edinburgh

The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 – Scout Durwood – Apocalypse Cabaret: Songs for the End of the World

August 6, 2025

Season 21

Episode 7

00:25:51

What if Cabaret, disaster movie, philosophy, and Geri Halliwell? You get Apocalypse Cabaret: Songs for the End of the World!

To learn more about this one-woman cabaret show, I talk with Scout Durwood as she brings this dark delight to the Edinburgh Fringe. With a mix of original songs, standards and a dash of existentialism, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

This is Durwood’s first play, which means balancing between sticking to the page and performing for a live audience, and why cabaret thrives with restricted budgets. There’s also the small matter of some of the comparisons in the press release… why Bette Midler?

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 – Kit Loyd – Frenzy

August 5, 2025

Season 21

Episode 6

00:21:48

One of the delights of the Edinburgh Fringe is finding something that’s just a single step to the side of your average show. It’s in those little side streets where you can find something spectacular.

Kit Loyd is on one of those side streets. He’s brought Frenzy to the Fringe, a delightful and engaging mix of comedy, physical theatre, and mime. It’s also his first full hour at the Fringe.

I sat down with Kit to talk about bringing a debut show to Edinburgh, his expectations, and how he discovered that his forte is mime and physicality.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 – Saaniya Abbas – Hellarious

August 4, 2025

Season 21

Episode 5

00:20:18

Today’s guest is Saaniya Abbas. From the UAE comedy scene, she is the first local comic to officially debut a solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe this August.

How do you go from a sheltered upbringing in New Delhi to a sometimes controversial comedy career? We talk about Sanniya’s background and her first steps in comedy, before finding wider acclaim and turning a hobby into a profession.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 – Barry Ferns – My Seven Years As Lionel Ritchie

August 1, 2025

Season 21

Episode 4

00:27:57

Some will know him from the dim and distant past as Barry Ferns. Edinburgh Fringe historians will know him as Lionel Ritchie. Others in the comedy scene of 2025 will know him, once more, as Barry Ferns.

And there you have the premise for his Fringe show, My Seven Years As Lionel Ritchie. This strong narrative hour charts the highs and lows of being a professional comic at the Fringe, the lead up to the shows, the many years of “this year is the one”, the debt, the bankruptcy, and the return to the scene.

We touch on many of these subjects in today’s interview to give you a flavour of what all performers face at the Fringe, as well as putting Barry’s work at Angel Comedy and The Bill Murray into context.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 – Grace Helbig – Let Me Get This Off My Chest

July 25, 2025

Season 21

Episode 3

00:28:31

This week’s Fringe preview takes in not only a Fringe show, but the evolution of social media storytelling itself.

Grace Helbig and I start by talking about he early days of content creation on the internet… I started podcasting with the Fringe Show in 2005 while Grace started during the first flush of YouTube in 2006.

That starts us down a path of online personae, presenting yourself, and the grind of content… which was then disrupted with Grace’s diagnosis of breast cancer. Her Fringe show, “Let Me Get This Off My Chest,” is about the journey from that point, and taking it while in the public eye.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 – Henry Naylor, Monstering The Rocketman

July 18, 2025

Season 21

Episode 2

00:36:03

As we head through July, we’ll be bringing you preview interviews that help set the scene for Fringe 2025. That could be the history of the Fringe, how traditional and online media impact the arts, the future of the Festival in Edinburgh, and the impact it can have.

In our first preview, Ewan Spence meets Henry Naylor to talk about his new solo show ‘Monstering The Rocketman,’ a timely drama about press values through the lens of Elton John and his libel case against The Sun in the 1980s.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 Prologue – Welcome To Season Twenty One

July 4, 2025

Season 21

Episode 1

00:08:42

The Edinburgh Fringe Show started in 2005, and as Fringe 2025 appears on the horizon, we’re going to get started on our 21st season covering the largest arts festival in the world.

We have a few traditions in these parts. One of those is our prologue podcast—a chance to ensure the website, podcast feed, and all the other digital components are ready to go. We’ll have weekly preview interviews through July to help set the scene, before a rush of recordings in August.

As always, we have the music of Daniel Cainer to remind us what it’s like to be in Edinburgh at this time of year.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2024 Epilogue – Some Final Thoughts On The Fringe

August 26, 2024

Season 20

Episode 20

00:11:48

And with that, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024 comes to an end. Trying to capture everything that happened is a task worthy of Hercules, so I hope that I’ve brought you a flavour of the Fringe during August.

The Fringe has always faced challenges from its first days to this year and beyond. Instead of an interview to close out August, I wanted to talk a little about our Fringe community and my hope that over the next year, we can all listen to everyone’s concerns and work on solutions that benefit everyone.

Let’s ensure that when we all return to Edinburgh in 2025, the Edinburgh Fringe is the best it can be.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2024 – Anthony Alderson, The Pleasance Theatre Trust

August 23, 2024

Season 20

Episode 19

00:32:48

As we come to the end of week three, we sit down with Anthony Alderson, director of The Pleaseance Theatre Trust.

We touch on several critical issues running one of the largest venues at the Edinburgh Fringe, including the continuing impact of COVID and the importance of government funding to the Fringe community and The Pleasance. Given the cost of the Fringe is on everyone’s minds, we talk about turnover, tickets, and artistic risk.

We also talk about the work of The Plesance to support and promote the arts at Edinburgh in August and throughout the rest of the year, including various Pleasance Futures projects and the ambition of creating sustainable touring for theatre in the UK.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Show 2024 – Tim Benzie, Solve Along A Murder She Wrote

August 22, 2024

Season 20

Episode 18

00:24:29

Tim Benzie joins us on the show today to talk about his two Fringe shows, “It’s A Mystery” and “Solve Along A Murder She Wrote”. Yes, he loves his cosy crime shows, but doesn’t everyone secretly love a mystery?

We start with the rules of detective fiction before our talk turns to Agatha Christie and Dame Angela Lansbury, how you can do a solve-along-a with a murder, and the advantages of having two shows at the Fringe where one is guaranteed to get the ticket sales.

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