“I think the Fringe is like a cat,” says Mark Dean Quinn.
“If you ignore it, it will come towards you. But if you try and get hold of it, it will run away.”
The approach certainly seems to be working so far.
Despite not paying for posters, PR, or even an entry in the Fringe programme, Mark Dean Quinn has become a Fringe cult – attracting hundreds of people to late night shows where he dresses as a whoopee cushion and eats a kilogramme of sliced cheese.
“No one knows my name. I got known as The Cheese Man. People say: ‘Is the Cheese Man back this year?’ on Reddit.”
But this year he has decided it is time for something new.
‘Mark Dean Quinn Tries To Walk Towards A Flipchart’ takes place at 1.55am each night in the Cinema Room of the Banshee Labyrinth, in a room that holds only 35 people.
He is hesitant to describe what will happen – but it will definitely involve a flip chart and some walking.
“It’s a tight five stretched over an hour,” he says. “It could go on longer. It’s the last show of the night.”
Quinn has found a way to work with late night crowds, whether they be drunk, asleep, angry or confused. He is a master of taking a simple concept and extending it, bringing his audience into a state of delirium with a repetitive game of call and response. A softly spoken man, he quietly and firmly subdues whatever wild energies are swirling around the room, getting his audience to supply sound effects, punchlines and roars of laughter.
“I see my shows as an open space where everyone’s response is valued. You can’t just close people down aggressively. There may be a reason why they are saying what they are saying. Maybe they are struggling. Let’s be realistic, it’s 1.50am, people have been drinking, they’ve had a long day and you don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives.
“I had a homeless guy come in four nights in a row. He just wanted a rest.
“It is about making people feel they have the freedom to do what they want – but there isn’t the freedom to do what they want without consequences.
“Lots of people who’ve come to my shows have become friends. It becomes a community.”
Bizarrely when Mark Dean Quinn first started comedy, he actively tried not to make people laugh.
At that time, he was an established visual artist who had work shown in the Tate. He conceived a performance piece where he would create a stand up comedy routine without laughter – by taking out all the jokes that worked. People found it hysterically funny.
“The more funny things I took out of the show, the more people laughed.”
The cheese eating also came out by accident.
“In 2022 I had a stroke and I wrote a tightly scripted show called ‘Mark Dean Quinn Has Had A Stroke But At Least He Got A Show Out Of It.’ But it didn’t work.
“When I was on stage I would think about what I wanted to do and think about the left hand side of my brain. But as soon as I thought about the left side of my brain it would paralyse me. It was a very confusing time. If I tried to do anything I couldn’t do it. If I did something instinctively I could do it.
“Once, that year in Edinburgh I was walking up an escalator that was broken – but as soon as I realised it was broken and I was walking I couldn’t walk.”
It was a difficult month – but by the end of it Mark Dean Quinn had figured out how to take back control of his brain in front of an audience. The cheese eating routine began as an experiment – and it worked.
The following year he decided to make it the framework for his entire show.
“I did sometimes mention that I had had a stroke but I think people thought it was a joke. I like the fact people don’t think it’s true.
In 2024, on the advice of medical friends, Mark Dean Quinn began to monitor his health and began alternating cheese with lettuce. People who went to shows on alternate nights became known as ‘cheese heads’ and ‘lettuce heads.’
Eating lots of lettuce, is, he confides, much, much harder than eating lots of cheese.
“The lettuce nights are brutal.”
The performer also began walking 20,000 steps a day to counteract the effects of eating 3,600 calories in a kilo of cheese. He got addicted to walking – whether he was eating a kilogramme of cheese or not and has slimmed down considerably.
“There’s an echo. I act like I’m eating cheese – even though I’m not eating cheese.”
Before becoming ‘The Cheese Man’ Mark Dean Quinn was making interesting funny shows and is a two-time winner of the Malcolm Hardee Awards. He first came to the Fringe in 2001 with the Subjective Quiz, featuring wrong answers only, along with a two-handed sketch show called Richard Dawkins Doesn’t Exist and We Can Prove It.’
There is a lot more to him than cheese.
“The purpose of that show was my recovery – not what happened to me. And I have recovered.”
A great supporter of other performers, Mark Dean Quinn has seen a lot of changes since he first came to Edinburgh. But he is still hooked.
“The Fringe has become a lot more commercial. It’s difficult for people to fail when there’s so much money on the line. But my whole career is based on failure. I fail up.
“People say that only rich people can come here – but I know a lot of people who come here and are not rich. But there’s so many little magic things that happen here. It’s about what happens in the room. It’s not like anywhere else.”
Mark Dean Quinn Tries To Walk Towards A Flipchart: Banshee Labyrinth, 1.55 am, PBH Free Fringe
