Fringe favourite Lucy Porter returns to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with her brand new stand-up show Pass It On from the 1st – 26th August. This is Lucy’s 12th solo hour at the Fringe and even after all these years she keeps the quality consistent. Last year’s show Choose Your Battles won Forth FM’s Forth at the Fringe award – it’s the second time Lucy has won this prestigious gong.
This year Lucy will bestow even greater gifts upon her audience – both literal and figurative – as she explores the concepts of heritage and tradition. What have we received from our parents and what will we pass on? Lucy inherited global warming, dodgy knees and a terrifying collection of glass clowns from her mum and dad, so now she is thinking about the legacy she is going to leave to her children and the world at large.
Stand up is the most ephemeral of art forms, so Lucy has worried that her life’s work will disappear when she does. On the other hand, this might turn out to be a blessing, as so many public figures find their juvenilia used against them in later life. As far as Lucy can tell, her first TV appearance (on Russ Abbot’s Christmas Madhouse in 1996) is lost in the mists of time. Is her pre-YouTube generation the last whose early embarrassments won’t come back to haunt them?
Lucy ponders how much we can control what others make of our life’s work anyway. Politicians are especially preoccupied with the idea of legacy. David Cameron probably hoped that he would be remembered for liberalising the Tories and legalising gay marriage. Unfortunately, most of us are more likely to recall him leaving his daughter in a pub, accidentally causing Brexit and that dead-pig-bothering rumour. Trump seems determined to unpick Obama’s legacy, but what will history ultimately make of The Donald?
Lucy employs her characteristic mix of personal anecdotes, political observation and philosophical musing to entertain and challenge her audience. Having recently lost both her parents, Lucy has had plenty of reason to consider what makes a good eulogy. ‘They did a lot of work for charity’ used to be uncomplicated praise, but in the light of Jimmy Saville, the President’s Club and Oxfam’s work in Haiti, it’s a little more problematic.
In considering #metoo, #timesup and all the other, less easily hashtagged attitudes towards historical bad behaviour, Lucy evaluates the responsibility older women have to their younger sisters and vice versa. Surely we all want to make the world a better place, but it’s difficult when that world is largely digital and virtual and you’re still operating with a clunkily analogue brain.
In Pass It On, Lucy will impart the sum of all the knowledge she has acquired in her 45 years on this earth. If that doesn’t take a whole hour, she might end on a song or a music-hall paper tearing routine. This may be the only show at the Fringe to feature tributes to Dan Leno, Betty Balfour, Valerie Solanas and both Wendy and Julian Cope. It will definitely be the only show from which you may go home with a glass clown.
Lucy Porter is a regular face and voice on TV and radio panel shows having appeared on Live at the Apollo, QI, Mock the Week, Insert Name Here, Have I Got News for You, Room 101 and Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled. She would be an asset to any pub quiz team having appeared on University Challenge, The Weakest Link, 15 to 1, Pointless, and ITV’s The Chase where she won the highest amount of money ever on the celebrity show for Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital. Lucy also broke records on Mastermind, where she fought off stiff competition from Mark Watson to achieve the highest ever celebrity score. On Radio 4, she has been heard on The News Quiz, The Now Show, Dilemma and The Unbelievable Truth, and is a regular guest on BBC 6 Music’s The Radcliffe & Maconie Show.
In 2014, Lucy wrote the thought-provoking and witty play, The Fair Intellectual Club, about a secret society of girls who convened in early 18th Century Scotland. Following the success of an Edinburgh run and national tour, BBC Radio 4 commissioned a 6-part series based on the play. Lucy has a keen interest in women’s secret societies and is an amateur expert on lots of them.
Most recently, Lucy wrote and starred in Lucy Porter: In the Family Way for BBC Radio 4.
Lucy recently completed a sell-out national tour of her 2017 show Choose Your Battles. She recently worked out that she has performed in every UK county except Orkney. Her favourite motorway is the M40, her favourite A-road is the A57 and her favourite service station is Tebay.
