Performers: Thinking Drinkers (Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham)
Photograph by: Steve Ullathorne
Show: Pub Crawl
Venue: Underbelly (Ermintrude)
Promoter: Bound & Gagged Comedy in association with TGA

Tell me about your Edinburgh show.

This is our fifth Thinking Drinkers show and we’ll be returning to Edinburgh for the eight successive year. It’s called “The Thinking Drinkers’ Pub Crawl”. Having previously focussed on the history of alcohol and the great people who have drunk it in the right way, this year we are embarking on a mission to save the British Pub by embarking on a pub crawl through time featuring the Ancient Greek Symposium, the Wild West Saloon, Irish boozers, Victorian gin palaces and a rum-fuelled beach shack.

Tell me about your first gig.

It was at The Rocket in Acton, West London seven years ago. We’d rather not talk about it.

Do you have any rituals before going on stage?

Yes, we pour all the drinks for our lovely audiences who each gets five drinks over the duration of the show.

Tell me about your best and worst review.

Dan Ackroyd from Ghostbusters and Blues Brothers said this about the show: “For serious and not so serious devotees of legal recreational consumables, this show’s your bible”

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

Yes. But we’ll only share them if they’re really good.

How do you feel about reviewers generally?

We’ll like them if they like us.

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?  

No. That way lies over-zealous censorship. Some people found it funny. Others didn’t. That should be the end of it.

Are there any subjects that are not suitable for comedy? 

Not if it’s funny

Have you ever gone too far?

Once when we were on the M4, we missed the turning for Reading.

Looking back over your time as comedians, tell me about the best gig of your career?

Our last one, probably. We sold out the 400+ Underbelly Southbank and the crowd were great.