Standup in a swimming pool, naked tractor driving, heart attacks, heckles, walkouts, rain and an onstage marriage proposal – as the fringe turns 75, this year’s performers on the memories that make the festival unique
Mark Watson’s first 24-hour show was the maddest thing I’ve seen. Midnight, Edinburgh, 2004. Mark ambles on, skinny, an underdog, mic in one hand, vague plan scribbled out on a pad in the other. Fifty people there, not knowing precisely why. The “plan” was to freewheel until it got to midnight again. I was in that room, bewitched by it all. Mark was unheralded, not yet famous, you wouldn’t necessarily back him to get through the first 45 minutes. But he’s a mad scientist, and the following day his show had turned into its own universe. Plates were spinning, storylines had caught fire. Mark’s comedy heroes had joined him on stage, laughing, weeping, in thrall to this new kid. It ended with Mark proposing to his girlfriend, more tears (she said yes), champagne fired into the audience, Mark was lifted out through the crowd, now a deity. It was astonishing, the essence of everything good about Edinburgh. Someone bursting through, doing something no one had done before, in the only city where it could have happened. Tim Key is at the Pleasance Queen Dome, to 17 August.
