My Favourite Place by Comedian Lucy Porter Where is it? Portobello Beach. Why do you go there? It has been saving my sanity at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe since the early 1990s. When the hustle and bustle of the city gets too much, I’m trying to work on jokes for my shows or I’ve simply had too late a night, I head there for a sit-down in the sand and some head-clearing sea air.
How often do you go? I used to go once during the festival month, but now that my children come to the Fringe too, we tend to go about once a week. They love the Empire biscuits with a jelly sweet on top from Baynes. (Image: PA) How did you discover it? I think it was Nica Burns who recommended it.
She’s now one of the world’s top theatrical producers, but back then she was my boss when I worked for the Perrier Awards. She could see that I was stressed and tired, so she packed me off in a taxi to the beach. What’s your favourite memory? When my children were very young, we went to Portobello with friends for the day and the weather was perfect.
We’d been cooped up in a tiny, top floor flat all month and they were going a bit stir crazy. We’d exhausted every local playground and they were too young for the children’s shows we were trying to take them to. We had a magical day at the beach making sandcastles and meeting dogs.
There were lots of tears when it was time to leave and we lost their shoes somewhere along the way, but I didn’t mind because we’d had such an amazing time. Wh.
