Meet Thom Tuck: The Master Juggler of Edinburgh Fringe Shows

An Introduction to a Festival Legend

Thom Tuck | Scaramouche Jones | The Alternative Comedy Memorial Society (ACMS) | Jenny Ryan: Björn Yesterday

Every August, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival bursts to life with an explosion of creativity, and few embody that spirit more than Fringe stalwart Thom Tuck. This year, Thom is involved in not one, but three distinct productions, each showcasing a different facet of his talent.

He’s directing Jenny Ryan in "Bjorn Yesterday," a singalong comedy that dives into the wild possibility of an ABBA-less universe and the mysteries of the Mamma Mia multiverse. He’s performing in Justin Butcher’s acclaimed "Scaramouche Jones," reprising the role of the century-old clown whose life story swings from the hilarious to the tragic—a part Thom first took on in 2005 and 2015, promising to revisit it every decade as he ages alongside the character. And, as the presenter of the legendary Alternative Comedy Memorial Society (ACMS), Thom hosts a late-night hothouse for the weirdest and bravest new comedy, nurturing risk-takers and delighting audiences with curated chaos and a bounty of comic guests.

This video delves into how Thom balances these diverse shows, explores the motivation that draws him back to Edinburgh’s stages every year, and uncovers what keeps his creative energy burning bright, Fringe after Fringe. Join us as we discover why Thom Tuck remains an enduring force at the world’s biggest arts festival.

TRANSCRIPT

(0:00 - 0:18)

Hello, I'm Ruth and I'm the Arts Business. Last week we caught up with Tom Tuck to talk about all of the shows that he has going on at this Fringe, including Scaramouche Jones, Jenny Ryan's, Bjorn Yesterday and of course ACMS. Join me with him now as we chat a little bit further about all of those shows and how he juggles such a hectic schedule.

(0:19 - 0:29)

So carry on from where you were just saying, the cost of this show. Yeah, so this show I did 10 years ago and 20 years ago. You don't look it.

(0:30 - 0:43)

Thank you. It's all the moisturising I have to do whilst taking the clown make-up off. That wasn't even my first Fringe.

1999 was my first Fringe. Blimey. I have no idea how much anything cost then.

(0:44 - 1:31)

By comparison, a hell of a lot cheaper, I think. You'd imagine, you'd imagine. Then this year with Hooters Nannies, who are a going concern throughout the year, but they put this up just for Fringe and everyone pays about £500 for their slot.

Then they'll take a certain percentage of some of the other ticket sales as well, but the vast majority goes to you. That's absolutely brilliant. Have they just started this year? No, certainly until last year.

They had two interlocking yurts last year, which turned out was a bad idea. Yeah, when you're doing arts, I imagine there's a lot of bleed. Not just bleed, but if something's gone wrong slightly with the tent itself, they couldn't fix anything because there was always a show in at least one of the tents, so they had to wait until the end of the day, so they've got a shipping container.

(1:32 - 1:41)

Nice, lovely. Right, so start off by telling us about your show, Shows. Yeah, so Scaramouche Jones is the play I'm doing.

(1:41 - 1:43)

Which is lovely. Thank you very much. Very good.

(1:44 - 1:50)

Almost said all of the words today. That's a lot of them. You're only on day three, you'll get them out by the end.

(1:50 - 2:09)

Yeah, I mean, it only ran an hour on day one, considering it was a 75 minute long slot, that's a lot of stuff I forgot. And then I forgot different sets of stuff yesterday, and I can only think of one section I completely missed today, but getting there. Yeah, nice.

(2:09 - 2:20)

And then I'm directing Jenny Ryan's mad conspiracy theory show about ABBA. Amazing. Yeah, and... Where's that? That's at the person's courtyard in the Cabaret Bar.

(2:20 - 2:27)

Lovely. And then ACMS is back at Monkey Barrel One, where we've been for a number of years, I think. A number of years.

