And how she cried when her ex's show was a success

Sara Pascoe has admitted she was reduced to tears when John Robins had a big Edinburgh Fringe hit with a show about their break-up.

She acknowledges her response to her ex's success was ‘absurd’, as she was also having a sold-out festival, but says it reflected the ‘overwhelming’ emotions of the month.

And now she says she won’t return to the Fringe as it is ‘not a a place I will flourish’ – even though she credits her time there as helping improve her craft.

The comic was telling journalist Elizabeth Day about the pressures of the festival on her How To Fail podcast, especially the significance of being nominated – or not nominated – for the main comedy award.

Pascoe said: ‘If you get nominated you will get into every meeting room. Everyone will say "what do you want to write, what you want to do". And it feels like that's the biggest chance you've got,

‘You think you'll find about it until the nominations come out. And they're like, "What did I do?"

Robins shared the main Edinburgh Comedy Award with Hannah Gadsby in 2017 – when Pascoe was there with her own show Lads Lads Lads. It was the last time she performed at the Fringe, save for a one-off performance of her latest show Success Story this year.

She said: ‘Every year, I kept building myself up [at Edinburgh] And actually my work did get better…. So there were some lessons learned. 

‘The last time I went to Edinburgh I sold all of my tickets before I went up. It meant I didn't have to pay for PR, I didn't have to do a single magazine shoot or a single interview, I didn't have to sell my show.

‘And I picked accommodation that was really far outside of Edinburgh, and I was going to have this healthy time. This was going to be the one which didn't break me. 

‘But unfortunately, my ex boyfriend wrote a show that was about our relationship. Mine was a little bit about a breakup, about  being single, but his was much more. And because I had a little bit of a profile, especially in Edinburgh, people knew who he was talking about. His show then went on to not only be very critically successful but  to win that award. 

‘It was honestly, the most absurd thing. I was like, "Oh, I can't win here." And we luckily weren't horribly acrimonious. 

‘I had to walk past his queue every day to get to my queue. And sometimes – especially in that third week –  I was crying one day. In Edinburgh, you do cry. It's overwhelming. Someone was trying to take photos with me while I was crying and I was saying "Can't you see I'm crying?"

Pascoe also spoke of how it was advantageous in her early career that her parents accepted her decision to go into performing, without being overly supportive.

‘Neither of my parents are very involved,’ she said. ‘And there's a real freedom to that. 

‘I think you can have much more supportive parents where you feel responsible for their disappointment in your career, or feel their opinion [has too much] sway. There was something really lovely about my mum saying, "I just don’t want to have to lend you any money". And my dad [a jazz musician] saying, "well do it, then."’ 

Published: 14 Sep 2023