Saturday with Alison Spittle: 'I got into comedy for the same reason people get into OnlyFans'

Currently performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—where she’s been getting rave reviews—comedian Alison Spittle takes us through a typical Saturday in her life

Sat, 23 Aug, 2025 - 03:00

Sarah Finnan

08.30

I try to sleep in because I work late, but the daylight will wake me, so I get up around 8.30.

If you’re a comedian, your weekends are really your weekdays. What most people do on a Saturday, I do on a Tuesday.

09.30

There’s a parkrun very near my house that I like to do. I do a parkrun once a month, but I think about doing a parkrun four times a month.

I won’t eat beforehand, and I’ll regret it, but I am a breakfast person.

I try and make the nicest breakfast possible with the ingredients I already have because I hate shopping. You’ll never catch me in Ikea at the weekend.

Three of my weekends a month are spent on the road, so I stay in hotels a lot. I have my routine down.

You have to get value for money, and I’m shameless, so I bring a lunch box with me and I’ll put my bits that I want for 11pm that night into it. I’m very Alan Partridge.

10.30

I have a show coming up at the Dublin Fringe, which I’m currently preparing for. It’s called Big.

I’m doing it at the Edinburgh Fringe at the moment, and it’s getting good reviews.

I lived in England when I was younger, and I was always self-conscious about having a bit of an English accent.

Then I moved to Ireland, I knew that there were two things people could throw at me: that I was fat and I was English, so I changed my accent.

I didn’t bother with my weight, but last year, I got really ill, and I had to lose weight. The show is about how I’m becoming smaller, but it’s terrible how we treat fat people. It’s very funny!

After the Fringe, I have to set up an OnlyFans account. They’re trying to branch out into non-horny stuff, so they’re paying comedians to record stand-up, like a TV show.

The website facilities are there, they already host a lot of content… It’s like opening up a business that works in tandem with sex work, like a kebab shop or something.

There are definitely a lot of emotionally damaged people in both industries. I’d say I got into comedy the same way a lot of people at OnlyFans got into that line of work: father wounds.

12.30

I saved And Just Like That for during the Edinburgh Fringe because I thought I’d need it to distract me. I hate-watch it.

I loved it when Che Diaz was in it. People thought Che was a horrible representation of nonbinary people, but they’re probably the most realistic representation of comedians; really narcissistic.

I wouldn’t go out with a comedian, and I’d give a medal to anyone who does, including my partner. Fair play to him.

17.00

Knowing whether to eat before a show or not is a comedian’s quandary. It’s important to hit the right balance.

In your 20s, you could say, ‘Oh, I don’t know why I feel like this. Is Mercury in retrograde?’, when actually, you just had cake for breakfast, and your blood sugar is spiking.

That’s the annoying thing about being in your mid-30s: you have to accept those realities. I’d rather believe in horoscopes than the gut microbiome.

If I’m going to eat out, I’m going to eat out at 5pm because it’s Saturday and I’m an early bird lady. Otherwise, I go to Marks and Spencers, I buy picky bits and then I last on that all weekend.

You’ll find me in bed, eating cold bean salad and tuna, which sounds horrific, but I like that life.

You spend your Friday night paying for the whole weekend, so you have to budget.

There are comedians who have been gigging for 25 years, and their wages haven’t gone up. I’m doing this for love, not money.

18.00

I like to have a bath to relax. I’ll get a bath bomb, even though I don’t know what it does, I’ll turn on Four in the Bed, and I’ll be looking up the TripAdvisor reviews of that B&B.

You can tell by the reviews that people have just watched the TV show, got so enraged at the people running it and then pretended that they stayed there.

21.00

Touring is amazing because someone has built their Saturday night around you. As a comedian, you see so many different types of people, but they all have one thing in common: they all wanted to go out and laugh that day.

That’s a big responsibility. With a club gig, the audience is taking a risk. They’ve just come out generally for a laugh.

So you have to do your best 20 minutes and show them something different. They’re not going to see a comedy show every weekend, so you want to make it as memorable as possible.

That’s what I love about my job: that you’re actively trying to make someone’s Saturday night a bit better.

I get all my external validation from about 200 strangers a night, which cannot be good for you psychologically.