(2:27 - 2:30)

I think we might be our fifth or sixth time in the same room. Yeah. We love it in there.

(2:31 - 2:38)

It's so much better being in there. I've followed ACMS for about 20 years, I think. So... Well, seven years before it started.

(2:38 - 2:41)

Seven years before it started. 15. However long it is.

(2:42 - 2:45)

2011. 2011. It was the first one in London.

(2:45 - 2:50)

Nice. You did Edinburgh 2012, because I was over at Summer Hall, for sure. So since you were here.

(2:51 - 3:02)

Yeah, we definitely did Edinburgh in 2012. We might as well have let us have Stand One that year. Were you over in... One year you were over in St Andrew's Square in the Spiegel Tower.

(3:02 - 3:16)

Yeah, that was the year after we were in Stand One, because they were like, can we have the same slot? They're like, well, maybe. Like, what is it? Kitson, he just hasn't replied to the email yet. But if he says yes, we're going to give him the spot.

(3:16 - 3:24)

We're like, okay, fair enough. You must be pretty well connected with a lot of the venues here then. Yeah, I know at least someone to speak to in most of them.

(3:25 - 3:30)

Nice. This being my, I think my 23rd Fringe. Nice, since 99.

(3:30 - 3:37)

Yep, 99. And then 2002, till COVID. And then since 2000.

(3:37 - 3:46)

Nice. How's the response been to Scaramouche so far? Lovely. Not huge crowds, but I think the crowds have been hugely appreciative.

(3:47 - 3:59)

Yeah, just nothing works like word of mouth. I hope everyone who's seen it will tell a couple of people and then we can get rolling. Yeah, perfect.

(3:59 - 4:07)

Where have you come from? London, are you based? Yes, yeah, we just moved to Kilburn, which is absolutely fabulous. Great place. You know, it's still real, you know.

(4:08 - 4:16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It hasn't been hollowed out by the corporations yet, and still proper free-range mad people are there. Great.

(4:17 - 4:41)

What keeps bringing you back to the Fringe every year? When I first came here, I was 17 years old and it just blew my mind that this existed. And I knew of the Fringe because, you know, like, beyond the Fringe and, you know, I didn't comprehend it. Reading it in a book and coming, I was in a production of West Side Story.

(4:41 - 4:48)

Nice. And so we were done by 8pm and we just got to go out. And £90.99, it was pretty damn cheap to buy tickets.

(4:49 - 4:58)

Yeah, yeah, well, absolutely. So we would like go see two or three things a night and just, yeah. Well, I think I'll try to come to university here, so I did.

(4:59 - 5:14)

What did you do at uni? Technically, I have an MA in Mental Philosophy. Wow. They changed the name of it shortly after I did it, but Edinburgh University still had the distinction between Physical Philosophy and Mental Philosophy, so it filters off as being Science.

(5:14 - 5:19)

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. They didn't change the name of the Philosophy degree. That is incredible.

(5:20 - 5:28)

I assume you do this for a living? Pretty much. I mean, adverts have paid the bills in the last couple of years. Absolutely, yeah, very nice.

(5:28 - 5:39)

And I'm doing Panto again this year, you know. It's all of a spectrum. Well, never the same place twice I've done, but Jenny and I are both doing the same Panto this year.

(5:39 - 5:43)

Oh, that's really nice. We got to see each other over the Christmas period, which wasn't really the case. What a novelty.

(5:44 - 5:49)

I think we went to Swindon. Nice, I was born in Swindon. Is the Panto good there? F***ing amazing.

(5:51 - 6:00)

I've done, I used to be a stage manager, I used to do Carlyle, because we used to get free meals, free accommodation, and I used to get a company car. It was incredibly cushy. Nice.

(6:00 - 6:12)

Terrible place to be, but other than that, I've never been to Carlyle. I can't say I recommend it. What is the sort of budgets you're looking at for your show, and how do you fund it? £500 for here, of course.

