Fringe preview: Lucy Porter

QI, Mock The Week, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Lucy Porter has been on them all. She has notched up a few Fringes too over the years. Since the 1990s, Porter has been rubbing shoulders with the big names from both the UK and Hollywood circuits. In her new show, Consequences, she ignores all that and shares insights into her life as a suburban mother. Of course, having kids has also radically changed her approach to '˜doing' the Fringe, as she explains here...

“People often ask me if my fringe experience has changed much since having children.

Well, you know how having kids turns your life on its head? Having kids as a fringe comedian also turns your day upside down.

My fringe routine pre-motherhood involved getting up as late as possible and going to bed at five in the morning.

Now my day starts just when I would have been rolling home in the good old days.

When the kids were very little I’d often see comedy colleagues sheepishly walking back from the Gilded Balloon, as I pushed a buggy across The Meadows with a sleepless baby. We would exchange embarrassed pleasantries, both bleary-eyed but for different reasons.

Now the kids are older and things are much easier. They sleep more and at more predictable hours, and they love the festival.

Taking under fives to shows is perfectly possible, but you have to be armed with snacks.

I usually try not to bribe the children with sweets, but... oh, who am I kidding? I always bribe the kids with sweets, and if they’re threatening to make a fuss in a show I shovel sugar into their mouths like a steam train driver stoking a furnace.

To save money I always try to bring our own food. I leave the house in the morning with a backpack full of pitta breads, hummus and carrot batons. I come back later with all those foods still intact, having spent pounds on donuts from the stall outside Assembly.

People always say, ‘Oh, but you can save cash by not taking them to shows and just letting them watch the street performers instead’.

These people don’t know how many street performers there are - those £1 donations soon add up.

I’ve found a cheaper way to entertain the kids though - get them up really early and let them watch drunk comedians doing the walk of shame across The Meadows.

Lucy Porter: Consequences, Pleasance Courtyard. Forth, until 28 August, 5.30pm, £10-£14, 0131-226 0000