Edinburgh Festival Fringe: ‘I’m a good comic. I’m not used to having audiences walk out’ – top climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith on why the eco crisis is a hard gig

Climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith is urging audiences to laugh in the face of “eco dread”.

There’s not much you could tell Stuart Goldsmith about the art of comedy.

After starting out as a tightrope-walker and slapstick acrobat busking for festival crowds on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, the 46-year-old is today a successful comedian, podcaster and professional business speaker.

And he is back performing in the Scottish capital this month for his 29th time, bringing his new stand-up show Spoilers to Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

He’s an expert when it comes to what’s funny and how to keep audiences on board, with most appearances over the past fortnight sold out.

But he admits that finessing his latest set has been “a hard road”, with the topic proving controversial and even unpopular with some.

He has experienced walk-outs for the first time ever, as well as a new type of heckling.

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So what is Spoilers about?

Only the biggest existential threat ever to face humankind.

The poster and blurb doesn’t directly mention climate change, but merely hint at the crisis – and that was on purpose, to avoid putting people off.

“One of the big challenges for the show is do I admit that it’s about the climate,” he said.

Climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith has been playing to a packed room for his new show Spoilers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but he opted not to advertise the theme is climate change. Picture: Matt Crockett

“If I say this is my big fat climate show, will my audience only be the choir?

“Will I be preaching to the converted?”

Although he insists he isn’t actually preaching and avoids “doom and gloom”, preferring “airy and light and daft” to get the message across.

“As a comic my job is to find silliness and joy in the problems,” he said.

Comedian Stuart Goldsmith's "eco dread" inspired him to create his new stand-up show Spoilers, which is running at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Picture: Matt Crockett

“I have to find what’s funny about countering the climate crisis – what’s funny and joyful and silly about it, how to get people to laugh and feel okay, and accept how scary it all is.

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“All this is a meta problem, made up of lots of little problems – and all of that is fantastic for comedy.

“That doesn’t mean it has been an easy process, learning how to make it funny and how to get people on board.

“I’ve also had to work out what my message is. What am I saying that’s useful?

“For a while I was paralysed by the idea that making people laugh is net negative, because it lets them blow off steam but they need that steam to get angry, take action.

“The conclusion I’ve come to is that I have to do what I can, activate whatever skillset I’ve got, in the way that I think we all should and must – although again ‘should’ and ‘must’ feels like a doom and gloom message,” he giggled.

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“I know that I can communicate with people, I can make them laugh and use it as fuel for my kind of comedy engine – the wind in my comedy turbine.

“I’m chewing through the problems and I’m good at making them funny, so I’m now hungrily searching for problems and that has enabled me to find positivity and joy in it.

“And it does sustain me. It is helping with my own climate dread, to feel like I’m physically doing something, taking some sort of action, putting it on the line.”

One popular part of the show is when he invites the crowd to confess their eco crimes – with sometimes hilarious responses.

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But not all his gags have been well received.

“I could fill two hours with the sh*t I’ve tried that didn’t work,” he admitted.

“I’ve spent 18 months working on the material. It has been a brute.

“I’m a good comic. I know what I’m doing.

“I’m not used to having audiences walk out.”

So why on earth has he chosen climate change for his latest performance?

“I always write about what’s on my mind,” he said.

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“All of my shows are an attempt to solve a problem, so previously they have been about things like parenting or my mental health or my anxiety.

“I’m sort of investigating a thing, fiddling with stuff.

“It just comes out of whatever is my preoccupation.

“And for the last few years I’ve been becoming increasingly concerned, and sometimes frightened and bewildered and angry, about the climate crisis.

“I felt a fear about finding out more.

“I thought if I find out more I’m going to become more scared. So I kind of put it off.”

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But he believes comedy is all about problems – problems are the material.

“With the climate crisis there are so many problems,” he said.

“And I don’t just mean the specific problems of how to reduce our carbon emissions.

“I mean things like how do we as human beings look our children in the eye; how do we motivate ourselves; how do we think about the climate in a way that doesn’t make us feel so bad that we become paralysed?”

So he began investigating the subject.

“And I found out how bad it is,” he chuckled.

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He believes action is all about “commitments” and has made some of his own to help tackle climate change.

He travelled to Edinburgh by train instead of flying from his Bristol home, has vowed not to touch any disposable drinking vessels, printed only a few flyers and his ‘merch’ is a biodegradable sticker.

When not gigging, the stand-up works on his acclaimed podcast series Comedian’s Comedian, which has scored more than 25 million downloads and featured big names such as Sarah Millican, Jimmy Carr, Nish Kumar and Sean Hughes, and provides motivational talks for the corporate world.

But he plans to continue coming to the Fringe for the foreseeable future.

“This year it’s me processing my eco-dread but who knows what it will be next year and the year after that,” he said.

“After 30 years it’s fitting and beautiful to come back here to Edinburgh for the festival.

“It would be great for the narrative if I died here.”