Connor Burns: My family used to hate the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, now it's my favourite month of the year

Connor Burns grew up in an Edinburgh suburb, where the Fringe was seen as an annoyance

When Connor Burns was growing up in the Edinburgh suburb of Gilmerton, his family’s views of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was far from positive.

“I always wanted to do stand up, for as long as I can remember,” he says. “But I grew up in a household where we didn’t massively value the Fringe. We saw it as that month where traffic is really bad and the city’s too full.”

Now, eight years after he first launched his comedy career, Burns regards the Fringe as the main event of his year. His career has rocketed in recent times, with sell-out runs in Edinburgh and successful UK and international tours. The comedian’s first full-length show is soon due to be broadcast on comedy streaming platform 800 Pound Gorilla.

“I cringe when I look back at the amount of years I wasted not going to see stuff at the Fringe, because as an artist, you realise it’s an unbelievable feat,” he says. “In the space of one day, you can see a Chinese circus, an African dance troupe and an American comedian and they’re all coming to one place.

“I think the Fringe is awesome. The city is buzzing with life. It’s just exciting. It’s a massive month for me.”

However, he admits his attitude towards the event is different to that of his fellow comedians from outside Scotland.

“I don’t know if I have the same feeling of grandeur about the Fringe, because I live in Edinburgh,” he says. “For a lot of acts who’ve got to get accommodation and get travel sorted, it's like ‘oh wow, it's the Fringe and I'm going to go and live in another city for a month’.

Connor Burns | Connor Burns

“But for me, I just love it. It's the only month I don’t have to pack a suitcase and get a flight, I have home gigs the whole time and there’s this cool month where all my pals come to my home city and we get to hang out with each other.”

Burns sees the month as a chance to hone his new material before launching into touring after August is over.

“I view it like a new show boot camp,” he says. “I try not to turn up to the first show without a show ready because I don't think it's fair to the first four or five audiences if you turn up without a show totally formed.

“But obviously if you do something 34 times in a month, it goes to a whole other place. With the repetition, you realise for example, that there’s a better word - that’s the process - and at the end of the Fringe, the show’s ready to tour.”

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However, he has not forgotten his early days on the Free Fringe. He describes the excruciating free Fringe scene depicted in Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer as “of the most accurate depictions of doing the Fringe as a nobody”.

The Netflix show portrays Scottish performer Gadd - whose career was launched at the Fringe - playing to a near-empty pub, telling jokes which fail to land.

Burns says he believes his early years were spent “doing the Fringe the way it was made for”.

“I was literally handing out all my own flyers, trying to convince people to see my show,” he says. “And I think that teaches you about humility. But I don’t think anyone could pay me any sum of money to go back into the first two years again. Because it's unbelievably humiliating at these gigs.

Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning in Baby Reindeer. The hit Netflix show started out life on the Edinburgh Fringe. | Ed Miller/Netflix

“Comedy is funny because it's back in front in that you do the hardest gigs of your career when you're the newest, and then eventually loads of people start coming, and then loads of people who actually already like you start coming. It gets easier and easier.

“When you start, you’re doing a gig in front of nine guys in a pub who are angry because you’ve turned off the football. So if you can get good at them [the gigs], standing in front of a thousand people who bought tickets because they want to see you is a breeze.”

Burns is about to start a pre-Fringe tour with a couple of other comedians, playing venues in Stirling, St Andrews and Paisley.

“It’s just to stretch our legs - we take notepads up and it's not sold or set up like a polished comedy night,” he says. “It's funny - there are people who come every year to see those shows, and then they'll also come and see us at the Fringe, because some people quite like to see how the sausage is made, what makes it to the actual show and what gets left.”

Burns admits that he tries to write a minute of his show a week over the year in advance of the Fringe - to a total of 45 minutes of the hour-long slot before it starts - with the rest given over to improvised crowd work.

He tries to avoid trying out new material in front of his established fans.

“If you've got that bias, that before the show starts, they want you to succeed and sometimes they'll let a five-out-of-ten joke slip by because there's goodwill in the room,” he says.

“So, I like to go up in front of people who are not my audience. They're just there to see a comedy night. I think that gives you the most accurate representation as to whether the stuff's properly good or not.”

Burns tried out a number of different jobs before settling on comedy, training as an electrical engineer and later working in an Edinburgh guitar shop.

“I can’t believe I was fixing washing machines a few years ago and now I’m running about New York getting to go backstage at all these cool venues,” he says.

“But I’m glad I had ten different jobs before stand up, because it gives you some perspective. I always feel like a bad night doing stand up is better than a good day fixing washing machines. And it gives me something to talk about. I know what it’s like to be really skint and what it’s like to be between jobs. That’s what’s most relatable.

“I sat down two years ago and thought ‘what do I want [from my career]?’ And the answer has always been to just be a stand up. It’s not about trying to get on panel shows. I love the lightning-in-a-bottle feeling you get, standing in front of a live audience. Nothing has ever matched it.”

Burns is playing at Just the Tonic Nucleus from July 31 to August 24.