Edinburgh Fringe Festival Diary 2026
Friday August 14th,
On the train from Birmingham to Edinburgh Waverley. My first Fringe as a performer again since Hardcore 24/7 in 2004. Twenty-two years! First time doing improv here too, as that one was a written show, albeit one we wrote, rehearsed, and performed in just 24 hours start to finish (we did one every two days for two weeks — hence the 24/7 bit of the name: seven plays across the fortnight, all done in 24 hours), so it felt like improv and required a little of it too when people inevitably blanked on the script they’d only had a few hours to learn.
When I auditioned to be in Box of Frogs last November, I had no idea Edinburgh would even be an option. I knew they performed there the last few years, but also know that these things are booked way in advance. By the time my induction into the group was over after auditions (May) I just assumed it would be too close to add me. But then I was told all I had to do was put my name down on a spreadsheet for when I was available, and I could go. As many or as few shows as I want. So I signed myself up for this week in between A-level and GCSE results days. Four shows, a day off in the middle, and a room with a double bed so I could bring my wife along too and call it a holiday.
My sister has come up today too, to watch my first night, which is pretty cute. Considering the bleakness of her cancer diagnosis last year, and the brutal treatments she’s undergone all year, it’s a beautiful miracle that she can be here. I remember dad coming up to see Hardcore in 2004. He always liked Edinburgh. Whiskey, mountains, and all that. And he always supported my creative pursuits. Coming up to Cardiff too, to see my improv there back in the day, and always showing up at my punk shows when he could.
When he died in 2010, I found a drawer of his full of my old gig posters, tickets, and programmes of stuff I’d been in.
I remember having a meal with him after the Hardcore show he saw but cannot for the life of me remember which one he watched? Did I act in it? Did I write it? Was it the Springsteen monologue I know he would have liked, or one of the weirder ones that didn’t work so well?
I have no idea.
But I remember that he was there.
It’ll be the same with my sister tonight. Improv is weird. Not always guaranteed to be great. I haven’t done it for a month since our last show here in Birmingham, and might be a little rusty. Or I might have a great night and be brilliant. But years from now, sitting on another train to Edinburgh, reminiscing, I won’t remember the quality of the show. I’ll only remember that she came.
Saturday August 15th
First show done. A really fun debut. Four star review too. I felt a bit rusty warming up and a sore throat as the day progressed made me worried about all the singing stuff on our setlist of games. But it turned out to just be classic anxiety. Total physical breakdown brought on by stupid nerves which evaporated the minute I hit the stage.
I never feel consciously anxious about performing. I weirdly never have. That’s not quite true — my first Academy Morticians gig as a kid, back when we were still called Doogle and the “gig” was a school concert, I worried for days about my one line of backing vocals I had to sing in our cover of Green Day’s “Walking Contradiction”. When the time came to sing it, I had the driest mouth imaginable. But since then I never explicitly think about it before performing and feel strangely calm on stage. But what I’ve noticed since I’ve been back in Box of Frogs is that my body doesn’t care that I’m not consciously worrying. It’s still worrying for me in the background.
As soon as I get on stage, I feel fine and realise the strain my body has been carrying all afternoon before a performance as it lifts and leaves me. A tension I didn’t realise I had or, like the sore throat, a symptom I attribute to ill health or something else and not merely nerves, only to find out it was nerves all along.
What it meant today was that I was able to notice it and ignore it. Not get worried when we warmed up and my throat — fine all day — got suddenly sore again and my stomach felt knotted. As soon as we hit the stage, the body returned to normal and the show was loose and fun. A good debut with a lot of joyful silliness.
We woke up early this morning to bring my sister to the station for her train home, leaving the flat at 8am. The plan was to find breakfast of some sort, which we did after a pre-train coffee with her. We walked up to George Street and found a breakfast spot near the flat we used back in 2015 when my wife brought her school’s production of Lear Inc. up for the Fringe. That was a really fun show which I still remember fondly. Great bunch of kids and plenty of time to see some cool shows too. I only missed one performance of their entire run. A chance to see Alexi Sayle at the same time. Although I enjoyed Alexi, I felt lousy for doing it.
It obviously resonated (the idea of supporting our students) as we were in the area to see a former student of mine, and son of my colleague, in the musical he’s brought up here, On Some Far Shore. We were going out of loyalty and a sense of obligation, but it turned out to be a great show that was well worth seeing in its own right, which was a pleasant surprise. A tiny space and even smaller stage, yet the three performers used it creatively to bring a strangely relevant story to life through acting and song. A son, who is a writer, mourns the death of his emotionally neglectful mother and struggles to write her eulogy. (When my own emotionally neglectful mother died, I too struggled to write her a eulogy, and actually ended up improvising one instead.) The songs were well sung (specially the harmonies) and had a good dark and emotional vibe. It felt great to be able to honestly praise the performance afterwards and celebrate with the cast member I knew, rather than having that awkward post-show goodbye where you both know what you saw was terrible. And we also got to see my colleague, his father, who had just landed in Scotland and arrived at the venue as we were leaving.
