Two Jewish comedians have been ‘cancelled’ from appearing at the world-renown Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.
The Whistlebinkies venue booked Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon for their individual acts—Ultimate Jewish Mother and a Jew-O-Rama variety show respectively—before bar staff at the venue complained this would make them ‘feel unsafe.’ The claims were linked to speculation that Jewish acts at the Fringe would need additional police protection.
Both performances have now been withdrawn from the official Edinburgh Fringe listings website. A press release from the duo noted that venue staff also complained of them holding a “vigil” for IDF soldiers in 2024—they didn’t—and of ‘Free Palestine’ graffiti left on toilet doors (hardly the fault of the comics).
Creeger declared
Sadly, this is part of an ongoing problem faced by Jewish performers in this country. We are being cancelled and often silently boycotted.
For Simon, the cancellation was “emblematic of the problem facing Jewish artists and performers in the UK today.” The pair, who co-host the podcast Jew Talkin’ To Me?, will now lose work and are left to foot the bill for unusable publicity material.
Some comedy fans and performers took to social media to express their dismay when they learned of Whistlebinkies’ decision on July 18th, which left it too late to secure an alternative venue. Edward Einhorn, Artistic Director at the Rehearsal for Truth Festival, posted
Absolutely horrifying … no content about Israel or anything like that. Just Jews being cancelled because they are Jews.
This cancellation fits in with an emerging pattern at the Fringe, where in 2022 the Pleasance Theatre closed down the show of shocking comedian-cum-magician Jerry Sadowitz, part way through its run. In 2023, Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan was forced to stage his show outside the Scottish parliament after two venues pulled the plug on the Comedy Unleashed line-up including him.
