‘I painted myself blue – but got skin problems’: how four Edinburgh stars created their weird characters

From a cake-baking Elton John to possibly the most horrible man in the world, comedians reveal how they get in character – and how far they can push things

Katie Pritchard is Sir Elton Scone

In the Covid lockdowns, I was drawing all these silly things, and one day I drew Elton John as a scone. It brought me lots of joy. I love Elton John and everything he’s about – his music and his outfits – and my first job as a musician was in a bar in Soho, where I used to play his back catalogue. I turned the drawing into a very silly character, just for my enjoyment.

I didn’t think anything of it until last year, when I was talking to my friend, the amazing drag artist Michael Twaits, and mentioned Sir Elton Scone. He was, like, “you need to develop that.” The character has evolved, but he’s still true to his roots in that it’s basically a bit like Elton John – but obviously for legal reasons, nothing like Elton John – and he just loves to bake. He’s hosting a TV baking gameshow that uses no ovens, so it’s completely nonsensical. It’s become really fun because audiences understand how a TV studio audience reacts, so it’s a clear game for them to play.

I thought if I was coming at it as drag, what would I perceive to be very “masculine” traits to put into the character? For me, it was manspreading and making people move out the way for me. I realised when I’m backstage I’m constantly trying to not be in the way, and I’m only 5ft tall, so I thought, let’s play with the opposite of that. If I am taking up this much space, what comes with that is more confidence, so I made this giant character – giant hands, a big chef’s hat, the suit jacket twice the width of my shoulders. Although if I could go back to last March, when I bought some velvet curtains from a charity shop in Wales to make the suit, I wish I could tell myself: in the run-up to Edinburgh, you’re going to have to preview this show in 30C heat.

Previous characters I’ve done include someone who sang hip-hopera – hip-hop songs, opera style – but I found it very restrictive. I feel like a baking-themed Elton John is more free. That’s been a really joyful part of it as well. It has sparked so many ideas.

Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick

I started doing standup 10 years ago, and got a bit sick of writing normal jokes. The standups I liked were absurd and surreal. I started a Twitter account called Basil Crumbwick with no intention or really knowing what I was doing, and I would tweet out weird nonsensical things, a kind of free-writing exercise. It turned into this character of this horrible old man. If anyone tried to follow it, I blocked them. It was very much for me and just this experiment I was doing for my own amusement.

He had to be the most weird, confused, un-self-aware person imaginable, and I think an older British man is a good way of getting to that. He exists in a very small world, but it’s all filtered through a lot of absurdity and surrealism. Whether that’s his delusion or whether he just actually exists in this insane, cartoon world is for the audience to decide.

I’m 7ft tall with Crumbwick’s head on. Because I’m not an actor, and the character was built through this anonymous Twitter account, it felt right to have the anonymity of a big papier-mache head. I knew people would say, “Are you doing Frank Sidebottom?” I think Frank Sidebottom’s great, but I wouldn’t say this was inspired by him and I’m doing quite a different thing.

This is now the third head I’ve made. It’s really hot and because I can’t see very well, I’m constantly bumping into things, banging my head or falling over. He’s such an angry character that when I, as a performer, am suffering, it ends up fitting him quite well.

Basil says horrible things. I’ve written routines where he says xenophobic, sexist and homophobic things, and I don’t want to shy away from that and what people like him are like, but there’s a satirical side to the show.You can let the audience figure out what your angle is, and different people can interpret it in different ways. I think that gives you more creative freedom. But it can be tricky being a performer who wants to be liked, playing the least likable man in the world.

Hudson Hughes is Rev Derek Gritt

I started with the idea of this horror story, based on Viy, a Ukrainian film – and the first officially sanctioned horror film in the Soviet Union – about a monk who kills a witch. She comes back to life three nights in a row, and he’s got to preside over the last rites. I don’t know why, but when I watched that, I thought: I could do that, but as a comedy.

