Title of Show: Alison Spittle: Wet Venue: Pleasance Courtyard – Attic Time: 5.15pm Dates: 3rd – 29th August (except 9TH) Photographer: Karla Gowlett Links: Profile and Social Media
Tell me about your 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show.
Wet is a show about my relationship with positivity – body positivity, sex positivity and mental positivity. It’s all a bit too positive… Growing up in rural catholic Ireland I was encouraged to hate myself. But now I feel immense pressure to love myself and anything less than that is frowned upon.
You are the the co-host and co-creator of the popular podcast Wheel of Misfortune for BBC Sounds, which was nominated for an NME award this year. The Alison Spittle Show also has a large following. Do podcasts give you freedoms that other outlets don’t?
Well, Wheel of Misfortune is a podcast I started in lockdown with my mate Fern. Lockdown finished and fern had a book to write and a successful career to do.
BBC sounds wanted to make more, so we continued with guest hosts and it’s been brilliant.
I’ve had people on that I find hilarious.
I just got word, we’re doing another series, delighted.
My favourite way to consume comedy is live and then it’s podcasts.
The Alison Spittle Show is a podcast I started years ago before the boom of podcasts. I believe the podcast bubble will never burst.
As a successful performer, writer, and podcaster what is your first love? Appearing live on stage, on TV or something else?
My first love was radio, that’s what I studied in college, but then at a radio station on work experience I was encouraged to do stand up and fell deeply in love with that.
Lockdown has cemented my love of being on stage. My favourite thing to do is what ever I’m doing in the moment.
It says here that you are an “outwardly nice person she also lives for confrontation.” What does that mean?
It’s a snappy sentence for a blurb.
Blurbs are almost as excruciating for comics as photo shoots. We like attention but we don’t want to know why or spell it out too much. In answer to your query,
I think the vibe I give off is placid as I defuse rows by being nice. It’s a survival mechanism but I find myself always stopping to watch physical fights on public transport and this stand up show explores that.
Finally, ask and answer a question of your own.
Alison, what are you’re favourite component of a fry up?
Well being brought up in Ireland with an English father, I loved tinned tomatoes with a fry up but had to keep this a dirty secret as it’s frowned upon. Now living in the UK a few years I’ve discovered the sausages are not too my liking. Overly herbed with a skin as thick as a condom. Give me a small pink Irish sausage any day. Bubble and squeak is a joy, one day, I will make the perfect fry up with lashings of Worcester sauce.
Tickets: Alison Spittle: Wet
