In Profile: Wendy Wason

It takes a particular kind of cool to hit the Edinburgh Fringe with a solo show when you’re eight months pregnant. Wason seems incredibly relaxed for someone who might, possibly, y’know, go into labour on stage. “I am huge. I am going to be SO pregnant at my gigs in Edinburgh,” she tells us. “I did a gig last night and I could just feel the audience worrying about me. It really made me laugh… so it could come early, but what else are you gonna do when you’re waiting for a baby? You only spend the last weeks of a pregnancy telling folk, ‘no, there’s no news…’”

Wason is an Edinburgh native with an impressive CV. She’s been on The IT Crowd, Tittybangbang and Midsomer Murders. "I had to play the single mother and my daughter played my daughter on the show. She got to sit on John Nettles’ knee in the make-up truck. I was like, ‘Oh my God, my child is SITTING ON BERGERAC!’ ”

Her previous Edinburgh shows include Other Peoples Secrets and Things I Didn’t Know, I Didn’t Know. So what can we expect this year?

“This year’s show is called Flashbacks,” she tells us. “I was reading that human beings are the only animals who imagine what the future might be like; we do that by drawing from the past and thinking about the present. So I thought I’d go back over my own past, being born in the 1970s and being a kid in the 80s – although I don’t want it to be like one of those dreadful 'I Love The 80s' shows...”

Wason’s caustic wit means the show’s not likely to be full of sappy childhood nostalgia, but does she have a policy on hecklers? “Do you know what; I once did a joke about Yakult, you know, the yoghurt drink – and got a bacteria-related heckle. I was like ‘Ooh, look at you, coming at me with your bacteria.’ How brilliant is that as a heckle, though?”

So, between banter with hecklers, who does Wason want to catch at this year’s fringe? “Seann Walsh; he’s a new comic and he’s great. I also recently saw Flange Crammer – great name – and I recommend Joel Dommett too.”

Listening to Wason’s deceptively simple confessional stories, you can’t help but feel like you’re in the pub with your particularly sarky and honest best mate. And with the added possibility of witnessing the first baby born mid-set at the Fringe, this is one to see at all costs.