David Elms's Edinburgh Binge, Cringe and Whinge.

David Elms is at the Edinburgh Fringe performing his show David Elms Describes A Room at Pleasance Courtyard at 9.35pm. Here he shares what he can't get enough of at the festival, his most embarrassing Edinburgh experience and the worst thing about the Fringe. Apart from the cost of accommodation, obviously…

Fringe binge

My biggest Edinburgh binge this year will be nostalgia. I’ll be insatiable, like an old fat Labrador, chowing down until I’m dragged from the bowl by the scruff of my neck. Shows are fun, sure, but have you ever turned a corner and been pierced through the heart with that bittersweet, hurts-so-good, can it really be 15 years feeling? 

I lived in Edinburgh from 2008-2013, and I haven’t been back since 2017, so I’ll be gorging myself on rose-tinted memories of my early 20s. Life was good. I was a terrible student and clueless comedian with no responsibilities and a full head of hair.

I was at the university for five years because I failed my German degree (it turns out you can’t cram a language the night before an exam) and had to change subject to linguistics. Thank God I did, because it meant I stayed in the city, fell in love, started doing comedy, and moved around enough to cover the whole place in stupid memories.

Some of them, I’m sure, will hit me like a freight train, dropping me to my knees as I grapple with the relentless and punishing nature of time. I’ll look down into a cute cobblestone puddle, and a balding father of two will be staring back. Time is a goon!

Mostly, though, I’ll feel lucky to slip away from the pressures of the festival and into my idealised youth, Midnight In Paris style. Except, instead of brushing shoulders with Hemingway and Dali, I’ll be watching myself flyering hungover for my half-midnight student improv show wearing matching T-shirts.

Maybe I could offer guided tours of The Credit Crunch Fringe. ‘Here’s where I never went to my German classes,’ I’ll say, or ‘Here’s where I got alcohol poisoning.’ I might even smile and say, ‘Here’s where I met the mother of my children.’ Can’t wait. 

Fringe cringe

I don’t embarrass easily (hence the whole ‘doing an improvised show at the fringe at 36’). There are certainly things that have happened and things that I’ve done at the fringe that I should be embarrassed about if I was in my right mind. There are the poor reviews. Never a one-star, thankfully, but there was a two star for a split hour that ended with ‘two stars, one each’. 

There’s the aforementioned matching T-shirts, happy-clappy, Legs Akimbo-esque student improv troupe. Fortunately, I was never in a production of Oliver set in a concentration camp or anything like that. (Not that you should be embarrassed if you were). Listen, to be cringe is to be free, as we all know. And if you can’t be cringe at the world’s largest arts festival, where can you?

I guess if I dig deep, and given Chortle has a gun to my head, I must, I do still cringe at one show. 

It was the last night of Adam Riches’ Coach Coach in 2015. I was part of an ensemble that has since gone on to win Perrier, Olivier, Bafta, Emmy, Golden Globe, and Peabody Awards (and that’s just Richard Gadd). It was a crackers riot of a show. Controlled chaos. Live sport in The Queen Dome! I played Teen Wolf, naturally, and I played him very straight for some reason.

Well, on the last day I thought it would be funny to come on in one scene with a fake moustache (please don’t ask why, it’s a long month all right?) To be fair to me, my character had just revealed two hairy arms in the previous scene and an earlier version of the script included me growing sideburns.

Anyway, on I come with this moustache, ready for Adam and the audience to find it very funny indeed. Except, they don’t. Whoops. Now I’m that dick who does something silly because it’s the last day. Add to that the fact that Dan Cook had already done something ‘silly for the last day’ which had absolutely killed. Cut to me with my flimsy moustache that is peeling off my sweaty face. 

Adam berates me in character, attempting to save the moment. It’s a good thing that I’m a brilliant improviser, I think, because I’ll be able to help him turn this around easily. Except, nope, everything I say sinks like a lead turd. The audience are only confused by my responses, and I seem to be fumbling every joke Adam throws my way. 

Adam cuts our losses, sticks my moustache back on my face with his chewing gum and we carry on the scene. When the show finishes, I slink off, determined to carry the guilt with me for the rest of my life, and never tell a soul. Wait!

Fringe whinge

My Edinburgh whinge is the collective mania artists experience from the moment they step down onto the platform at Waverley, during which they become convinced that the Fringe is not an end in itself.

I’m sorry, I only have a sincere answer for this one, and I don’t have any other whinges to share, I’m too madly in love with the whole endeavour. And as someone who hasn’t been in eight years, I’ve been chomping at the bit to hit those streets and meet those challenges if it means being a small part of something so big, so ill-advised, and so close to my heart. 

I’ll take the awkward ‘How’s your show going?’ small talk. I’ll take the accommodation costs. I’ll take the drunk local heckles. I’ll take all of that you got.

• David Elms Describes a Room is on at Pleasance Courtyard at 9.35pm throughout the Fringe.

Published: 30 Jul 2025