A little bit about the people who make up Darkchat

The idea for Darkchat came about before the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival as a group of friends prepared to spend a week at that year's Fringe.  We watched a total of 29 shows between us over the week and each evening discussed what we had seen that day over drinks during our 'Darkchat' meetings.  The name came about using an acronym of our names.

                                               DARKCHAT's original Line-Up

                 consisted of:-

  David

      Anthony

    Rachel

Kate

Carl

   Helen

   Anne

Tim

 In 2008 Darkchat expanded to include further friends and the number of

 shows we all saw increased to around 50 shows.  Phil, Rick, Andy &

Anne (number 2) all attended their first festival and stayed at the

'Darkchat flat' whilst their were a further 9 friends gave their scores

for shows they attended with other Darkchat members.

Having now seen over 500 shows at Edinburgh as a collective we liked to think we had become reviewers (of a sort) and were now making a point of seeing as many different types of shows, across a broad range of genres and price ranges, providing online reviews for people to see.  We managed to get our first press pass in 2010 thanks to the good people at the Fringe and our reviews have now been seen by people from Greenland to New Zealand, and Aregntina to South Korea!

Some of the team take themselves so seriously that they have each added a paragraph about themselves below!

Dave Cox is original D for David in DARKCHAT. Being the oldest of the current

group it is fitting that his Edinburgh memories go back to the 1986 festival,

his first show being Rowan Atkinson at the Playhouse theatre with stooge,

Angus Deayton. Where are they now, eh?

By 2010 he had survived (just) his 12th festival in which time he has seen over

270 shows.   Who says a diet of little sleep, wine & curries is bad for you?

Back in the real world he masquerades as a shy, mild-mannered Insurance

adminstator during the day before changing into his reviewing outfit in the

evening and attending as many shows as he can. (Some of them he

doesn't fall asleep or faint in!)

You can read his online reviews at his blog or can contact him

using his e-mail or on facebook. 

Anne has been visiting Edinburgh for the Festival since 1989 and now

can nearly find her way around the city without a map.  She is married to

Darkchat Dave and works as an administrator, with an excessive love of

Excel spreadsheets and colour coding.  Her hobbies include scouring

the internet for the ultimate bargain Edinburgh Festival apartment.  

Her favourite thing about the Festival is Dave’s Excel spreadsheet

timetable (colour coded).  Least favourite: sleep deprivation.

Rick has yet to provide a penpic of himself as yet so it falls to the webmaster

to make some stuff up instead.  Rick is a writer, director & performer of

comedy sketches and plays.  He has the misfortune to follow a football team

whose kit looks a bit like Man City's but has far less money to spend and he

has a Masters.  His wife is also too pretty for him!

Kat Nicol is by her own admission an ageing film student who leans to shows outside of the comedic offerings. Tends to theme her yearly visits to the festival; one year death, the next cabaret. Revels in seeing truely bad shows, and manages to see most of them each time. Also has a tendency to stalk her favourite comedians, or mistakenly go into the mens' toilets when shaking the hand of a naked one.   She is still waiting for the roadside recovery man to call her back.

Carl is another founding member of DarkChat who first attended the Fringe in 2006 and for the following 2 years before having his Festival going cruelly cut short by the intervention of fatherhood.  Returning in 2011, with his wife and other DarkChatter Kate, Carl saw more shows in one day than was good for a father of twins that doesn't get much sleep, and will be returning in 2018 with those twins in tow for their 5th Fringe (at just 9 years old).  He is the only member of DarkChat to (so far) appear on BBC's 'The Culture Show' and is the proud owner of a 'Steve Wright played my oldies on Radio 2' badge.

Dailegs, aka : Dave, legs (yes it really is that simple a nickname) hails from a

home known to the local people as "Pyle's pimple on the arse of humanity".

A young and once uncultured soul has had his life changed due to the wonders

of Darkchat and it's shenanigan's. Nights spent whiling away watching trash

tele have been turned into wine and tele.  Now don't let that lull you into a

false sense of security, for this man does not watch X-Factor and what not,

he despises such pithy programs. He's far more a Family Guy so to speak.

Social commentary is more his forte, rather than social decimation. If

you need anymore details about this strange creature, email him here

Philip Jonathan Morgan Williams is the world's foremost expert on comedian/grasshopper Dan Mackee; he attends Edinburgh purely to bask in the glow of that warm, furry individual. He is knowledgable, wise, and can be mistaken for an owl at a very great distance.  He has written fifteen bestselling novels that have been sold in more than thirty different countries (none of the English-speaking conutries, sadly).

In his spare time he likes to repeatedly count to four, stop, then count back to zero. It is an exercise that ensures he will never be unable to count to four, stop, and then count back to zero, which is one of his great fears. His other fears include being one day considered 'trendy', being killed by a falling oak tree, and standing still for so long that life just passes him by. He also drinks far too much wine, though is yet to decide whether that's a flaw or a blessing.