We did it! We triumphed! I have returned a conquering hero from the Edinburgh Fringe, a process which traditionally involves a lot of goal-assessing and navel-gazing and long-winded thank yous and photo dumps on Instagram. “I’m so grateful to everyone who facilitated my decision to spend all my savings making people pay to look at me,” we gush in the captions to a series of photos of ourselves standing in front of photos of ourselves, as though any of this is normal behaviour. Traditionally for Fringe creatives, this is a time of hibernation and reflection, although it also often involves desperately trying to hit deadlines you’ve been putting off for a full month because you were too busy eating chips and cheese and googling your own name.

Happily, this year I put all the necessary structures in place to make it easy for me to do the necessary reflecting. Long-term readers will remember that at the start of the year I drew a Tarot card for each month of 2025 to find out how the year would go. I therefore cross-referenced my Fringe experience against what the Tarot predicted to get a sense of where my energies should be directed as we flow into the year’s final third, where hopefully I will reap the rewards of all my hard work and achievements at the Fringe. I was depressed to remember that for September I drew Death. Great. Just as I was starting to feel quite hopeful about the future.

Mind you, I see I also drew the Devil for August, traditionally quite a negative card about self-destructive habits, and my Fringe actually went really well, so clearly I’m capable of beating the cards. Although come to think of it, I did eat chips and cheese every other night and I did google my own name an awful lot, and I did work around my self-imposed ban on checking ticket sales by working out that I could add 20 tickets for my own show to my basket in one tab, then open an incognito tab and try to add another 20 tickets, then reduce the number I was trying to add until it no longer said “Allocation exceeded” and therefore work out how many tickets I’d sold for each performance, and I did this obsessively about twelve times per day. (I’d like to apologise to any Pleasance box office staff who were ever trying to sell tickets to my show and noticed that the number of available tickets would briefly go from 37 to 0 and then back to 37, as though a large group booking was being incredibly indecisive). I suppose all of those would qualify as self-destructive habits, so perhaps the cards are real, and I will die next month.

Anyway, no matter. The future is the future. It is for September to work out quite how I die (or, to give the Death card its true meaning, how I irreversibly change – maybe I’m finally going to get that Marillion tattoo across my shoulderblades?) For now, I’d like to look back at August and #reflect.

Look, the truth is, it went really well. It was maybe my favourite Fringe ever. I’ve spoken often enough about how bad it is that the Fringe encourages us to focus on and commodify external things that we can’t control and pull our focus away from our own creative fulfilment, but the fact of the matter is, people outside of the Fringe bubble don’t really know what qualifies as “going well” unless they see it quantified in some way. So, for the sake of simplicity, here is this year’s scorecard:

“Wow, Joz, that’s a lot of stars and award laurels! What’s the WoW award, I’ve not heard of that?”

Nor have I. But yeah, it’s nice, isn’t it? We also sold out the last two weeks of the run, and it became my first Fringe ever where I spent more than half of it not needing to flyer. I have always tirelessly flyered my own shows, even back in 2019, the only other year I succeeded in making a hit show that sold out by itself. Because I was doing two shows that year, it meant that no sooner did I finish performing the sold out one than I’d need to go and flyer for the other one, a ridiculous low-fi sketch double act I did with Ed Aczel that I absolutely loved. That experience, of running from a show that had inexplicably become a hit to another show that needed a bit more juice every day to get it full despite it being just as silly, just as fun, just as good, made me very aware of how random success at the Fringe is. Something can catch fire without you ever meaning it to. Something can pootle along all month despite you working really hard on it and doing everything right.

I was similarly aware of all that randomness this year. The first week was hard work. I was surrounded by such an incredible team – director genius Jon Brittain, tech wizard James Hingley, producer extraordinaire Queenie Miller, the incredible Strip Light flyering team headed up by the amazing Ewan Ward, the endlessly smart, insightful and supportive Miranda Holms who came up later in the run but was such a lifeline of love and care and thought in that first week over the phone. But I became aware that I had once again made a show that was quite hard to market. The show’s hook was basically “We can’t tell you what the hook is, you just have to come and see it,” which I do think is quite funny, but struggles to cut through in a crowded marketplace. The beautiful poster by Will Andrews helped us a lot, as I think the show’s artwork really stood out, and my pre-existing Fringe audience and sort-of reputation helped a lot, as it was a show that was on a few people’s radars already, but I was playing a big room and I found it hard to fill for a while. At one point I even spent a day really worried that I might have wasted my time and money and that I would return home in September with absolutely no idea what I was going to do next. Not that I wanted this Fringe run to change my life – the Fringe very rarely makes such sweeping career changes as that any more – but I hoped it might point me in the right direction for the next thing, and for the first week I was worried it might end up just being something I was proud of, and that was it. I remembered how badly I’d reacted to the cliff edge of not knowing what to do next after Blink back in 2022, and I was so worried it might happen again.

