A furious row between TV and radio performer Paul Sinha and one of Scotland’s best-known comedy critics threatens to divide audiences and comedians at the Edinburgh festival fringe into rival “teams”.
Sinha, who has a Radio 4 show and is a regular contributor to ITV’s quiz show The Chase, labelled Scottish writer Kate Copstick a “sociopathic bully” after she responded angrily to being refused entry to his show. The Scotsman critic wanted to see his show’s only preview night in the city.
“She was politely told she could not come,” Sinha told his audience at the Stand comedy club. “This is normal in Edinburgh, yet she reacted by calling me ego-driven and lazy.” Sinha went on to ridicule Copstick and ended with a challenge to the critic to sue him.
After being turned away last Wednesday, Copstick wrote on Facebook: “Am currently taking a bag of Scotsman stars, tipping them into a mortar and pestle and grinding them to dust. Sorry. Now rant over.” She later complained that high-profile comedians were overly protective of their work, yet happy to take punters’ money before their shows were ready. She wrote in the Scotsman: “These are, let’s face it, just highly paid blokes, standing at a microphone, saying stuff. Stuff they’ve been standing and saying at microphones for months of previews.”
Sinha retaliated on comedy website Chortle, calling her “spiteful” and an “ageing Veruca Salt” (the spoilt child in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
This weekend Sinha said he had no previous “beef” with Copstick: “I was vitriolic about her on stage for comedic effect, but I have a responsibility to my show. I’ve had other preview evenings, but before Edinburgh you get lots of false-negative and false-positive audience reactions to jokes. It is only at the festival that you have your first true preview. I didn’t appreciate her saying I wasn’t ready.”
He also told the Observer: “To Copstick’s credit, she spends time looking for unheralded talents and acts people have not heard of.”
Sinha added that he did not want to undermine the relationship between critics and performers at the festival, a place where a comedian’s career and finances can depend on reviews and the number of stars on their posters.
Copstick told the Observer: “I’m a Paul Sinha fan. And he’s right about one thing, I was flouting an Edinburgh convention. But his argument about previews is kind of bollocks because the audience here changes radically every performance and if some newbies come up and have to be seen by the critics straight away, then why can’t the big boys handle it?”