Waxing lyrical is the award winning stand-up poet, Kate Fox who is making her Edinburgh Fringe debut with Kate Fox News in the Sportsman’s Bar at the Gilded Balloon. As poet in residence on Radio 4’s Saturday Live and lyrical commentator for BBC2’s Daily Politics – Kate Fox literally presents poetic vers d’occasion from the 4th to the 30th of August at 1.15 pm each fringe filled afternoon.
1. What inspired you to become a stand up poet?
It’s a substitute for being a rock star or a psychotherapist and contains some elements of both!
2. What’s your show about and where are you taking your show after the Edinburgh Fringe?
Kate Fox News explores my life story through the news stories that were their backdrop. It has mainly funny poems in, and stand-up, and some less funny bits where I hope there’ll be slight moistness – In the eyes. The show then goes on a national tour of Arts Centres starting with the Soho Theatre in London on September 22nd.
3. What are you most proud of?
Being just socially dysfunctional enough!
4. If you had a chance to work with anyone of your choosing, who would it be?
Leonard Cohen. Not quite sure what he’d make of poems about Trinny and Susannah, but there you are. Also, I would be an excellent Dr Who’s companion, if not quite as leggy as Karen Gillan. Bring back Billie Piper I say!
5. What kind of questions do you most like to be asked about your work and why?
Probably not questions that ask me about questions. I just heard the children’s writer Michael Rosen talking about how it’s good to ask questions you don’t know the answer to.
6. Do the reviewers of Fringe shows do a good job?
I’d think a reviewer of my show had done a good job if they left their preconceptions at the door and responded honestly to what they experienced. Perhaps I really mean; as long as they liked it!
7. What do you feel about the current state of Arts funding available?
It’s a time where new funding streams are going to need to be developed. Organisations will need to focus and streamline, individual artists will need to see themselves as multi-skilled mini-businesses even more. I’m not sure that the Tories belief that there are tons of wealthy philanthropists just dying to shower ragged artists with cash to create masterworks in their garrets is accurate. Maybe more co-operation and collaboration will also come out of inevitable reductions in funding (and grassroots inventiveness – probably greatly fueled by the global possibilities the internet offers). Gosh, I’ve thought about that more than I’d thought I had.
8. Which three famous people would you invite to dinner and why [dead celebrities included]? And what tasty treat would you prepare?
For Leonard Cohen, R.D Laing (the Glaswegian anti-psychiatrist) and Barack Obama I would prepare salmon and mango stew with rye bread. I thought it was a traditional Finnish recipe since that’s where I was first made it, but it turned out our Finnish host had got the recipe from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”.
Those three men are also just the right side of socially dysfunctional in very different ways.
9. What do you do to relax?
I look at the sea, read anything from Ian McEwan to Marian Keyes, watch DVD box sets with my husband – we most loved Boston Legal and are now on “Lie to Me”- and eat copious amounts of milk chocolate.
10. What would be your dream come true?
Actually, I think it really would be being Dr Who’s Companion. Not in the TV show, but in actual, real life. I wouldn’t be much use fighting Daleks though. I would however be most excellent at confusing the monsters and aliens with strange streams of consciousness ramblings and then I’d get them to do a stand up poetry workshop and be less angry.
6. You are also a singer-songwriter and your voice has been compared to the immortal Patsy Cline. Do tell us more about your musical career? 