It was pretty ironic that I was experiencing these concerns around a show which was explicitly about the narcissistic assumption that making any piece of creative work will lead to some sort of monumental reward or give us any sense of closure, instead of accepting that our job is simply to move on to the next thing. I tried my best to internalise these things which I knew deep down, and stop torturing myself over whether or not the show would become “a hit.”

And then one guy came and gave it a 5-star review (the only one he gave out this Fringe!) and because he’s a critic who has become a bit of a bellwether for the Fringe, the show became a hit. It sold out most of the rest of its run, and lots of heroes of mine came to see it, and it secured a transfer to the Downstairs space in the Soho Theatre, a room I’ve never played before but have always wanted to (please come and see it! Words really cannot express how much I would love everybody to come and see this show as I do think it’s the best thing I’ve made, so if you’ve not seen it and can make it to the Soho dates, I would really love you to come!) And because I spent a lot of the last two years working up scripted ideas for TV, film and radio, the show kickstarted some conversations with people I’ve been wanting to collaborate with for a long time, which now might lead to some fun scripted projects over the year to come. Or they might not. Who knows? But the fear of the cliff edge completely disappeared. The show had given me enough breadcrumbs to walk towards the next thing, and the next, which is all you want any project to do, really.

So I’m very aware of how random and unpredictable Fringe success can be. I’m enormously grateful to Steve Bennett for his kind words about the show, and very glad he enjoyed it, but I’m also so aware that he is just one man who happened to see the show on a good day and whose review happened to come out at a time when people start to sniff around for which shows are getting buzz. It could have been so different, and it’s so much easier to absorb these lessons when it’s gone well. But for the time being I’m doing my best to hold two things in my hand at the same time – the pride at having made something that connected and resonated with a lot of people, and the knowledge that it doesn’t really mean much and it’ll pass, and soon it’ll be time to think about something else anyway.

One of the things I most enjoyed about having a successful Fringe, and the subsequent lack of need for flyering, was how much time it left me to actually hang out with people and watch shows. I saw 50 shows this year, more than any year before, and I spent so much time with so many wonderful friends – principally all those I mentioned before who were part of the team around the show, but so many others as well. Watching so much stuff at the Fringe is a great reminder of what’s really important about it – that you can immerse yourself in so many different people’s ideas, and be inspired from so many different directions. I saw Julia Masli do something genuinely transcendent, I saw Garry Starr being completely stupid (both made me cry, even though with one of them the thing making me cry was a guy’s willy flopping about while 500 people sang “Moon River”).

I was also so, so, so proud of all the shows I worked on, either as director or as a guest consultant/workshop facilitator. All five of the shows I directed – the Mayor & His Daughter, Tara Boland, Andy Barr, Lulu Popplewell and Edy Hurst – approached the Fringe with open hearts and sensible, achievable goals and all of them smashed their own goals and then went beyond them. They achieved 5-star reviews, award nominations, sellout shows, and all those other bits of nonsense you can’t control, but I was most proud of how they all fostered a healthy, human attitude to the emotional rollercoaster that is the Fringe. All of them confronted the abyss of wondering what the hell they were doing at some point, just as I did, and all of them emerged happy, proud, fulfilled, as well they all should. Go and see them when you can, I’m sure all their shows will come to London or perhaps tour some other places at some point!

And I even did a bit of work on two of the year’s biggest shows, Ayoade Bamgboye’s Swings & Roundabouts and Ada & Bron’s The Origin Of Love, both of which were nominated for Best Newcomer and, in Ayoade’s case, won it! I was only a tiny part of both shows, but I loved seeing so many things I worked on speeding ahead to such huge success this year, and I’m so proud of everyone I collaborated with.

