Link to one of a number of articles I’ve written for The Independent as a sometime reporter at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
After an eight-year absence, Emo Philips, once America’s weirdest comedy export, is back at the festival. What has he been doing?
At first I didn’t recognise him. He looked almost, well, normal. And normal is a word rarely uttered with reference to Emo Philips, by far America’s weirdest comedy export, who shot to fame with distinctive goggle-eyed amazement in the early 1980s with appearances on Late Night With Letterman andFriday and Saturday Night Live. Gone is the signature hair-do – a geeky long back bob with a ruler-drawn fringe – that suggested he’d just stepped out of an institution, rather than a salon. Gone, too, is the gangling frame, variously described as “stick insect” and “ET”, replaced by a comfortable stockiness.
Sarah Barrell 