I initially wrote pages of ideas, and then I got a bit stuck. I just couldn’t figure out what the character would be, so I shelved it for about a year. Then I must have been watching something with TV presenters Richard Madeley, Alan Titchmarsh or Anton Du Beke, and I thought, this is who he is. I find something funny about them – they’re middle-aged men who wear foundation.

So Derek is a vicar, but he’s also a TV celebrity. The audience are his old parish that he hasn’t been back to for 20 years. He treats them terribly, like they’re country bumpkins, practically medieval, and he can be extremely condescending to them. There’s a veneer of charm that I think is quite funny, and I think he does genuinely try to be friendly, but he’s also quite sneering.

There are a lot of electronic props in the show, including an animatronic coffin which is controlled remotely – I studied electrical engineering at university – mainly to advance the horror rather than the comedy.

I’m not really interested in being myself on stage. I’ve done standup a couple of times and I don’t think I’ve got anything interesting to say. It’s so much easier to put words into someone else’s mouth and figure out who the character is. When you’re playing a character, you can be a lot less self-aware. I like high drama, and being theatrical. I find character comedy more surprising as well. I know a lot of clowns, and I definitely draw stuff from that. In standup, unless you’re doing audience interaction, most of the time you’re talking about stuff happening elsewhere and getting the audience to imagine it, whereas with clowning, and with character comedy, it’s all about what’s happening in the room.

Anna Leong Brophy is Born Sexy Yesterday

The seed of the show came from a podcast I used to do with my comedy partner, Emily Lloyd-Saini, where we reviewed the Luc Besson film The Fifth Element, and the concept of Born Sexy Yesterday came up. It was first identified by writer Jonathan McIntosh. He noticed this theme, particularly in sci-fi, of a powerful alien or otherworldly entity who is deposited into the body of, usually, a 19-year-old model who has a lot of attributes that men value – martial arts or gun-fighting skills – but is completely naive to the human world. Which means as soon as she meets any man, often an extremely mediocre man, she thinks he is the most wise, amazing person ever, just because he’s shown her what pizza is.

She’s unaware of her physical beauty, so she might accidentally take her top off, because what’s the big deal? It’s this worrying concept that men are so desperate to feel unthreatened that they actually want the mind of a baby in the body of a sexually active woman, whereas no woman would fantasise about having a baby deposited into a man’s body. She lives in the same world as the manic pixie dream girl, and the girl next door, and all these tropes. I started seeing her everywhere, and I also realised that I had really bought into this idea of a woman having to be profoundly naive, but also incredibly strong and kick ass.

I went with what immediately occurred to me as a “sexy alien”. Initially, she was blue, but after several shows of painting myself and the resulting skin problems, she’s no longer blue. But she has that smooth alien otherness while still being very human that I associate with characters like Leeloo in the Fifth Element – the sci-fi hottie.

I have an acting background and I’m always drawn to performing rather than telling. The show is essentially about inequalities that I see or experience day to day, but no one wants to sit in the dark for an hour to be ranted at. You can push it really far by parodying, for example, the tropes. It feels like these stories we’re all told, men included. We’ve all bought into them because that’s the water we’ve been swimming in. But it’s interesting to lift the lid, and it feels like the audience all does that at the same time.

I’ve played fantasy characters in TV and film – as a mixed-race person who is often viewed as “other”, it’s a natural casting place where people want to put me. This show gives me the opportunity to play multiple characters, including all the characters I don’t get cast as. I can play a man, I can play Leonardo DiCaprio. I get to make this show, play the roles and flex the muscles that I never get to flex. The joy of self-creation.

• Katie Pritchard is Sir Elton Scone is at Hoots @ Nicolson Square until 30 August. Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage is at Monkey Barrel Comedy until 30 August. Hudson Hughes: At Your Service is at Underbelly, Cowgate, until 30 August. Anna Leong Brophy: Born Sexy Yesterday is at Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August.