Performer: Alice Fraser
Photograph by: Sally Sparrow
Show: Ethos
Venue: Underbelly, Bristo Square
Promoter: Get Comedy by arrangement with Mushroom Comedy and TGA

Tell me about your Edinburgh show.

It’s a double act with a robot, which is an ambitious artistic choice I now deeply regret.

Tell me about your first gig.

I think it was a school production of a children’s book about fish. I had an excellent fish costume made out of a cardboard box and was probably about 5 years old.

Do you have any rituals before going on stage?

About two hours before a show, I’ll drink a lot of tea. Ideally just enough tea to make me feel reckless but not enough to give me the shakes, but it’s a delicate balance.

Tell me about your best and worst review.

You know how no news is good news? No review is a good review. The best thing about being a comedian is that you’ll find the one sentence in a five star review that’s even slightly critical and take that one to bed with your self-esteem for the next month.

During this Edinburgh run, do you plan to read reviews of your show?

No one never plans these things. They just happen.

How do you feel about reviewers generally?

I’m sure many of them are lovely articulate people with a genuine passion for the arts. Others are terrible people who like ruining the lives of innocent comedians. Some, I imagine, are both.

In April 2018, YouTube comedian, Markus Meechan (aka Count Dankula) was fined £800 for training his girlfriend’s pug dog to do a Nazi salute with its paw, in response to the phrase ‘Gas the Jews’. Do you believe Meechan committed a criminal offence, and why?  

I feel sorry for pug dogs generally. Poor genetic cul-de-sacs of cute sadness. Do you know that they can sneeze their own eyes out? Accidentally being trained into hate-mime is the least of a pug dog’s problems.

Are there any subjects that are not suitable for comedy?

It’s all in the angle. Like a selfie, the same subject can be very beautifully dealt with, or a horrible mistake like accidentally opening FaceTime from below.

Have you ever gone too far?

Once I fell asleep on a late train and woke up in the middle of nowhere and had to sleep in a motel because there were no trains back til the morning.

Looking back over your time as a comedian, tell me about the best gig of your career.

Never look back!