Edinburgh Previews 2022 - Recap

Edinburgh Fringe Preview Season

We’ve had quite a few Edinburgh Previews and Work in progress shows so far this year. We wanted to thank all the brilliant acts who have joined us with their new shows, and to everyone that bought tickets to any of these events.

If you’re going up to Edinburgh Fringe this year, we hope you have a blast! We have made a list of all the acts who we’ve had so far this year so you can check them out at the Festival and support their shows.

Ryan Mold - Generation Gap

Just the Tonic at The Mash House - Just the Attic -12:00

Tickets

Josh Pugh: Sausage, Egg, Josh Pugh, Chips and Beans

Monkey Barrel Comedy - Monkey Barrel 4 - 14:10

Tickets

Angela Barnes: Hot Mess

Pleasance Courtyard - Cabaret Bar - 19:00

Tickets

Nick Helm: What Have We Become?

Pleasance Dome - QueenDome - 17:25

Tickets

Harriet Kemsley: Honeysuckle Island

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Carnivore) - Carnivore 2 - 21:10

Tickets

Hal Cruttenden: It's Best You Hear It From Me

Pleasance Courtyard - Pleasance Two - 20:10

Tickets

Daniel Foxx & Kate Martin

Laughing Horse @ Dragonfly - Main Room - 22:30

Tickets

Garrett Millerick: Just Trying to Help

Monkey Barrel Comedy - Monkey Barrel 4 - 18:25

Tickets

Esther Manito: #NotAllMen

Gilded Balloon Teviot - Wee Room - 19:20

Tickets

Sara Barron: Hard Feelings

Pleasance Courtyard - Upstairs - 19:15

Tickets

Norris and Parker: Sirens

Monkey Barrel Comedy - Monkey Barrel 4 - 21:15

Tickets

Markus Birdman – The Bearable Heaviness of Nearly Not Being

PBH's Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth - Cinema Room - 17:10

Free Entry

Mark Simmons: Quip Off the Mark

PBH's Free Fringe @ Liquid Room Annexe/Warehouse - Annexe - 13:45

Free Entry

Paul Sinha: One Sinha Lifetime

The Stand’s New Town Theatre - Lower Hall - 16:40

Tickets

Abandoman aka Rob Broderick: Discography

Underbelly, George Square - Udderbelly - 21:25

Tickets

Larry Dean: Fudnut

Monkey Barrel Comedy - Monkey Barrel 3 - 20:30

Tickets

Paul McCaffrey: We Go Again

Underbelly, Cowgate - Belly Laugh - 19:25

Tickets

Glenn Moore: Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, Glenn I'm Sixty Moore

Pleasance Courtyard - Cabaret Bar - 16:05

Tickets

Leave a comment below on who your highlights have been so far.

For those of you going up to the Fringe, who you most looking forward to seeing?

Rise Of The Crate

Just A Little Bit Of History - From Kj Bradshaw

I’ve always had a fascination with stand up comedy. It started at a young age, I had VHS tapes of Joe Pasquale and saw him a few times at The Royal & Derngate as a kid (Don’t judge, I was young). This lead me on a path of wanting to discover all types of comedy over the years, getting my hands on anything from Lee Evans to Richard Pryor. I also had an old recording of Lenny Bruce who paved the way for free speech in comedy in the 50s and 60s. Even the history of it was something I wanted to dive into. I read Rik Mayall’s autobiography when I was 16, still to this day it has the best self indulgent book title, it’s a brilliant read. But I digress!

Before we started running comedy events, I had compiled a collection of over 400 stand up comedy DVD’s. It’s a world record, not one of those cool Guiness World Records, but an online one on Record Setter…not sure if that counts. I stopped at 426 when DVD’s were becoming obsolete and Youtube, Netflix and Amazon were taking over with their own comedy specials.

This obsession with watching stand up in 2015 made me want to discover even more comics through the crazy world of the internet. I even searched for mobile apps that might be around at the time and realised there wasn’t many options. I did find this American app that was free to download and all it was, was a list of Youtube links you could click to watch snippets of American comics. It was very basic, yet it had over a million downloads, and that’s when the lightbulb went off…

Later that year I started working on my own app, with no knowledge or experience with coding, I put together something that I called The Comedy Crate. I’m not going to blow smoke up my own ass, it wasn’t great. But essentially what it did was create a mini database where people could look up their favourite comics through an A-Z page of hundreds of acts, look at Youtube clips, find their website, social media pages and also find out where their gigging etc.

In 2016 I made the decision to go up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a couple of friends for the first time. I also thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try and sell this app to like minded people. I went up with flyers, t-shirts, I paid out of my own pocket to get this app on the Play Store and Apple Store. I stood out in the crowds and handed out flyers and I dumped plenty in various venues. Spoiler alert, it didn’t work, however what it did was open a door I didn’t know existed….

Going back a few months prior to the Fringe Festival, I got a call from an old friend Conor. He’d noticed the app through my Facebook page and wanted to chat comedy, said him and a guy called Mike were thinking of starting a comedy night in Northampton and asked if I’d be interested in getting involved… it was a no brainer.

I didn’t think much of at it the time but we all met up at The Comedy Cow Festival and talked about this idea. I met Mike Chase who we quickly established was the business head of the operation. The one big thing we all had in common was we loved watching comedy, we were all just fans who wanted to put on a night we’d all like to go to and we all brought different things to the table.

After the inevitable lesson learned from the app, I wanted to dive into something that scratched that comedy itch. After a few meetings, we had decided to use the name of the app, but change the logo. Rightly so, Conor was quick to say my initial logo for the app looked like a guy holding a… well take a look below and you’ll see for yourself, it could be misconstrued.

That was when Crate face was born.

Michael Legge has written a book - Strawberry to Pigs

If you are familiar with stand up comedian Michael Legge, then firstly you are in for a treat. If you’re not, but you enjoy funny books, you are equally in for a strawberry style treat.

‘Michael Legge is a stand-up comedian and this collection of his writing from 2008 to 2020 is his way of apologising for inventing online anger and wrecking all our lives.
Stories of romance, success and bravery are not included. Instead of writing about how fun and exciting the life of a comedian is, he decided to tell the truth.’

You can order his book through Go Faster Stripe

Or alternatively, limited signed copies are available through Bandcamp!