Pete Heat on the best and worst of Edinburgh

Comedy magician Pete Heat returns to the Fringe with his show Bogus, on at the Pleasance Dome at 8.30pm. Here he shares what he can't get enough of at the festival, his most embarrassing Edinburgh experience and the worst thing about the Fringe. Apart from the cost of accommodation, obviously…

Edinburgh binge

What do I like about the Fringe? It’s like a holiday camp for exactly the kind of people I’d want to go on holiday with. Creative, funny, interesting people, making art. Lovely. A kind of drunken Withnailian Butlins, crossed with a month-long house party, crossed with a visit to some kind of reverse doctor who injects you with whatever the opposite of vitamins is.

I bet this has been said before, but the train from London to the Fringe always feels like the Hogwarts Express. Here’s a comedian you know carrying a mannequin leg and a gold tiara. There’s a woman you gigged with once, dragging a telescope and a birdcage full of very real-looking snakes. There’s Rhod Gilbert. It’s like a school trip for class clowns.

Hours later the familiar buildings scroll into view and the stress and excitement hit you simultaneously. It’s happening again.

Reality stops for a month, and everyone hangs outside of time and space, in a kind of stressed-out bliss bubble. 

Sold-out shows and five-star reviews followed by empty rooms and late-night consolation kebabs. Unexpected drinks with the cast of the Mighty Boosh. An improvised rap battle with a former Taskmaster contestant in the rain. 

Extreme highs and terrible lows, a cocktail of adrenaline, serotonin and, uh, cocktails, creating a rollercoaster for the ego and fuelling a couple of months’ worth of post-fringe anxiety dreams. Totally worth it.

Edinburgh whinge

To whinge about anything other than the sheer soul-crushing cost of the Edinburgh Fringe is a luxury that I, as a non-upper-class member of society (despite my gentle voice and ASTONISHING bone structure), do not have. 

It’s unsustainable. I’m going to have to become a household name before I can afford to come again, which is extra difficult because my entire strategy for becoming a household name is: a) go to Fringe, b) repeat A.

Edinburgh cringe

I used to have a trick where the audience would take it in turns to colour in a drawing of me, by taking random pens from a jar throughout the show. I would finish the show by undressing, revealing that my underwear (vest, Y-fronts, socks etc) were, somehow, an exact match for the colours they had chosen. 

Except, one day, they weren’t. Completely the wrong colours. This was supposed to be the big finish. Not only that, there was a slight but very noticeable wardrobe malfunction around the crotch area (the pants were pretty skimpy). So I closed the show in my underwear, in front of a room full of strangers, with a trick that went completely wrong, and flashed the entire audience at the same time. 

They filed out, confused and possibly traumatised, while I hid behind the curtain. Marvellous.

Published: 10 Aug 2024