Kieran Hodgson on the best and worst of the festival

Kieran Hodgson - star of Two Doors Down and Channel 4’s Prince Andrew musical is back in Edinburgh with Big In Scotland, his stand-up show about moving from England to Glasgow. It’s on at  Pleasance Courtyard at 7pm. And here he shares what he can't get enough of at the festival, her most embarrassing Edinburgh experience and the worst thing about the Fringe. Apart from the cost of accommodation, obviously…

Edinburgh Binge

Oh my Edinburgh binge is a total food binge. I tell myself that the mental and physical resources used up by my one-hour show can only be replenished by going on a daily eating spree around the city.

It's overpriced crepes from the venue vans, daal from the Mosque Kitchen, some sort of tarragon and potassium experimental ice-cream from Mary's Milk Bar, jacket potatoes with a pint of beans from The Tempting Tattie, a veggie haggis burger from The Southern, pistachio barfi from Bismillah Food Store, chips from The City Restaurant, gallons of Irn Bru and locally-sourced real ales...and that's just for breakfast!

Edinburgh Cringe

About ten years ago, some friends and I would hold an annual 'Edinburgh Christmas', where at the end of the Fringe we'd do the flat up in Christmas decorations and make a big Christmas dinner, pull crackers, write Christmas poems, the lot. I even conducted a rather impious Midnight Mass a couple of times.

Then, in 2012, someone's mate's mate came round and saw us doing this, and afterwards wrote an article about how it was the cringiest, most embarrassing thing she'd ever seen in her life and how she'd been completely appalled at it and just wanted to leave.

Finding that out was truly devastating and killed Christmas forever. But who was right?

Edinburgh Whinge

I hate that three-hour period around your show where you clash with stuff and you can't see your mates' shows and you miss out on loads of the festival's best things.

Can't we, like, shift the timetable every week just to really confuse and frustrate the paying public in order to remedy this? The campaign starts here.

Published: 17 Aug 2023