Q&A : Sam Lake

We are interviewing Sam Lake, comedian, writer and self-proclaimed queer 'elder' on his Edinburgh Fringe Show 'Cake.' Debuting at Pleasance Courtyard Cellar, Sam tells the story of how his perfectly planned wedding turned chaotic celebration took place. The show is all about getting comfortable when thing don't go to plan...

See Sam Lake: Cake at the Pleasance during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 3-28 August. For more information and tickets visit www.edfringe.com or www.pleasance.co.uk

Most importantly, what kind of cake did you have at your wedding?

Good, we’re giving the people the information they are desperately craving. You know what? We just had a tray of cupcakes from the supermarket! Our plan was to have a five-tier cake (yes, five-tier) that was going to play quite the role in the wedding. If you come to the show, you’ll find out what exactly I planned to do with it.

Who is the bigger bridezilla: you or your partner?

Well, neither of us are brides so…..

If it’s who was the biggest ‘groomzilla’(?) we’d probably both say the other one was the bigger diva. He was in charge of the creative stuff, and I was the one looking at budget and planning. We rarely argued over anything, just every now and again he’d say something like “wouldn’t it be nice if we gave everyone their own personalised enamel pins as a souvenir?” and I’d say “yeah, it would be, but this is the budget, so what if we gave everyone a pack of tic-tacs?”. It’s called compromise.

How has your experience with the chaos of your wedding helped inform you about other aspects of your life?

Genuinely, what I think it’s taught me is that no matter what, if people want to make something happen, we find the most novel ways to do it. If you look at what happened to comedians back in 2020 who suddenly found all of their live work gone, we found different ways to entertain people. We did gigs on zoom, we made sketches from our homes, we started podcasts, we did tiktoks. It’s not quite the same as what we wanted to be doing, which is being live on stage, but ultimately, we’re doing it, we’re being funny. And that’s what happened with the wedding. We had such a chaotic day but we did a whole bloody wedding under crazy circumstances.

It has also taught me to go easy on myself when it comes to my own personal goals because when I planned everything I wanted everyone to have an amazing day. So, I felt a bit rubbish and guilty when we didn’t get to do it, even though it was because of something totally out of my control. I think everyone gets like that sometimes with their own goals, be it goals for your love life, starting a family by a certain age, getting a certain job etc. We all need to stop sometimes and give ourselves some credit for what we have been able to achieve in the process of pursuing those goals.

What are you the most excited about as you debut at Edinburgh Fringe this august? Most nervous about?

Given that I wrote this show in 2019, had it cancelled in 2020, rewrote it in 2021 and am now actually doing it in 2022; I really am just so excited to just do the show. It feels like it’s been on the horizon for so long, so it feels great to know ‘Cake’ is going to have it’s proper showing. What I’m nervous about is how people will receive it. Obviously, I hope people think it’s funny. Usually, I’m totally fine if I bomb a gig or don’t get the reaction I expected for some new material, but I’ve been working on this show for ages, so I’m very protective of my little ‘Cake’ baby.

What is it like being a queer “elder”?

Okay, before anyone gets up in arms about this, I call myself an elder mostly as a joke. I’m only 30, which is fine in human years. However, in gay years, I’ve been legally dead for 7 years. The point I’m making here is gay men can be incredibly judgy and dismissive and I really feel like it harms the community that we’re not more harmonious with each other. I look at the rest of the queer community and see them building each other up, celebrating each other instead of being catty little bitches (which is what I am, but I’m admitting I have a problem which is the first sign of growth, right?). So, I hope we can get to a point where we do the same.