Zach Zucker reflects on the best and worst of Edinburgh

In a new daily featuring running until the end of the Edinburgh Fringe, we invite comedians to share their most embarrassing Edinburgh experiences, tell us what they can't get enough of at the festival, and have a good old gripe about the worst thing(s) about the Fringe. First up, Zach Zuker:

Fringe cringe

I could write an entire series of novels based on the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me but I’ll give you this – my first year at the fringe in 2015.

My best friend and comedy partner Viggo Venn and I did our first run of Zach & Viggo on the Free Fringe and everything went wrong: Viggo missed his flight the day of the festival, all of our posters and flyers were misprinted, we were on at 12:30pm on the opposite side of town, people selling credit cards outside of the venue and scaring away all of the foot traffic, we were only getting 2-3 people a day to our shows, and the accommodation we secured was not at all as it was listed (shocker). 

Our place had no blankets, no pillows, no bed sheets, no hot water, no gas, no electricity and we were dead broke. We were literally filling the bathtub up with cold water and dipping our body into 2-3 inches of water and furiously scrubbing with soap.

One night I was in the bathroom when I realised we ran out of toilet paper. I didn’t want to wipe my pooey butt in the bath tub because that was everyone’s cleaning station, so I had Viggo run to the kitchen, bring me whatever he could find, and I wiped my ass with a mouldy tortilla. 

Fringe binge

The best part about doing the Edinburgh Fringe is having all of your friends and favourite artists from around the world in one place for an entire month. It’s a true blessing.

I’ve been living on the festival circuit as a nomadic performer for the past eight years despite almost everyone and everything in my life telling me not to; and the only reason anyone would ever do something like this (besides a burning desire to perform) is because of the incredible people they’re surrounded with. 

I’m so unbelievably thankful to be inspired by the greatest artists in the world, and I’m even luckier to call most of them my friends. It’s hard enough to get together with people as we get older, move to different cities, start families or change careers, so to have everybody back together again in one place for a month is a real miracle.

These people are my family and they mean the world to me, so you better believe I’m going to enjoy every moment I can with them while it lasts. 

Fringe whinge

The worst thing about the fringe is how powerless the artists are. The Fringe festival was started as a protest to the Edinburgh International Festival because it was unaffordable for independent, avant-garde artists to participate.

The Fringe still stands for what it initially was created to provide on paper, but in practice, it has turned into the machine it once rebelled against. Artists are at the mercy of venues, landlords, publicists, booking agents, and quite frankly, untalented thieves who hijack the culture that we bring to the table.

The amount of times I’ve heard ‘without us, you would have nowhere to go’ when really it is the artists who have the product the venues so desperately seek. I wish the people would realise that they are in fact the ones with the power here. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault in particular, every successful operation must face this dilemma if they succeed and it’s just unfortunate that artists are always the ones getting shafted. 

I won’t waste my breath talking about accommodation because every landlord that’s quadrupled their prices can absolutely fuck themselves to death. How dare you prey on us while we’re still recovering from a pandemic that obliterated us. You were given the opportunity to receive financial relief – we were not. And this is how you repay us, by extorting us until we bleed dry? Shame on you. And shame on everyone who allowed this to happen.

I beg every landlord in Edinburgh to show up at Monkey Barrel at 7.50pm every night so I can kick your fucking ass onstage so you know how it feels to participate in the festival this year you ungrateful cuck ass stank ass hoes. 

Fringe was started by a collective of artists who believed in what they were fighting for and I implore everyone who reads this to do the same.  

• Zach Zucker: Spectacular Industry Showcase (Made for TV) is on at Monkey Barrel at 7.50pm (not 17th)

Published: 1 Aug 2022