Max Norman – aka Coco The Time Travelling Tart – on making art come alive

A couple of years ago, I found myself in a position many comedians will recognise. I'd spent years doing open mics, character comedy nights, fringe shows and endless gigs, and while I loved performing, I felt I was sliding into the dark abyss of failure and obscurity.

‘I’m worried about my career,’ I told a friend.

‘What career?’ he replied.

It wasn't entirely the reassurance I was looking for, but he had a point. 

By early 2024, staring down the double barrel of frustration and depression, I decided to give myself one final challenge: 90 days to get a new comedy agent. A last-ditch Hail Mary to make something happen. How typically melodramatic of me. 

That challenge ended up changing my life.

I started creating characters and posting them online. One of those characters was Coco The Time-Travelling Tart, a glamorous socialite who has witnessed and been directly involved in most of human history. One afternoon, a comedian friend and I took turns filming each other. I took Coco to the National Portrait Gallery. There was no strategy, no business plan and certainly no grand cultural mission. We were simply trying to have a laugh. 

We filmed a series of short videos in front of portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. Coco chatted about everyone from Charles Darwin and Christabel Pankhurst to King Charles III, including an entirely improvised exchange with an unsuspecting member of the public about the King's famously chubby fingers. I posted the videos and went to bed.

The next morning it had gone viral.

That single video eventually led to millions of views, sold-out gallery tours, an Adelaide Fringe award and now Coco’s debut Edinburgh Fringe show. But what electrified me most wasn't the success of the video - though it’s quite a rush going viral for the first time - It was the reaction.

People weren't responding because they had suddenly developed a burning passion for art history.

They were responding because, for a brief moment, art history - people - felt alive.

Growing up, my mother used to drag me around galleries. She's an artist and ceramicist, so visits to the Tate, the National Gallery and museums across the country were a regular occurrence. I have to confess that, as a child, I was often spectacularly bored. My strongest memories aren't masterpieces. They're the smell of damp concrete, the echo of giant gallery spaces and the promise of carrot cake in the café if I behave. Interesting word that: behave. Who decides how we should behave in a public place? And what if we did something different?

Yet obviously something stuck.

Today I spend much of my life in galleries and museums. Beyond the actual subject matter, what fascinates me is that I don't think people dislike culture. Galleries are often bustling. Museums are clearly busy. Historical podcasts attract millions of listeners. People binge period dramas and geek out on YouTube documentaries for fun.

The problem isn't that people hate culture.

The problem is that many people don't feel connected to this part of it.

Somewhere along the way, culture became something we're supposed to admire from a respectful distance. We worry about saying the wrong thing. We think we need expertise. We assume there is a correct interpretation hidden somewhere that cleverer people already understand. There are all these thoughts, expectations and unwritten conventions trapping us in our own heads and limiting our experience. 

That's where comedy and play come in.

The moment people laugh and interact, something changes.

The pressure disappears. Curiosity replaces intimidation. People stop worrying about whether they're looking at a painting or sculpture correctly and start engaging with it and each other as a human being.

And art history is bursting with humanity.

It's full of sex, scandal, gossip, ego, ambition, terrible decisions and extraordinary personalities. Artists and their subjects weren't dusty historical figures. They were people. Many were total nutters. Some were complete disasters. Quite a few were both. Caravaggio is a great example. He once threw a plate of artichokes in a waiter's face. When did you ever see that?

The stories behind the works are often every bit as fascinating as the works themselves.

What I've discovered through Coco is that humour creates permission. Permission to engage. Permission to be curious. Permission to have fun.

Fun. Remember that? It was big in the 80s. 

That's what happens on my tours. People arrive perhaps expecting a traditional gallery experience and leave having spent 45 minutes imagining, playing, having a laugh. The paintings haven't changed. The objects haven't changed. What's changed is the relationship people have with them.

Social media taught me exactly the same lesson.

Millions of people have watched Coco videos online and one thing became very clear: audiences don't need history to be simplified. They need it to be brought to life.

Whether someone is discovering art history for the first time or returning to it decades later, the reaction is often remarkably similar. People don't want a lecture. They want an experience. They want stories. They want surprise and scandal. They want to feel something.

Looking back, Coco feels like a strange full-circle moment. My mother spent years dragging me around galleries as a bored child. Now I spend my life dragging audiences around them as a time-travelling tart. Coco is, in many ways, my revenge joy.

That's ultimately why I created my Edinburgh Fringe show.

The gallery tours and the theatre show come from exactly the same place. Both are attempts to transform culture from something observed into something experienced. Both invite audiences into a world where history isn't a collection of dates and facts but a living, chaotic story full of real people.

Beneath all the wigs, champagne, time travel and historical nonsense, some sort of a mission and I guess a vocation is emerging: 

I want culture to feel alive again.

I want wonder. I want curiosity. I want people to feel part of the story rather than standing outside it looking in.

If someone leaves a gallery, theatre or comedy show laughing and accidentally caring a little more about history than they did when they arrived, then I think I've probably done my job and probably earned myself a cocktail. 

• Coco the Time Travelling Tart is on at Underbelly George Square at 9.45pm during the Edinburgh Fringe.

Published: 14 Aug 2026