After that we got lunch on Victoria Street, a Mexican place there, following a visit to the Scottish National Gallery. Then we found a free Fringe show, Karl Dagher’s stand up hour, Big Dumb Smile, which was really good as well as being free. (Another nice surprise — free Fringe stand up can be famously ropey!) Then we had a coffee down by the convention centre before seeing dark puppetry and dance in Dracula: Lucy’s Dream before a speedy walk up the hill and back to the venue to warm up and then do my second show. My first sell-out! A packed room, great audience suggestions, and a really fun night. I particularly loved my interpretation of “titillated” as an emotional state in Emo-Date and my ability to utilise the name Xanthippe in a non-shoe-horned and natural way when it got to X into A-Z.
What I really love about a Box of Frogs show is how different they all are. The night before was equally enjoyable but in entirely different ways, with different games shining and others taking a backseat. The changing line up of games and mixes of performers you’re playing with makes it eternally refreshing and never feel stale, and audiences know it too, with many coming back to see us a second time, or who had seen us at a previous Fringe.
Following the show we hoofed it to the train and chatted for a bit at Frog Central before a well-deserved sleep, having been out all day since that 8am departure.
It was a good job I thought to bring my Frogs t-shirt with me for the show when packing a bag for the day!
Sunday August 16th
Happy birthday dad. He would have been 76 today. We raised a glass to him at The Advocate on Hunter Square in between shows.
Today was a much slower start, being our official day off with no Frogs show. I woke up at 8 and read for a bit before a pointless walk to the Co-op in the rain just to see what they had and ascertain they had nothing I really needed. We had a Frogs meeting at 10 to review the shows so far and discuss any notes or changes for the second half of the run, then my wife and I got the train into Edinburgh, grabbed coffee and some lunch, and tried our luck for standby Phil Ellis tickets having missed a free magician we had planned to see. We lucked out! Only eight tickets were available and we were number nine and ten in the queue. But the couple in front had lined up for the wrong show and saw we wanted it more. They sacrificed their spot for us. We got to see Ellis (who we’d tried to get tickets for yesterday) and had a great time.
He’s just an inherently funny human. He could say anything and make you laugh, so he’s deadly when he’s actually crafted stuff to do it intentionally. Just hilarious.
After that we chilled in the Monkey Barrel for a bit, drinking more coffee and killing time before Phil Wang. Wang has a wonderfully twisted mind and his show was somehow both angry and joyful all at the same time. I loved it.
Next up was Holy Shit! Improv, who did a brilliant classic UCB-style Armando. It was, I realised, the first time in my life watching one of these since my first Asssscat in 2004, that I haven’t been envious. Back then, I had just done Theatre Anarchy and wished we’d been able to do something as free-form as what I’d seen on that New York stage. After Edinburgh, those of us who had done TA formed a new improv group with some others — The Fourth Chair — and messed about with the format a bit, but it didn’t end up working for us and eventually the group broke up. Years later, when I first started doing Box of Frogs in its early days in Birmingham, some of us who wanted to do something more longform like that formed The Kneejerks to experiment, and did a few ourselves we called “Stream of Consciousness”, but it didn’t last and, ultimately, neither did the group. Then, when I joined Fat Penguin in the aftermath of the Kneejerks, it was explicitly because they did that specific format. We did it every week for a while before covid killed us by shutting down the venue, but it was never as great as any of the US versions I’d seen because it really depends on the quality of the people doing it and what “working at the top of your intelligence” means, and that group always tended towards cheap laughs and smut. I was never a great fit.
The moral of the story is, I know now that as great as that format is, and as much as I enjoy it, it requires a scene of improvisers trained in it and all on the same page about what a good one looks like. I’ve dabbled lots but never quite found the magic here in the UK. And that’s okay. For the first time in my improv life I’m happy now focusing on short form only. So happy, that I could watch Holy Shit! and just enjoy it without any envy. They do their thing, we do ours, and all of it is great!
Following dinner at Mosque Kitchen, and the aforementioned drinks to dad at The Advocate, Paddy Young was next and utterly fantastic. I had similar feelings watching him that I had about Stewart Lee in 2004 when my mind was blown by the first solo show of his I’d seen — like some terrible part of the voice in my head had been given a microphone and dialled up to crazy. Such festering rage made funny and weird. I felt seen and scared all at the same time. It was utterly brilliant, and so very different (in a good way) from his also excellent persona on Weekend Update on SNL UK.
