Vix Leyton has some hard-won advice for fellow comedians

It’s gone by so fast that it feels unbelievable that I’m now approaching my fourth fringe as a performer. When I had just got started in open mic I went up for the weekend to just be there.  Waiting at the airport to go home, I texted my friend that I wished I was part of it. 

He said ‘do it next year’ and I remember replying that it felt like the equivalent of coming home from Glastonbury and deciding to be a rock star. Imagine that? Being part of one of the biggest arts festivals in the world, with your own corner of it? Ridiculous, pinch me dream-come-true stuff. But somewhere over the last few years I forgot that.  

Everyone is full of advice for young comics at this time of year - it is one of the most common themes on my social media, and something I have asked many a more seasoned comic. 

A lot of advice will focus around taking it seriously, working hard, going to bed early, eating your vegetables and buckling down. You’ll be reminded it’s not a holiday, and that’s certainly true; if I was crying every day of my holiday I’d probably want my money back, or at least be readying a very stern TripAdvisor. 

There is a lot of good stuff in there; it is a huge investment and you need to decide your goals before you go and try not to lose sight of them. And it’s easy to consider the Fringe as just the stepping stone to somewhere better; work hard, get known. 

Realistically luck, current trends, how well your social media boosted your signal, and the mood of a reviewer on the day, are among a huge amount of elements that go into ‘overnight’ success that are out of your control. 

Most comedians who go to Fringe don’t get discovered there, so I would counter that you should remember to have fun as well. You have a chance to put everything into a creative pursuit and lock out the outside world a bit, in a city where all your friends and heroes are doing the same thing. Not many people to get to do that, and that does sound a little bit like a holiday versus the rigours of my normal day job. 

It is a privilege to perform at the Fringe, and you have worked hard to be there, so it is worth enjoying it for exactly what it is without looking ahead to what it’ll mean on September 1. 

Last year I completely lost sight of that. I was ‘debuting’, and if I’m honest I’m still not sure what that meant other than I had a lot of extra pressure on me and I featured in a couple of lists. It had been one of my hardest years since records began for various reasons and the effort of dragging myself around the country doing previews in the run-up, paying travel costs I couldn’t afford, built up noisily in my head into a drive for it to be ‘worth something’. 

When I arrived in Edinburgh, I knuckled down and treated it like a job - I had two shows a day in the same building, and that meant being in the corridor between my two rooms from 12.30pm to 5.30pm. Every day I woke up, reviewed notes and feedback line by line with a forced-down healthy breakfast, got ready and went to the venue. 

Because of the location of my show, I had booked an Airbnb in New Town, so the walk was quiet and I felt very far away from the action. This was a far cry from the year before where the closer I got to the venue, the bigger the buzz, and also the greater the chance you’d see a hero or a friend -  where you couldn’t resist the feeling that anything was possible. Arriving on my deserted street every day, smiling hopefully at anyone I did encounter, just in case, it took on Groundhog Day properties. 

Not every day was identical, but the things that added difference weren’t always positive; one rainy day a bus went through a puddle and showered me in a sheet of dirty, brown water. On another, I was greeted by door staff asking if I was excited for my reviewer being in; turned out they had forgotten to tell me that was happening.  

Up to that point, I’d had a classic Edinburgh Fringe morning of mixed fortunes - my panel show was selling badly which was mortifying as I had people I loved and respected giving up their time for it, and my flyerer had just called in sick, so I had cried all the way up the hill and I looked like it. 

While I was contemplating all this in my doom corridor, my tech wandered off and Spotify shuttle decided to play Unchained Melody. I peeped into the room to see four people, one of them a reviewer, contemplating the maudlin breakup lyrics lit only by an incongruously cheery neon flamingo. As younger people on TikTok would say, the vibe was a shambles. I laughed it off, or tried to, but mentally I was the guy who played the fiddle while Rome was burning. 

I had a successful run of the solo show, on paper. It sold well, had some sold-out days (small room, so barely a flicker on the Edinburgh landscape) 

One day a whole group of my favourite comedians and beloved friends came to see it, a day where I got a four-star review. These things are definitely related. The panel show continued to break my heart; a combination of lack of footfall, being too far out of the action, and a bad time slot meant despite throwing everything at it and having brilliant line ups, it never quite took off. 

It was the one thing I did not see coming, for the two years previously the walk ups on the day had more than filled the spaces. On the worst day, there were almost as many people on stage as in the audience; I offered everyone a drink from the bar, and we ploughed on, despite two walk outs. As it happened, that was the day Chortle came to review. I didn’t read it until I got back, I just couldn’t face it, but I should have. As it was, it was three stars, and the reviewer could see what the format was capable of if we weren’t in an echoing hangar at what felt like the end of the world. 

The show went on, until it couldn’t. Towards the end of the last week I came out of my solo show and two comics had already dropped out of the panel for that day. We limped through it, but I sat in the pub after, and realised I couldn’t carry on with it. 

The Stand were incredibly understanding when I pulled the last three shows of the run, and I drank a glass of champagne and took what felt like my first proper breath. I booked shows I wanted to see into those spaces and grabbed the last few hours of the Fringe as it slipped away - but the regret I felt for not doing more of what made me happy was immense. 

I missed seeing friends, seeing shows, supporting people in their runs and feeling part of something - it was a lonely grind and when I came back I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do comedy any more.  I got nice reviews for the solo show and really great rooms but I came back burnt out.

 Looking back, there was so much to be happy about and so many moments I would have killed for before I started in comedy; I had Jess Phillips MP on a panel with Jenny Ryan, Bec Hill, Ada Campe and Leslie Ewing-Burgesse, sharing outrageous stories about her time as a politician. 

Or when Sophie Aldred stepped in at the last minute, an iconic Dr Who companion and one of the coolest women in the world on my silly little show that started on Zoom - the same show where Mark Watson  came on stage from the audience at the half time point as Thom Tuck had to run to his clashing show.

 If you’d told me this five years ago, I would have laughed in your face and gone back to answering work emails. But it happened, and I didn’t appreciate it; when those hour shows were up, I was so on the ropes that I was just relieved another one was over. 

It has taken me most of the year to rediscover the joy in it, so my biggest piece of advice is enjoy it.  

Steal moments of silliness, get a ticket for something random, take in a late-night show on a day you are tired and probably should go home, support a friend’s show, even if you’ve seen it 50 times. It is incredibly energising to be with other people, and these moments are a gift not given to everyone. 

When I got back and started listing out the above complaints to friends and family, despite their best efforts to be empathetic, I heard how it sounded. It feels so big when you’re there, and then so small when you’re not. 

Edinburgh isn’t a stepping stone, it’s a destination. So work hard, for sure, but do not forget to look up, and look back on your way to your next mountain – to when doing this was a remote daydream. You made it. Well done.

• Vix Leyton hosts  The Comedy Arcade at Laughing Horse @ Bar 50 at 9.45pm

Published: 14 Aug 2024