Leave Right Now

Our biggest bugbear is folks who think it’s OK to just walk out part way through a show. It’s always free shows too. Are their brains so addled by years of smartphone abuse and instant dopamine that they can’t sit and watch a bloody mediocre show for an hour? It makes me wonder what else these people will just give up on half way through. Cooking an omelette? Driving to Manchester? Writing a witty take in an article for the Skinn-

Planet Caramel: Rotations in Flavour Space, Just the Tonic, The Grassmarket Centre (The Little Kirk), 2-26 Aug (not 13 & 27), 11.20pm, £5/PWYW