Edinburgh’s smut surge has become one of the most talked-about currents at the festival this season, driven by a mix of veteran names and smaller, interactive acts. Among the billed attractions is Julian Clary, returning with a show titled Fully Dilated, while burlesque performer Entendre Entendre stages deliberately bawdy singalongs. Other offerings include formats built around catalogues of explicit language — an A–Z of very dirty words has become a fixture in some late-night programmes. The trend has been visible across venues clustered around Edinburgh and the wider Fringe circuit.
Cameryn Moore, a US-born former phone-sex operator turned playwright, has brought a markedly intimate gesture to public spaces with a project she calls Sidewalk Smut. For a fee of £20 she asks people about their sexual preferences and quickly produces a piece of personalised erotic prose on a manual typewriter. Moore describes the pieces as stream-of-consciousness efforts with minimal punctuation; she also offers to read them aloud. Her working routine involves sitting for several hours a day and producing multiple bespoke texts for passersby and paying attendees.
A reporter who observed the activity at close quarters described being questioned about personal fantasies and receiving a typed erotic vignette in return. Moore and similar performers present their work as participatory: asking explicit questions, then converting answers into an artistic product that participants can keep or hear performed. Audience response has ranged from amused to visibly pleased, with many participants reporting a novel sense of being listened to and acknowledged about intimate desires.
The emergence of these shows highlights a broader willingness among festival programmers to make room for material that foregrounds sex, language and audience interaction. Established comics and newer acts alike are reframing lewdness as a vehicle for laughter, confession and spectacle rather than mere provocation. Performers argue that the format opens a direct line to audience experience, while venues accommodate a late-night appetite for edgier content as part of the festival’s diverse programme.
