Edinburgh Fringe - The Last Dance 2025

Last week of Fringe

It’s over….

And with that the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe is over…

dun dun dun dada dada dundun

ohhh ahhhhhhhhhhh ahhhh

ohhh ahhhhhhhhh ahhhI hear

Jerusalem bells a-ringin'

Roman Cavalry choirs are singin'

Be my mirror, my sword and shield

My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason, I can't explain

Once you'd gone, there was never, never an honest word

And that was when I ruled the world

(Coldplay)

The last week for me was probably the best week in terms of numbers and my favourite ever performance was on the Friday 22nd — had my tied biggest crowd of 18 in and they loved it! Which is amazing. I’ll be honest, after that I was happy to stop, to go out on a high. The 2 days after that were a struggle. Rooms of 10 that were rowdy, which in my opinion is better — to have some energy in the room rather than people not enjoying it and them becoming a vacuum. Just plenty of people that were shitfaced at 9:35 on the weekend.

They were lovely with it but it wasn’t as smooth a run-through as I would have hoped it to be. They all said they really liked the show too, which was lovely — whether they meant it or not. Compared to earlier in the week when I had a room full of people who said they liked it but clearly didn’t. They said “no we really enjoyed it” then invited me for a beer and continued to tell me about all the jokes that they thought were rubbish.

The things I’ll do for a free beer. I’m not even alcohol dependent, it’s just because it’s free. The amount of disrespect I will take just so somebody gives me a free thing.

Anyway here are my numbers from the week -

• Monday – 1

• Tuesday – Day off

• Wednesday – 18

• Thursday – 12

• Friday – 18

• Saturday – 12

• Sunday – 6

  
  

Compared to my week before:

• Sat – 6

• Sun – 8

• Mon – 4

• Tue – off

• Wed – 3

• Thurs – 13

• Fri – 11

• Sat – 7

  
  

Ended on having 67 people come to see me altogether in the last week. Which is the most I had during my entire run, which is fantastic and according to some of my reviews they rather enjoyed what I was doing.

It’s great up here! It really is. It’s beautiful, you will get out what you put in. However, with my flyering I had 1 person come in from flyering them! Just the 1. I bought 2000 and I gave out probably 500. And 1 person came from that. I had people grabbed last second from the bar and people from the “Wee Blue Book” or The Free Fringe App (PBH).

The flyers were pretty much useless to me and now I can rest easy knowing I don’t have to hand any more out for at least another year but also saddened that a cartoon picture of my face will be spread all over landfill, being picked through by the gulls as they try to find a morsel of food.

I was so happy to perform for people to be honest. With the amount of shows and the amount of competition up here I was just happy that people had taken a chance on my show honestly and I think the gratitude came out in what I was doing. Even though I think it’s a good show, you never know, y’know.

The plan for the future?

I think I’ll start writing a new show as well as add things to the 45 minutes I already have. Hopefully, I can turn it into an hour of top-notch stand-up for when I come back. Yet also come up with another good 20 minutes for club comedy.

It’s pretty exciting. Doing the whole show I didn’t get bored, it felt great to be there doing it. Sometimes I get bored of my jokes but it didn’t happen, which was lovely! I do however have to continue to create new stuff because if I continue with the same old shit when I get back, no doubt I will hate every word that comes out of my mouth.

That’s the plan at the moment — come back next year with a more refined show if not a completely different one altogether. How fun it is to be able to put your best work forward for people to enjoy. Even if they don’t enjoy it, it’s quite the privilege if not more, because you have now met people that are patient enough to put up with something they hate for 45 minutes.

Would 100% recommend coming here to do a show. You can do a shit load of compilations and spots if you want to, there is plenty of that and there are lots of people who come up just to do that. I personally enjoy the novelty of saying I was at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival but what does that amount to? Well, there is experience which is great. You could do 150 gigs here which for an open miccer is about the same amount they would probably do the rest of the year. You would learn a lot from multiple audiences of varying nationalities, sizes and drunkenness.

There is a way that can connect and network between lots of different people. You can watch a bunch of shows and be inspired by different performances, I certainly was while I was here. The best thing I did was watch people I have never watched, do different things that I had never considered.

One such show was Nate Kitch – Something Different!!!!! I loved the show and really liked him — or the persona that he was during the performance anyway. From a comedic point of view, I loved his freedom, the improvisational tone to his stand-up, that clearly had a narrative but everything that he did or that went on he took in his stride.

He gave me the indication that what he was doing was a very freeing thing. That he truly understood what he was doing even though his show seemed chaotic. Which he brought attention to constantly by expressing that he understood people in the room wouldn’t like it. Just to let the audience know that he is very aware of what is happening. That he has done this many times before we arrived there that day at 5pm.

Which to me is a beautiful thing — he is truly cultivating his audience in real time. The people that liked him thought he was brilliant. I can’t speak for the people who didn’t like him to be fair, but he could tell those that didn’t enjoy the show and he was very soft with them. And maybe that’s part of him being soft with himself. You guys aren’t liking this… I can see that, but this is the show, this is what I want to talk about.

That sort of thing takes incredible bravery on stage to the point of admiration on my end. Don’t get it twisted, I don’t think he should be awarded a Victoria Cross or anything, but from a performance standpoint to stick to your guns and still do very well is a beautiful thing to witness!

One of the funniest moments for me was when he spoke of his grandad being in hospital and he thought about punching him in the face “just to see what would happen.” It is hilarious and I feel like it is a type of curiosity that I can get on board with. That aching question about doing something stupid, having a vague idea of what would happen but thinking to yourself “maybe I’m wrong.” As if his elderly grandfather would respect a punch to the chops as he lay in a hospital bed.

It truly was something different and also something for me as a comedian — thought-provoking as an “artist,” especially his tag at the end of the show which I won’t talk about just because I feel like perhaps I have given away too much and I don’t know what his future plans for it are. Despite only about 10 regular readers of this blog, I would hate to ruin too much for people that would love to watch him.

Other than that I am glad I came but I will be happy to leave and get back to some sort of normality in my life. Big thank you to everybody involved. All the people that supported me. Big thank you to PBH’s Free Fringe with whom I would have been unable to afford to come up here with my show and for all of their help along the way.

If anybody is thinking of coming up here, I’d highly recommend using PBH’s Free Fringe.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. I’m tired. Cya next time.