The Herald is taking a look at some of the artists performing at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival - and getting to know the people behind the magic.
Kate Lucas
What is your Fringe show about?
It’s called Kate Lucas is Selling Herself which is a bold title I guess. It’s partly about advertising and how it has wormed its way into everything we do.
It’s also about how that relates to my life. I’m always told I’m bad at “selling myself” or that I need to think of myself as a “brand” so I decided to take that advice very seriously and auction off all my body parts to the audience. It’s just silly and it’s my way of questioning the hold products and marketing are having on our lives.
How many times/many years have you appeared at the Fringe?
Oh my God...6?! I have no idea but this is only my second solo show.
What’s your most memorable moment from the Fringe?
There are two really and both happened on the last day of the Fringe. One was with my friend Harriet, it was the last official day of the Fringe but our shows had finished and we were feeling a bit tired and emotional so we went to see a show to cheer ourselves up.
Her mum had recommended it. It ended with a manic transvestite getting the audience to sing a really unnerving chorus of a song called “We’re all going to die.” while she shook a bottle of pills. It was not the uplifting experience we’d hoped for but it was really funny.
The other was getting to know my friend Sophie. We went for “breakfast” in the City Cafe at about 3pm. We were both hungover and supposed to go back to London. I’d lost my voice and sounded like Frank Butcher. We didn’t go home. We just bonded and ended up drinking the leftover wine at Brookes bar, dancing in the Gilded Balloon and going back the next day.
What’s the worst thing about the Fringe?
Flyering. It sends me into meltdown. I remember being by the Tron church one year watching 3 broken comics just staring into space at the same time holding a pile of flyers.
It’s always a little bit soul-destroying watching someone drop your flyer on the floor and seeing your own face laying on the floor with a big footprint on it.
If you were not a performer what would you be doing?
Walking a fine line between amusing and irritating someone sensible as I have in every other normal job. I just have no common sense and I’m clumsy and sometimes that’s annoying and sometimes it’s funny.
How do you prepare for a performance?
Half a lager, a diet coke, cut my nails so I can still play guitar and pace back and forth.
Favourite thing about being in Edinburgh?
Some cities just feel like they have a soul and Edinburgh definitely does. So many towns and cities start to look the same but Edinburgh has character and history and it’s a bit special.
What’s the most Scottish thing you’ve ever done?
Well, I don’t know about me personally but my friends visited and stayed with me one year at the fringe. My friend Kurtis got off a Megabus gold at 9 in the morning, drunk and stayed that way until 2 am when we got home and we sent him across the road to get chips.
READ MORE: Edinburgh Festival 2019 showcases best of Scotland
He came back with battered sausage, battered white pudding, battered haggis, battered cod and no chips. That felt like quite a Scottish thing to do.
Favourite Scottish food/drink?
This is a tricky one because I SWEAR the lady in the chip shop told me that battered white pudding was vegetarian and I kept saying how it was the best veggie food and how much it tasted like meat.
A lot of people since have told me that white pudding IS meat so the Jury’s out on that for now.
Sum up your show in three words
Stupid, interactive, inappropriate.
Kate Lucas’s new comedy show ‘Kate Lucas is Selling Herself’ will be at the Just The Tonic The Tron at 6.20pm from 1st – 25th August for tickets go to www.edfringe.com
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