Tessa Coates is performing Witch Hunt at Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance This) during August.

  • What is your Fringe show about?

It’s about men and women and language and evolution. It’s funny, I promise.

  • How many times/many years have you appeared at the Fringe?

This will be my second time going by myself, three years with Massive Dad and three years as a student. (Too many) 3 What’s your most memorable moment from the Fringe?

Maybe sitting in the back of a free fringe venue in a pub with Ellie White, when we were teenagers and before either of us were performers and we'd come up to Edinburgh on the overnight Megabus. It was pouring with rain, I was sat beside a sexy dead bride from a student production of Dracula who was covered in blood, and a guy in an outfit that was just fishnets, with a dog collar and he was holding his own leash.

It was a cabaret show at about 2pm in the afternoon, everyone there was just sheltering from the rain and an American woman got up and did a rap and then started genuinely crying and shouting 'why don't you like me!' at the audience. I think about it all the time.

  • What’s the worst thing about the Fringe?

The rain, and the sheer length. It needs to be 10 days shorter. Or they need to start giving out vitamin shots to performers so everyone stops getting scurvy.

  • If you were not a performer what would you be doing?

Maybe being a teacher? But absolutely living for directing the school play.

  • How do you prepare for a performance?

I’m alright these days, I used to get very sick with nerves but now I’m much better at channelling them. I once tried to do some pre-show yoga like I was Katy Perry or something and I immediately put my back out so I never tried that again.

  • Favourite thing about being in Edinburgh?

That it’s like summer camp - you know everyone and you make new friends and there’s a real camaraderie between performers underneath all that scurvy.

  • What’s the most Scottish thing you’ve ever done?

Oh, fell off a barrel at a ceilidh?

  • Favourite Scottish food/drink?

A battered Mars Bar every time.

  • Sum up your show in three words

Do Please Come

Show summary

Armed with an absolutely useless degree in Anthropology, she'll be combining storytelling with very intense academic research. Which is surely what everyone wants from their comedy. 

Tessa Coates is performing Witch Hunt at Pleasance Courtyard (Pleasance This) during August. For tickets, please visit www.edfringe.com

You can follow Tessa on Twitter at @TesaCoates and visit the official website at http://www.tessacoates.com/