John Roberton talks about his new shows, The Dark Room and Arena Spectacular.
1 Tell us about your Fringe show
Got two! The Dark Room, which is the world’s only live-action videogame, now celebrating its fifth year at Fringe by selling out a 180 seat room, and Arena Spectacular, which is an arena show in a broom cupboard.
2 Best thing about the Fringe?
The great sensation of having people say “we saw you” and not finishing with “p*****g in the street”.
3 Worst thing about the Fringe?
Journalists
4 How many years have you been coming to the Fringe?
Seven years!
5 Favourite Fringe venue?
White Belly at Underbelly Cowgate is currently tied with The Stand. The Stand is one of the best comedy clubs in the world, and White Belly is perfectly suited to my stadium-filling levels of crazy.
6 Best heckle?
There are no good heckles, just c**p people.
7 Craziest on stage experience?
I decided to crowd-surf out of a 3,000 seat theatre after an epic Dark Room show. The audience crammed in the aisles and held up their hands… and I sailed directly over several strong people into four tiny Japanese women who crumpled beneath all 5’ 8’’ of me. Three of them were okay.
8 What’s on your rider?
Three tiny Japanese women.
9 How do you wind down after a show?
Three tiny - okay, I’ll stop that.
10 What do you love about Scotland?
Raw beauty, generous people, and a sense of humour never knowingly undersold.
11 What do you like about Edinburgh?
The architecture! What a series of incredible buildings you people have from which to buy your groceries and chips n’ cheese (Zara on Cowgate is, again, the best.)
12 What’s the most Scottish thing you’ve done?
Walking through Glasgow, a ned was running from a police officer. I was holding my chicken pakora and chips n’ cheese. The boy ran up to me, I sidestepped, kicked him and he went headfirst into a parked car. The police officer was grateful and I didn’t drop my dinner. Not bad.
13 What kind of jokes do a Scottish crowd seem to respond to?
Smart filth and clever daftness.
14 Favourite Scottish food/drink?
I used to be a huge fan of Lorne Sausage and tatty scones, then I got food poisoning off a bad batch. Flat on the way in, alarming on the way out.
John Robertson will perform The Dark Room at Underbelly and Arena Spectacular at The Stand Comedy Club 2 until August 27.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here