Fiona Allen: On the Run

ON THE RUN is about a woman finding herself.

While Fiona Allen was already well known as one of the female-led sketch group Smack The Pony she had always wanted to try stand up.

And her new Edinburgh show is all about what happened when she went on the road.

“It’s called ‘On the Run’ because it is about realising that for years life was all about kids and work.”

“It’s a thing or being in your fifties. People start doing things they’ve never done before. I remember my mum in her forties started coming home with pottery. Years go by and you think – what am I doing for me”.

She fell in love with the comedy circuit – even though people could not understand why she was doing it.

“I did once have someone say to me: ‘Why don’t you give someone else a chance?’ – but I thought: ‘Are we supposed to do what other people want us to do?”

For Allen the stand-up scene was hugely liberating. “Anyone can do it. There are people from all different nationalities. There are loads of women and you can say whatever you like.”

“It’s nice being in a car without a dog and listening to my own music without my kids. I think: ‘Where am I going to be this week?’ I look at the map, there are all these different places I’m going to be and I look forward to it.

“I’m meeting loads of other comics and really having a good laugh.

Although Allen is well known as a character actress and has appeared in sketch shows alongside Jo Brand, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Simon Pegg – she realised with stand-up she had to start from the beginning.

“I started with five minutes, then ten minutes, then fifteen. When I got to 20 minutes I thought I would see if I could write a show.”

“There are characters in the show – but they are characters in my life. So my mum is Spanish and I have an Australian hairdresser and a Bulgarian cleaner.”

Her husband (Allen is married to Michael Parkinson’s son Mike) will also feature: “He’s so disorganised I don’t think he’d manage to have an affair because he’d forget to go.”

“I do a bit about passive aggressive school mums. That was a real shock to me when I encountered it. No one really talks about it and I think we should call it out. There are mean girls at school and they carry on being mean girls when they grow up. You think you’ve put that behind you and you find out it carries on.”

Allen says she’s still proud of ‘Smack The Pony’, where she appeared alongside Sally Phillips and Doon Mackichan and which still stands alone as a female-led sketch show.

“I don’t think I have seen anything like it and people still genuinely love it.

“I get a lot of people, younger comics who come up to me and say: ‘I got into comedy because of ‘Smack The Pony’. People also get in touch with me saying: ‘I had a ‘Smack The Pony’ binge last night. It’s still very relatable.”

For the moment she’s concentrating on her new stand-up career – and her upcoming debut on the Edinburgh Fringe.

“I absolutely love Edinburgh. I love the city.”

She’s rented a place in the suburbs, away from the centre of town – and she’s looking forward to a month of doing her own thing.

Is she expecting a visit from the family? “They might come up – but I’m not encouraging it.

“I have never been away from home for a few weeks before – but I have got to concentrate on my show. I’m not on holiday.”

She’s already booked a tour of regional theatres in Autumn on the back of her afternoon show at the Pleasance in Edinburgh.

“I’m not even having a day off in Edinburgh. I didn’t know that was a thing.

“But I’m a grifter. I just want to do the best show I can.”

Fiona Allen: On the Run

16:15

Pleasance Courtyard

August 2 – 20