INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Leo Hincks, on Career Loss, Old Wounds, and Driving Yourself Mad with Your Own Insecurities

How meta and self-deprecating do you like your comedy? Leo Hincks might be out there to push your boundaries with his upcoming Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatrical comedy hour Emotional Cowboy, which he describes as the middle-ground between awards acceptance speech and ego death. The show revisits Hincks’ self-described devastating, career-altering loss at the Chortle Student Comedy Award Finals in 2024, in which his on-stage persona comes to a career reckoning. We caught up with Leo for a pixelated pint to find out more about the show.

You can catch Leo Hincks: Emotional Cowboy at Turret at Gilded Balloon Teviot on August 5th – 31st from 15:50 (60mins). Tickets are available through the Gilded Balloon Online Box Office.

Shay: Hi Leo – your upcoming show handles your loss at the Chortle Student Comedy Awards in quite an abstract, meta-theatrical way – tell us about why you’ve decided to bring it to the stage.

Leo: Because of the indulgent nature of my onstage persona, I wanted this debut show to feel weirdly like a long-awaited comeback tour. In real life, the Chortle Awards were nothing but an amazing opportunity, but on stage it’s a career loss that I take very seriously. In the show, the awards loss seems to open up a lot of old wounds for me, which causes the collapse of the traditional stand-up format into something more theatrical and dream-like. The show is this middle-ground between awards acceptance speech and ego death.

Shay: How has the creative process been of putting the show together? Give us an idea of the journey you’ve been on with it so far.

Leo: I think the hardest part of the creative process was actually deciding that I’m going to do a one man show. Once I knew I was doing it, the pieces came together a lot quicker than I imagined. I’d been doing stand-up as my on-stage persona for a couple years so I just thought, what would he do if he had an hour? I was inspired by old notes app entries, clowning classes I had done at university and memories of performing out-of-my-range scripts for GCSE Drama. A lot of the show comes from previous improvisation as well, which I still try to adopt on stage where there’s room. 

Shay: What will be the first thing the audience sees, feels, and hears as they enter the space?

Leo: The pre-show music (Bikini Kill, Fiona Apple, Charli XCX of course) is ‘interrupted’ by recordings of self-tapes that I have tried to send in. These range from ‘British exchange student in Euphoria’ and ‘Disturbed child in White Lotus’. I want the audience to already feel immersed in the nature of the show, they are about to watch someone who is filled with pop-culture, dread and desperation.

Shay: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?

Leo: I’m playing an exaggerated version of myself, I still hope that the audience can see a small part of themselves in it. It’s a show partly about what it’s like to drive yourself mad with your own insecurities, so I hope people realise just how funny and ridiculous our own self-doubt is. The overall main goal is to at least get one laugh so that’d be great.

Shay: What journey has the show been on to find itself at EdFringe 2026?

Leo: I first did this show in Bristol in February 2025, mainly just because I was about to graduate and wanted to do a big fun thing for my friends and anyone else to watch before I moved back home. After I did the show I so desperately wanted to do it again, so I did it in London last September. Luckily someone from the lovely Intertalent was watching and now they are producing the show to go to fringe. Self-indulgence pays off!

Shay: With EdFringe now just around the corner, what are you most excited for?

Leo: I’m just so excited for the chaos, even the really awful days. I’ve heard story after story from my comedy heroes about their hectic time in fringe and now I’ll finally be able to experience that. It’s my debut show, no one knows who I am so I’m just excited to tread new ground and see what comes of it.

Shay: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?

Leo: A Pepsi Max but specifically the ones you get in the Cinema. It’s the beverage equivalent of an academy award, filled with star-quality, culture and a little too much syrup and ice. I hope the show feels like a big gulp of that. 

You can catch Leo Hincks: Emotional Cowboy at Turret at Gilded Balloon Teviot on August 5th – 31st from 15:50 (60mins). Tickets are available through the Gilded Balloon Online Box Office.

Image Credit: Rebecca Need-Menear