(6:12 - 6:41)

£500 for this, I spent some money on the, we've got one big poster, which is right there, which is an absolute, you can see it from here, which is an absolutely perfect location. And then flyers and posters, a couple hundred quid. And I've printed some business cards, because I'm before the show, as you saw, I'm clowning for 45 minutes before the show, because I'm an idiot.

(6:42 - 6:52)

But Scaramouche can't hand out his own flyer. No, exactly, he wouldn't. So Scaramouche has got business cards, which just say, Scaramouche Jones, Esquire, Clown, Englishman.

(6:52 - 7:00)

Absolutely brilliant. There's no information about the show whatsoever. I've committed a bit.

(7:02 - 7:26)

How does ACMS work in terms of budget and funding? We make a bit of money during the year, and then we put that towards flyers and et cetera, et cetera. Monkey Barrel are quite happy. I don't think they even pay a deposit with Monkey Barrel, because they know four nights a week, we're getting two and a half hours worth of people buying drinks.

(7:27 - 7:31)

Drinks at the bar, yeah. And then it's a split on the advance ticket sales. Nice.

(7:32 - 7:42)

I think 70, 30 to us. They're so good, Monkey Barrel, it's what the Fringers needed for a long time. The stand, the stand are very good as well, you know, like if you're like in financial hardship.

(7:42 - 8:04)

It's not a great location, are they? No, no, not ideal. But it used to be, like the assembly rooms up there, there was more, you'd go, oh, I'm going to have a day in the new town, which it didn't feel like people do that much anymore. But the stand, if you're having a hard financial time, will give you cash weekly against your ticket sales.

(8:04 - 8:12)

So you can eat, because they would rather have comedians who are able to perform their show coherently. That is amazing. With a false belly.

(8:13 - 8:25)

How is your partner getting on with the Pleasant? Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, the Pleasant can be flexible with certain things, but then... Absolutely not with others. Yeah, it's very, very odd.

(8:26 - 8:41)

You're like, no, you can't store flyers here. Could you have told her before we ordered them to here, so now we have to carry them away? We could have ordered them to the flat. It just seemed like sensible to... That is insane.

(8:42 - 9:02)

It's ludicrous, it's ludicrous. Completely ludicrous, and the reason's total bullshit. Well, they've only got a really small building, where on earth are they going to put them? Last time she was at the Fringe, she was with Guild of Balloon, and they were like, well, here's the specific flyer room for everybody, and here's it organised into like... Yeah, lovely, delightful.

(9:03 - 9:25)

I did a show a few years ago, that's exactly what they had at PQA venues, that's gone now. In terms of flyering, marketing, social media, PR, who does that for you? How much do you do? What's the balance like? I try and remember to post on Instagram. Very bad, aren't I? That then automatically posts to my Facebook, but that's only friends.

(9:26 - 9:37)

Facebook, you can't grow on anymore anyway, it's basically a pointless thing, unless you're going to plummet a lot of money into it. They buggered it years ago. We started with my sketch group, we started a group, and people would join the group.

(9:37 - 9:58)

Nice. And then they were like, this must be like 17 years ago now, they went, oh no, you can't message all the members of the group at the same time. What's the damn point of us having curated this over the past couple of years? We should have started a mailing list that can't break or be torn apart by Zuckerberg.

(9:58 - 10:06)

It's so annoying. It is. Facebook is ridiculous now, because you can't grow on it organically at all, so there's no point in utilising it.

(10:06 - 10:19)

And half of the stuff is AI-generated slot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So who does your PR and marketing and things like that? Madeleine Gingerbread is doing PR.

(10:19 - 10:25)

She did it last time. Nice. And I said, you are going to let me do it again this time.

(10:26 - 10:46)

Demanded. That's what you need, though, isn't it? I very rarely have PR, but it seemed like there was a story worth telling with this show. The fact that I did it 20 years ago, a 100-year-old character, I'm 10 years closer to the age of the character, and hopefully 10 years more experience and more skills as a performer.