Monday August 17th
Today the weather forecast is for rain. We’re currently sat in a sheltered booth at the Union Social Garden near where our first show of the day starts — Chris Grace from Baby Wants Candy and Holy Shit improv. Then we’re keeping dry with Earnest? straight after before running in the rain back to Monkey Barrel for Ceyla AB and then my third Frogs show of the run.
It’s lovely having this little unexpected holiday in such an important place for me and my wife. Although we weren’t together in 2004, she was here with us too that year with the play that ran on Hardcore 24/7’s off-nights, in the same slot at the venue, and it was where we had some of our first big, long chats (I particularly remember a lengthy and lovely stand in the stairwell at our residence block where we all stayed that year). The sense of Edinburgh’s importance was shared, which is why our next festival together was 2009, as the second act of our honeymoon. A lovely week in a rented flat watching show after show after show and enjoying newly married life. Then, in 2015, she brought her show up here from school and even though I didn’t teach there, they allowed me to come along too as a staff member/ chaperone for the kids. The Festival is so us coded. When we bumped into my colleague from work on Saturday he suggested bringing up a play from school in the future. I have already put over the case that we should bring my wife along too as an experienced pro if we did it, and he agreed.
Seeing Chris Grace was one of those reminders that you really don’t know what impact your words might have. In 2015, we watched Baby Wants Candy and loved the funny Asian guy who played a bear complaining about losing his habitat. He said “habitat” in a hilarious way, and my wife and I said it to each other for years. “Habitat”. We saw the guy pop up in things and called him “the habitat guy” even after I learnt his name was Chris Grace. As soon as I saw he had a show up this year, we got tickets. Likewise, as we ummed and ahhhed about seeing Holy Shit! Improv yesterday, it was seeing Chris Grace was in the troupe that made us take the plunge.
One word — “habitat” — which he probably doesn’t even remember, and eleven years later we’re paying £30 each to see two shows of his just because of that performance over a decade ago.
His stand up was great fun. Earnest? afterwards was more fun still; a silly conceit (getting audience members to take on the roles in the show until the whole show was cast with audience) and some excellent slapstick. And Ceyla AB was exactly what we’d hoped for after getting just a taste of her stuff at Somerset House earlier this month. An amazing talent with some of the funniest jokes and observations I’ve ever heard.
It was good to be back at The Space on the Mile again for our first show back since our day off, but you could feel we’d had that Sunday off and that a new member had joined the group (and was off the train and straight onto the stage in a matter of hours with little time to decompress and get acclimatised first!) It felt like a transitional reset kind of show as we got used to each other again, and in a new formation, since our time away. A little rusty in places. Still good. Still fun. But not quite as connected as we had been on Saturday and a little in our heads. No audience reviews from that one, which felt like a review in itself.
You could feel the impact of the rain on both the audience (quieter and smaller than usual) and us (lack of pre-show fliering, which acts as a further warm up as well as drumming up more audience, and unable to do our normal warm up outside beforehand too). It wasn’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination — a subpar Frogs show is still a great show and much better than many other improv groups I’ve seen’s best shows — but it wasn’t our best of the run.
And it’s all a matter of perspective anyway. A former colleague from my previous school came to see us and really enjoyed himself. He said he’d be bringing his partner and their son to Wednesday’s show and that they’d come see a Jewellery Quarter show soon back in Birmingham for a proper catch up. It always feels different from the inside, as a performer, than it does from the outside, from an audience point of view. And, as long as the audience enjoy it, any internal disappointments we might feel are largely irrelevant other than as fuel to try to do better (by our own high standards) tomorrow.
Tuesday August 18th
We began early today, with Rose Matafeo’s work in progress show at 11am. It was a brilliant, and intentionally ramshackle, bunch of new jokes and ideas that I can’t wait to see in their final form somewhere later down the line, but enjoyed thoroughly in their embryonic stage too. Then we lucked into free standby tickets for Ayoade Bamgboye’s own WIP show straight after. A very different experience, both from Rose Matafeo‘s version of a work in progress, and from Bamgboye’s own completed show which we saw at MAC in Birmingham a few weeks before coming here. Sort of a focus group seminar on small talk to gather and generate ideas. Not consistently funny, but not really intended to be. More of an enjoyable, weird, and thought-provoking hour of chit-chat about chit-chat. Interesting and full of promise. And my wife might have inspired a part of the future show with an idea she shared about the problem of small talk within relationships that are supposed to be intimate (such as a 20 min phone call with a family member which never goes deeper than talk about the weather).
After that we walked up to Frederick Street and got some Thai for lunch before an uphill walk on very full stomachs back to Monkey Barrel for our third WIP show of the day: Nish Kumar.
