Adele Cliff on the best and and worst of the festival

Adele Cliff, former UK pun champion and regular on the Dave's Funniest Jokes list, returns to the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Here she shares what she can't get enough of at the festival, her most embarrassing Edinburgh experience and the worst thing about the Fringe. Apart from the cost of accommodation, obviously…

Fringe binge

Outside of watching shows or performing myself, I spend most time doing these.

Activity: Maison de Moggy cat cafe on Grassmarket. You have to book in advance and they only let a small number of people in at once. I find it so calming, like yoga without the stretching! It’s quiet, there’s tea and coffee and you get to hang out with some beautiful cats, a must every year.

Place: The Meadows. Since 2019 I’ve stayed in the same place just south of the Meadows, so every year so I get to start and end every day walking through them. I really love taking five minutes on one of the benches or meeting a friend for an ice lolly on a hot day and just sitting and people-watching.

Food: I would love to pretend I have a complicated set of food recommendations for the Fringe, and if you’re eating out a lot, I do. But early on, after some expensive meals, I realised that you can save a lot of money by being willing to wait and eat at home at the end of the day, even if it’s late. My go-to evening meal is a Sainsbury’s plant pioneers bean burger sandwich. Throw it in the oven, wait, put it between slices of bread, apply all the condiments you can find - perfection.

Fringe cringe

Not necessarily embarrassing but it’s definitely the Fringe experience that has made me cringe the most.

One year, when it was a particularly rainy August full of dramatic downpours, I got totally soaked less than an hour before my show. 

Luckily I had a top to wear on stage in my bag, top half was solved. I was wearing black jeans so they were Damp and uncomfortable but not visibly wet, bottom half manageable.

 But the thing that got wettest was my shoes and socks, they were drenched, I couldn’t wear squelchy, squeaky, wet shoes for the whole show. I also couldn’t do it barefoot, feet are gross (all feet) and I wasn’t going to have naked feet, I’m led to believe people should be paying a premium for that. 

So I did my full hour in my socks, I was leaving little wet footprints all over the stage and it felt so odd to perform like that, just thinking about it now makes me squirm. I always try and have shoes at my venue and emergency socks in my bag now. Never again.

Fringe whinge

People getting too bogged down in their own show. 

Taking a show to the Fringe is important and you should always be aiming to do everything you can to make it the best it can be but there’s a whole festival going on and it’s important not to forget that.

I’ve seen people spend their whole month so focused on their own show that all they do is perform their show, promote their show and go to industry bars to try and schmooze folk into coming to or discussing their show, and repeat, every day. 

Doing it that way is exhausting and isolating, and it makes you so dull to chat to. Try and work out what times of day you need to dedicate to the show and things surrounding it and then, outside those times, make the most of being at such a great festival. 

Go see some comedians you love and admire, it’s invigorating and hopefully pretty funny.

•Adele Cliff:  Adele, Adele, Adele... Cliff It Isn't the Consequences of My Own Actions is on at Just The Tonic At The Mash House at 5.50pm during the Edinburgh Fringe

Published: 1 Aug 2025