(10:47 - 11:12)

And I think I've got the... One thing I'm pleased about this time is a little control over tone. But I think I was, you know, not like it was a runaway train last time, but I feel more in control of it and able to flip on a dime, you know? Yeah, yeah. And the plan is to bring it back in another 10 years.

(11:12 - 11:16)

Every decade till I'm dead. Excellent. Look forward to it.

(11:16 - 11:43)

I said that to someone, they went like, so this is the last time, yeah? And on that note, what are your tips for managing burnout and exhaustion? Mentally, try and have more than one thing going on. Because if you've only got one show, the tendency is to get completely, absolutely in your head about it for the next 23 hours until you have to do it again. Unless you've got to go, well, I've got to go do this, do this thing well now.

(11:45 - 11:57)

Then compartmentalise, and you will have enough time to worry about the show, but you go and do that now. Worrying about it isn't going to make it any better or worse. Well, it can.

(11:57 - 12:15)

It can heighten, it depends the kind of performer you are, but it can heighten the antennae somewhat, to be more tuned in. I argued myself out of nerves long ago. They're not helpful for me, so don't have them.

(12:16 - 12:34)

So back in 1999, what encouraged you to come to The Fringe? Why did you first come? Well, it was a Leeds University production of West Side Story, and they didn't have enough men auditioned from the university. So we were the sixth form college over the road, and six of us got in. Was that Brexit or Leeds? No, no.

(12:34 - 12:47)

Although two of them who were in it went on to Bretton. RIP? Yeah, RIP. It's a hotel now, and a golfing range, I think.

(12:47 - 12:51)

Horrible, horrible. League of Gentlemen formed there. Absolutely.

(12:51 - 13:03)

My sister went there, so I went quite a bit. And I saw a lot of shows that came up to here from Bretton, and Dartmouth as well. The two weirdo schools that produce real interesting stuff.

(13:04 - 13:20)

I'm from Queen Margaret University, and that is arguably no more now either. Got rid of all of their arts courses. But yeah, the six of us got into the show, and it was... How much for the cast would it have been? Full cast? 17.

(13:20 - 13:23)

Bloody hell. And a 16-piece orchestra. Yeah, yeah.

(13:23 - 13:28)

That is incredible. A full two-hour show with an interval. Christ, that is amazing.

(13:28 - 13:40)

And none of us knew anything about The Fringe. We were so dumb. The venue was the Bonnington Resource Centre, a now defunct daycare centre for the mentally ill, on Bonnington Road.

(13:40 - 13:44)

Do you know where that is? No idea. Do you know where East Claremont Street is? I used to live on East Claremont Street. Okay, yes.

(13:44 - 13:52)

If you carry on down East Claremont Street, away from Broughton Street, you get to Bonnington Road. Keep going down past the sci-fi pub. Don't know if that's still there.

(13:52 - 13:55)

And you get to a daycare centre. Probably not as far as Leith. Not quite as far as Leith.

(13:56 - 14:07)

You get to the daycare centre, and we shared the venue with a production of Godspell, which had a Lego robot in it. Absolutely incredible. And it was selling okay.

(14:09 - 14:18)

Was there a twist? Yeah, capoeira. And it was selling okay, and then we got four stars in The Scotsman. Amazing.

(14:19 - 14:25)

And in 1999, that meant you sold out the rest of your run. And we did sell the rest of it. We only had two weeks.

(14:25 - 14:28)

And you got people all the way down there. Yeah. Damn.

(14:29 - 14:33)

Yeah, it was good. And then we won a Herald Angel. That's amazing.

(14:33 - 14:39)

Yeah, so my first Fringe, I won an award. And my last Fringe, I won an award. Nothing in between.

(14:41 - 14:55)

What advice would you give to people thinking about coming and doing their shows at The Fringe? If it's a stand-up show, don't be precious about doing an hour. Just do it. Just do it.