This was not a work in progress, whatever the posters might say. This was a fully-formed show. And it was brilliant. It made me realise how much I’ve ignored Nish as an act all these years, and I’m not sure why? I think because I always agreed with him when I heard him speak on things in the past, so sort of didn’t see the point of hearing comedy aimed at preaching to a choir I am already a long-converted member of. I already had Mark Thomas and Alexi Sayle in my life and it felt like Kumar might be more relevant to a younger crowd. What I had forgotten was that, when I saw Nish outside of his stand up, it was usually in opposition to someone I also disagreed with. I didn’t feel I needed to be convinced of what he was selling. But there is value in the affirmation of hearing a voice confirming you are not crazy and the rest of the world really is as fucked as you think it is.
I should have listened sooner. But now, thanks to my negligence, I have the joy of doing a deep dive on a whole career when we get back from the Fringe. Plus another podcast to add to my already bloated list.
After Nish, and a coffee, my wife and I went our separate ways. Not forever! Just for a few hours. She had booked to see Larry Dean at a time that clashed with our Frogs warm up, so I went to see Police Cops: The Original to see what all the fuss was about. A lot of people seem to love the show and were excited for the new sequel that was also playing at the Fringe. Having not seen it before, I went in with no expectations at all, and found it to be good, dumb, silly fun with some innovative stagecraft and a trio of dynamic actors who were really enjoyable to watch. The only thing I didn’t get was exactly why it was such a hit. It was good — but nothing really elevated it to the truly exceptional besides the fact that people seem to love it? It felt a lot like it probably would have been amazing to see when it first came out, in a much smaller venue, but in the massive 500+ seat theatre it was now a tribute act to something it no longer was and felt like it needed something more than nostalgia to justify the grandeur. My own fault for not having seen it at the time, I guess. But I didn’t regret spending an hour in its company.
Looking back on all the shows we watched this last week, I’m sure this trip will be financially ruinous when I check my bank balance (what Fringe trip isn’t!) but it will be totally worth it for all the cultural succour it has provided. At some point, with all that’s on offer, you seem to move from asking “what can I actually afford?” to simply “what can I fit in during that spare two hours I’ve got between 2 and 4?” and getting the extra ticket without even thinking of it’s cost. Being proud to have filled the gap in your timetable. But I’d rather spend my money on all this than on more plastic crap or another streaming service I have no time to watch. Live comedy, theatre, and music. That’s what life’s about.
Wednesday August 19th
My last Frogs show of the run last night was much better than the slightly lukewarm one we did the night before. A good audience, with lots of suggestions and loud responses to our work. A colleague from work came with some friends and family and they had a great time — said we were better than Paul Merton, whom they had seen earlier in the day, which is always nice to hear.
I especially loved playing Gibberish Opera Switch. The previous night was my very first time performing the game after only ever playing it once in a rehearsal before, two months ago. Why not debut it in front of a crowded theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe? It was like my first Frogs show in Birmingham, where I did my very first Madrigal on stage in front of everyone instead of in rehearsal.
And we also got to play Objection, a game I adore and haven’t played for ages. Speaking of which — objection: I played A-Z two nights in a row and got the X both times!
After the show, it was back to “Frog Central” at the QMU residences for a final evening of chit-chat and late-night junk food (pack of McCoys and a Tunnocks Caramel Wafer for me) in the shared kitchen with everyone before popping off to bed finally around midnight. The Frogs are such a great group of people. It’s been really lovely to not only get to perform with them at the Fringe, but to get to know them all a little better too these last few days.
It was a nice way to end the festival and I am sad to be leaving it with four more shows of the run to go. I am especially sad that the reason I cannot do more is because my school continues an unnecessarily analogue tradition in a digital age, requiring me to be in work for GCSE results day on Thursday so parents and pupils can ask me in person questions they could have easily emailed from home. But I suppose it’s good to be leaving wanting more? Better that than feeling eager to go home and sick of it all. And considering it was such an unexpected addition to my year to be performing in the 2026 Fringe at all, I really can’t complain. I’ve had an absolute blast and loved every minute of it.
Before the train home today, we crammed in one more show: Ania Magliano’s Peach Fuzz. It turns out I am (proudly) an “indoor husband” even though I only found this out by being out instead of in.
Just as we entered Waverley station, it started to rain a bit. Watching back some of the videos of the deluge later on social media, despite wishing I could stay for the final run of shows, it looks like we picked a good moment to exit. Torrential rain and flash-flooding soon followed.
I sat on the train still buzzing with the vibes of the Fringe, watching Marc Maron’s Panicked special on my iPad to keep the comedy rolling and promising myself I won’t leave it 22 years between Edinburgh performances again next time.
All being well, I’ll be here again next year.