Last year London-based comedian James Trickey was enjoying a run of his debut solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe.
He was getting attention in the national press, living with friends, and being an accountant by day, comedian by night. He was on the ultimate performer’s high going into the final night of his run. Then a fire alarm went off, and his show was evacuated, but the audience was enjoying his set so much they asked him to continue it outside on the streets. So of course, he did.
What an experience, what a buzz, what a time to be performing.
But then, James got punched in the face.
‘The audience were all like, “We were loving it. Keep doing the show on the street. Keep going!” James remembers. ‘You hear the stories about people doing this in the past, and it’s always like, oh, the spirit of the Fringe is beautiful, lovely, what show business, you know?’
As James and the audience settled on the street towards Cowgate to continue the show at around 10pm, a member of the public told them to shut up. It was a Sunday, so that’s completely fair enough, James admits.
‘Can you all shut up? People are trying to sleep,’ was the stranger’s opening. James understood this was perhaps not someone he wanted to mess with, apologised, and turned to tell the audience the show was over.
‘What are you, some kind of student?’ the man shouted, as James turned his back to address the audience. ‘I was very confused,’ James remembers. He tried to apologise to the angry stranger, but nothing resonated, and he continued to shout.
James’ producer came over and tried to get between the man and him, but he was already on a warpath and wasn’t going to back down.
‘Then he just punched me in the face, it came out of nowhere,’ James says. The ‘Guardian reader middle class’ audience gasped, James recounts with a small glint of amusement in an otherwise sombre retelling.
The man ran off and he was eventually arrested. Edinburgh Court summoned James to be a witness, but the man is not turning up to his court dates so there is now a warrant out for him.
‘I guarantee he won’t remember me at all,’ says James, who is performing at the Edinburgh Fringe again this August. ‘But there’s a little bit of me, which is like, was it a good idea to put my face on a lot of posters all around the city to be like, here’s where I’m going to be each night?’
It’s no wonder the moment has stayed with James. After just a three-minute interaction, the man split James’ lip into such a wide gash he had to go to A&E to get stitches.
‘I think the main thing was the immediate high to low,’ James says. ‘I was like, “I’m having such a good time”, to a complete change in status and feeling.’
James’ first reaction was not anger: it was shame. Since then, he’s spent a lot of time working through these complicated feelings.
‘Obviously the one thing was that there was an audience, but in the same way, it’s like, well, as a man, should I have been able to protect myself? Should I be able to fight back?’ James asks.
‘There’s a lot of chat at the moment about this manosphere stuff saying, “Oh, you’ve got to be able to protect yourself” and “I’d never let anyone punch me”. I don’t believe in any of that, but somehow it bled through a little bit.’
Reactions from other comics were also interesting. While they were sympathetic, the main response was that his next show is ‘sorted’. That did come to pass, as James is performing his new show, Split, in Edinburgh, based on this experience and the complicated feelings he has towards it.
But as a first reaction from people, James thought it was worth examining, how being punched as a man is an experience that’s brushed off, when it still lingered with him six months on.
‘I was like, how come I feel way worse about this than everyone seems to think I should feel?’ says James, who asked this in subsequent therapy sessions.
‘I didn’t really feel super comfortable with it until maybe like January,’ James says. ‘I was very conflicted about how I felt about it. There were times where I was like, oh, well, you know, people get punched like all the time. In my head, that was like a thing. A couple of my mates have been punched at uni and you’d wake up the next day and it would be like, oh, yeah, I got into a fight with some guy, but it’s “whatever” now.
‘So I thought if they’re all getting over it, then how come I’m not? Why am I so caught up on this? I realised that it’s a different scenario, right? Being drunk on a night out and having an argy bargy with some dude is different to doing the final show of your Edinburgh run, that you’ve poured loads of time into, and having it happen in front of the audience.’
James has always opened himself up on stage since school when he starred in plays. He went on to perform at the Fringe a few times with the University of Bristol, where he found his home in the improv and sketch scene. But after this disastrous lack of communication, resulting in him being punched, James is mindful to open himself up more in his real-life relationships.
‘[The incident] made me reevaluate the relationships I have with specifically the other men in my life,’ James says. ‘It’s made me reach out to my male friends in ways that I might not have done before.’
While James is melding this experience into a positive as much as he can, it’s also impacted his confidence, and he is now unfortunately wary of members of the public in a way he never was before.
‘I’ve never really ever felt on edge walking around late at night or anything like that. I think it’s probably got quite a male experience, to be honest,’ he says. ‘But all of a sudden I was like, if someone comes up to talk to me in the street, there’s like an anxiety there that I never used to have.’
James doesn’t think this was an incident motivated by a local’s objections to the Fringe. While the festival brings soaring costs, busy streets, and a huge swell of population for locals and there is backlash, James has never experienced animosity over it. It was a simple breakdown of communication, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But he still had to confront this experience for the first time when he stepped on the cobbles at the beginning of August.
‘All of a sudden, I couldn’t walk the same in the streets [after the incident]. I just got on a train and went back to London because it happened on the last day. When I go back, am I going to be like, oh, what’s going on here? I don’t think I will. I think I’ll be okay. I’m living with some really good mates of mine. So the support network is in place,’ he says.
Following James Trickey’s debut hour, Split will be at Bunker 2 from August 5-30 (9.25pm) in the Pleasance Courtyard. Get tickets here.