Bart lets loose at Edinburgh Festival

The voice of one of TV’s best-loved characters is raising laughs – and eyebrows – at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, it emerged today.

Bart Simpson is famed for his repertoire of cheeky catchphrases such as “don’t have a cow” and “eat my shorts”.

But the troublesome 10-year-old is turning the air blue at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Nancy Cartwright, who provides Bart’s voice in The Simpsons, is performing at the festival, in the show My Life as a Ten-Year-Old Boy.

In the show she tells the audience the expletives Bart can and cannot say.

He is allowed to say “damn”, “hell” and “ass”, but during the festival show Ms Cartwright also mumbles a series of swear words he is banned from uttering on TV.

The voice of Bart does not actually belong to Ms Cartwright but to Gracie Films, who also own the rights to The Simpsons series.

Peter Kjenaas, spokesman for Ms Cartwright, said: “It’s a retrospective piece on her life as Bart.

“In it she explains what Bart can and cannot say in the show, she says he can say ‘damn, hell and ass’, then she mumbles an impression of words he cannot say.

“It gets a laugh, it doesn’t offend anyone. We haven’t had any complaints - the show has been reviewed as too wholesome by some papers,” he said.

A spokesman for the Assembly Rooms venue said they had not had any complaints about the performance.

“By our standards the show is quite mild,” he added.