(14:55 - 15:09)

Find a free Fringe venue. I mean, spit an hour if you want, but there's nothing wrong with getting the number of gigs under your belt. You know, Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.

(15:11 - 15:36)

You can only learn how to stand on stage and make people laugh if you stand on stage and make people laugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And do that as much as you can, as much as you can, any way you can, whether it's improv, whether it's stand-up, whether it's sketch, whether it's just do funny plays, or get as much out as you can, and then come up here and realise that the purpose of The Fringe is to get the work good.

(15:36 - 15:46)

It isn't to make money. Lots of people who do The Fringe successfully... Well, there's no chance if you come up and want to make money, you're not going to do it. Well, I mean, I've often made money.

(15:46 - 15:52)

I mean, you're very popular and... But I've often made money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've often lost money.

(15:52 - 16:03)

I've done 22 Fringes. And then the goal is to break even. So it's a cash neutral month and you are three and a half weeks better.

(16:04 - 16:09)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like real battle-hardened better. Sum up your Fringe experiences in one sentence.

(16:13 - 16:30)

Yeah, take a sip of your wine before you do it. It's usually better when you're living closer. Yes, that is so true.

(16:30 - 16:45)

I used to production manage Summer Hall and I had a flat literally around the corner. It was late fairly consistently every day because it was just around the corner. And then the next year I did it, I was fucking miles away over in... Oh, in a really creepy place above the Odeon on Lothian Road.

(16:46 - 16:56)

That looked like the hotel out of The Shining. And got there fairly relatively on time every time because I was further away and had to think about it. But yeah, that's such good advice.

(16:58 - 17:10)

One year I stayed on the mile. Quite noisy but lovely flat. And four nights a week ACMS finishes at 2.30 if we're lucky.

(17:12 - 17:19)

How many days last year do you think we finished at 2.30? Absolutely none. Two? Twice. We finished twice on time.

(17:19 - 17:29)

We've made it until two o'clock the last few years. And yeah, life gets in the way of making it any later. Yeah, but it was up Ninja Street and then just down the mile.

(17:29 - 17:38)

I'm like, oh, I'm in bed already. This is brilliant. And if my girlfriend had come to bed already, I would just, in the sofa bed, I would just like, no, I'm not going to disturb.

(17:38 - 17:47)

I'm just going to get into the sofa. Amazing. And finally, where can people find you? Keep in touch with your, obviously.

(17:47 - 17:59)

I'm at Turlygod across the internet. That's T-U-R-L-Y-G-O-D, which is a quote from which Shakespeare play? Turlygod is, I'm going to say The Tempest, something like that. It's Lear.

(18:00 - 18:10)

You know, do you know Lear? We saw, it was the first show I took you to see. Was it Lear? Was it Edward? Yeah, which is me from Shakespeare. It's Marlowe.

(18:11 - 18:30)

There's a bleak season at the RSC this year, basically. So do you know when Edgar is accused of the murder he didn't commit and runs off and pretends to be the mad beggar? Yeah. In one of his nonsense mad things, he goes, oh, poor Tom, poor Turlygod, poor Tom.

(18:30 - 18:40)

And in my annotated edition at A-Level, it said, there is no satisfactory explanation for this. So I thought, that will be my name on the internet. It's absolutely brilliant.

(18:40 - 18:46)

Turlygod on Instagram, Twitter, if that's still there. Magic the Gathering online. Excellent.

(18:47 - 19:00)

On your Facebook group, if someone is. And then where are your shows? Shows, The Yurt, that's Hoots. Monkey Barrel One, Jenny's show, Peasant's Courtyard.

(19:01 - 19:05)

And I'm helping out with Leslie Ewing Bird, which is in The Container. Amazing. Great.

(19:05 - 19:10)

Thank you. And that's a nerd Magic the Gathering thing that I made myself.