Will Owen: Picking the Strictly Come Dancing line-up at Edinburgh Fringe
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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 is here! And so is our annual features series. This year, it’s all about REVELATIONS: the gossip, the mysteries, the spies and the moles. Because everyone knows you can’t keep a secret at Edinburgh Fringe…
Will Owen is making his debut at Edinburgh Fringe with Like, Nobody’s Watching. Strictly Come Dancing might be more than a little beleaguered at the moment but knowing TV, it’ll be back before long pretending like nothing happened!! So in preparation for that moment, Will has compiled a guide to casting Strictly from the Edinburgh Fringe pool.
By Will Owen
August has rolled round again, and we all know what that means… Yes, flagship BBC entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing begins to release its celebrity line-up. A month of pure serotonin, provided by a small Instagram graphic each day that reveals which former popstar turned daytime TV presenter will be learning the samba this year.
The Edinburgh Fringe is also back, and it will once again be frequented by thousands of aspiring Strictly contestants, performing their shows in a bid to be the next Stacey Dooley. To help the casting team, I have assembled a list of the classic Strictly contestant tropes, and exactly where you need to look in Edinburgh in order to fill them…
The Ingenue
Every year on Strictly, there is someone from a completely non-showbiz background, who starts training and realises they have been walking around for years with a total knack for the Paso Doble without realising it. The Fringe is crowded with these figures — unknowingly performing their magnum opus to four Scottish pensioners in a student union. You may not have heard of them from the flyer, but by the end of their hour, you will be more invested in their journey than the lives of your loved ones.
The Gay One
Progress is so important, and Strictly is often at the forefront of this. Way back in 2020, they were one of the first TV shows to discover that gay people existed, and decided to let them be seen! It was an incredibly brave and important move, and a bold step forward from the primitive world we’d been living in in 2019. Sadly for the casting team, there is not a single gay person at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s just not our thing. So you’ll need to look elsewhere.
The Straight Man in a Serious Job Who Wants To Have A Bit of A Laugh
Strictly is an amazing space for middle-aged straight men to embarrass themselves and their children, and get the nation to fall in love with them while doing it. I have met lots of straight men at the Fringe from a whole range of different one-man theatre shows about dating, who have talked at me in deep earnest about how draining self-producing their own podcast can be. A place on Strictly would be the perfect levity for them!
The ‘I Cannot Believe I’m Here’
Each year on Strictly, there is someone pinching themselves and professing constant confusion about how they even made it onto the show. For this one, I’m turning the camera round and sending the execs out looking for a punter. Someone participating in a silent disco maybe? We need to find a way to funnel them off the street somehow, and maybe a direct line to the TV ballroom is the perfect answer.
The Comeback Kid
What is Strictly if not an exercise in defying obsolescence? Thousands of former soap actors have proved they still matter through mastering the jive. Fringe is much the same – universities send up cohorts of students trying to prove that their archaic institutions are still making cutting edge sketches about Love Island!!! (And I’m talking first hand.)
The Romancer
The Strictly Curse is the name given to the affairs that celebrity contestants have with their dance partners. The Fringe is actually an amazing place for copping off with people who exist in the same professional sphere. I personally plan to spend most of the month flirting (by which I mean feeling really sick and going silent and stand-offish the second anyone approaches me. Cheers!!)
The Stand-Up Comedian
As panel shows die, learning how to do a Viennese Waltz is becoming an increasingly palatable route for stand-ups to sell their tours. Jayde Adams, Chris Ramsey, Judi Love are just some of the famous comics to tread the glittery boards in recent years. I can name countless comedians I think would be amazing on the show. For example, Will Owen. That’s just the first draft of the list, I will try and add more names as they come to me!
Producers - you’re welcome. I have cast Strictly ad infinitum. And just remember: keep dancing! Like whatever happens, keeeeeep dancing. You will find me on day twelve, tears rolling down my cheeks, knee deep in my fourth eight pound bao bun, spluttering out the words: Keep. Dancing.
Will Owen: Like, Nobody’s Watching is at Assembly George Square (The Crate) from Jul 31-Aug 25th (except 13th), 10:20pm. Tickets here
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