It’s August, which equals the arrival of the biggest event in the British performing arts calendar: the Edinburgh Fringe (happening this year from August 7 to 31). It’s a time when swathes of comedians, theatre-makers, cabaret artists and more from the UK (and far further afield) descend upon the Scottish capital for nearly a month of chaos and camaraderie. Among them is Taskmaster star Sophie Duker, who’s bringing her exhilarating and provocative new show Hot Beef Injection to the Fringe. It’s the comedian’s fourth time taking an hour of stand-up to the world’s biggest arts festival, but “probably [her] 365th Fringe”; that’s what it feels like to Duker, at least. “[It’s] this incredible place that has raised me, in a way,” she tells Broadsheet.
In her new show, Duker is exploring a topic on everyone’s lips right now: the worrying state of modern masculinity and how people square that with the men they know and love. For anyone who hasn’t figured it out, Hot Beef Injection is an “undercover dick joke” typical of Duker. “I always want to be a perverse little silly billy,” she says.
Men aren’t given an “easy time” in Duker’s hour, but it’s by no means exclusionary. “I love having old straight white men in the audience because I think that they really can laugh at themselves,” she says. “I think that so many people, regardless of gender, are terrified by a sort of hypermasculine competitiveness, and there are so many other nourishing ways to be a man and to deal with masculinity and to move forward.” That’s what Duker wants to offer – “with a lot of jokes about fingering as well”, she adds.
However-many years into doing the Fringe, Duker has compiled her own personal survival guide for getting through what can be a very intense month for performers and punters alike. “I think that it is very comforting and very relaxing to accept that at the Fringe everyone is mad,” she says. “But what I do like is that there's just so much [going on] energetically. Edinburgh's humming all month.”
The key to making it through the Fringe in one piece is knowing that “there's no expectation to do anything except for the job you have to do”. In her case, that’s performing her show every day; putting on Vitamin Poc, the event she’s organised on August 11 for people of colour; and running her own scheme, Sugar Daddy, which allows people of colour or low-income Fringe attendees to come to her show for free.
Duker doesn’t drink much, which helps her “stay grounded” during the festival and actually appreciate the city as a place that exists outside of the Fringe. “Explore the edges of a map,” she advises. To maintain her sanity and health, she’s “finally going to buckle and go to the Pleasance gym this summer to keep herself moving. “People who go rave about it; I don't think I'm a particularly Sporty Spice kind of girl, but I have started pole dancing, so I've got to keep the upper body strength because the only thing I'm going to be lifting for 30 days is going to be a microphone, and they aren't that heavy,” she says.
When it comes to spots to eat in, Duker admits that her recs are “sort of unhinged”. She sings the praises of Uwagboe’s Kitchen & Grill, a Nigerian restaurant on Leith Walk. The team catered an event by arts initiative Fringe of Colour that “people will not stop raving about”, to the extent that Duker booked it to cater the 2026 Vitamin Poc party. Then there’s Edinburgh’s oldest (and these days, viral) baked potato spot Tempting Tattie. “It's the only place where jacket potatoes ever really made sense to me,” she says.
She’ll be spending time at Pomelo Cafe, an Asian-fusion restaurant in Marchmont that “sounds delicious”, and Urban Angel in New Town, which focuses on locally sourced seasonal produce. “When someone's like, ‘Oh, let's get something healthy during Edinburgh,’ you’re like, ‘Why would you try to hurt me like that?’, but it's just real good food,” she says.
Sophie Duker: Hot Beef Injection runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from August 7 to 30.*
