Fantasy Fringe

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Fantasy Fringe 〰️

*Images: Ross Fraser McLean / StudioRoRo*

We’re excited about the Edinburgh Fringe, but it’s clear it needs to change. A lot of people have a lot of ideas, but nothing has really happened yet. So we decided to ask the comedians themselves: in your fantasy, what would the Fringe look like? It might have been a mistake.

Adam Flood is stuck in a loop, doing the same show every single day for a whole month — what is this fresh hell? It’s Groundhog Fringe, and he’s determined to nosedive every single time, in increasingly elaborate ways.

I can’t shake this weird fantasy of purposely tanking at the very top of my comedy career whilst doing the biggest gig imaginable, like Chris Rock’s live Netflix special. Everyone is there who has supported me along the way — agent, family, friends, fans. I get on stage and all I do, without deviation, is Austin Powers quotes. Just: “Groovy baby. Yeah baby, yeah! Do I make you horny, baby?” An hour. Of that. A bewildering destruction of goodwill fostered along the hard slog it is to make it in comedy. I don’t know why exactly, but I fantasise about that a lot. Is it cos it’s a funny colossal prank taking over a decade to set up? Or is it a fantasy about controlling expectations of me? I dunno. I’d need to pay a therapist to dig into that.

I doubt I’d ever do the big tank, but I’d love to know how it would feel. So for my Fantasy Fringe, I want it to be the same day, with the same audience, again and again and again. Groundhog Fringe. Goodbye pressure of doing well; hello doing the stupidest things to make it go badly on purpose.

Let’s start small. A new alienating outfit everyday, all unreferenced and nothing to do with the show. Lederhosen one day, full Kendo martial arts gear the next (billowing black cape, protective armour, caged face mask, a bamboo sword), one day in a zorb. Another day I’d hire two actors to dress fully as police officers to lead me on stage, handcuffed and I do my set without mentioning I am clearly in police custody.

Maybe the audience would shout out “why are you dressed like that?”. Hecklers are fun for a show, to a point they can breathe life into it. Now, I’ve never had a physical fight but in Groundhog Fringe I’m flipping the ‘Will Smith slap moment’. One peep out of the crowd and they’re getting a roundhouse straight to the chops, just to see if a gig could be recovered from there. It being illegal and scary, I think probably not.

Then I can start playing with accents. That’s up to you to imagine what accent I could do. I was thinking Birmingham. Why, what were you thinking?

Of course, I’d do the Austin Powers set. Less high stakes in a Fringe room, but “do I make you horny?” to 60 people in my small room at the Monkey Barrel would be a ride. The next day I’d take an element of my real show — vocal autotune pedal — and do the entire show on this.

My rule about not drinking before a show would be thrown out the window, kicked down the road and then hoofed through another window of a bar and dunked into several vats of tequila. I’d be completely off my nut. Hell, I’d try a day on every drug. I can’t imagine anything worse than trying to perform an hour of comedy on magic mushrooms, apart from watching a comedian for an hour who is on magic mushrooms.

How long does Groundhog Fringe go on for? I’d hope a month, but stuck in this loop I can’t tell how long it’s been anymore. Is it a year? Christ, can you imagine a year at the Fringe? A day at the Fringe is heaven; a year is hell.

In a pit of despair with no end in sight, I'd do things I would never normally imagine doing at the Fringe, like watch a student improv show. I’d do the whole day in those annoying silent street discos to see what that level of sensory confusion for 24 hours would do to my mind. I’d relentlessly train to win that game that’s set up where you hang from a bar for 60 seconds that’s clearly just impossible, and I’d still lose every time (the system is rigged).

Finally, to break the cycle of my out of hand fantasy, I do my show ‘Remoulded’ properly and sincerely, which are modes that are difficult for me — and is sort of what my show is about. It breaks the Groundhog Fringe loop and September shuffles on to the scene.

This year is my debut hour at the Fringe. A lot of hard work has gone into it. I’m dead proud of it and with that comes fear that others might not like it. So to be able to set fire to it everyday to stop people from judging it would be extremely cathartic. Even though that’s just fantasy, the Fringe does melt your mind, so maybe I’ll be tempted to take a match to it IRL. Come along and see if I live my nightmarish fantasy, or just do a bloody good show that you like.

Adam Flood brings his debut stand-up hour ‘Adam Flood: Remoulded’ to the Edinburgh Fringe, performing at 3.20pm at Monkey Barrel The Hive [Hive 2] from 2nd to 27th Aug (excluding 15th). Tickets here.

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