Speaking of collaboration, John-Luke Roberts and I cobbled together an incredibly stupid show called Joz Norris & John-Luke Roberts Are Barry & Tony: The Baritones in about two days and it ended up being one of my favourite experiences of the Fringe. It was an important reminder halfway through the month that it doesn’t matter how good your show is or how acclaimed it is, unless you’re authentically connected to your own enjoyment while performing it, it doesn’t count for anything. I absolutely loved it, and I hope we might bring it back for a longer run next year, as it’s completely and utterly stupid.

Two final thoughts – about two thirds of the way through the Fringe, I was invited to be part of a press round table event discussing the state of the Fringe. Myself and a random selection of other comedians were asked how we feel about performing here, and the first question was “What keeps you coming back? Why do you all do the Edinburgh Fringe?” Every other comedian ignored the question and immediately started complaining about all the problems with the festival. I had to circle back and remind everyone of what question we were answering, and I gave my answer – because, for all its faults, it’s still the best place in the world for showing the kind of work you want to make and making it on your terms. There’s no commissioner to mess things around or kick the can down the road, or eventually reveal that you won’t be paid after all. There’s no algorithm to force your work into a recognisable format that will then show up in more feeds. There are plenty of hoops to jump through to even get a platform at the Fringe, true, and the problems with accessibility to that platform are well-known and real. But once you have that platform, I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the world quite as good at going “Ok, over to you. Make what you want to make.” A lot of people think the online space does this, but I don’t really agree. I think long-form comedy in particular – the idea of really crafting something special rather than making lots of small things – is poorly served by the online space, and I don’t think there’s anything like the Fringe for helping artists to find and build an audience for something they’ve really laboured over.

There are many, many problems with it and things that are causing it to atrophy, and it can’t last forever the way things are going. But I do think we have a responsibility as artists to talk about what works about it, and why we do it, and why we care about it, because if all we ever do is make noise about everything wrong with it, then we can’t act surprised when it inevitably dies. The last time I did the Fringe I came away with nothing but bad things to say about it, because my experience had left me completely drained. This time, I recognise its unfairness, its commercialisation, its unsustainability, but this time I also recognise that it’s important for me to say that that place matters, and we should be fighting for what’s good about it.

And finally – as a potential solution to the problem I noticed early on whereby I rarely make work with an in-built marketing hook and just hope the work will be good enough for its quality to eventually become its own marketing – next year I will be working on a show called Joz Norris Is Hugh Jackman Is The Phantom Of The Opera. Put it in your diaries now, because it will sell out.

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – Channel 4 have announced their upcoming slate of shorts, including mini-pilots from legends Rob Copland, Joe Kent-Walters and Tatenda Shamiso. I can’t wait to see them!

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – I think my biggest laugh of the whole month was either at Phil Ellis’s chihuahua story in his show Soppy Stern, or at the unexpected success of mine and John-Luke’s “Rubber Biscuits” sketch in Barry & Tony.

Book Of The Week – I’m reading Steve Martin’s memoir of his time in stand-up Born Standing Up (thanks for the birthday present Isabelle!) It’s fascinating and very funny and brilliant. I was never really into his stand-up, but having gone back and watched some of it alongside the book, he was a genius and paved the way for so much of what I love.

Album Of The Week – Jazz Impressions Of Japan by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. My Jazz Phase continues, to Miranda’s intense annoyance, although she’s finding the Brubeck stuff less aggravating than Mingus, or Mahavishnu Orchestra-era Miles Davis. This is your standard Brubeck weird-time-signature piano stuff but with a vaguely Japanese flavour here and there (well, they bang a gong a couple of times). It’s nice!

Film Of The Week – The Thursday Murder Club. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS FOR THIS FILM. This film is really bad. It’s bad for most of its runtime, then in the final five minutes a naff cosy teatime murder mystery suddenly ends with the main characters forcing their friends to carry out a suicide pact, then sending an undocumented migrant and victim of human trafficking to prison without any apparent thought for the morality of what they’re doing. Then they all dance around to Cat Stevens. It’s insane. Pierce Brosnan plays an East End trade unionist? Daniel Mays plays a country bumpkin police officer who’s out of touch with how they do things in the city? Baffling.

That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to recommend it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it! Take care of yourselves until next time, and all the best,

Joz xx

PS If you value the Therapy Tapes and enjoy what they do, and want to support my work and enable me to keep writing and creating, you can make a one-off donation to my Ko-Fi account, and it’s very gratefully appreciated.

PPS Here I am setting foot on home turf again on Tuesday:

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