BriTANick on their 'not tall' energy and sex-with-puppets jokes

Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, AKA BriTANick, are Emmy nominees, SNL writers and sketch comedians. They are performing Dummy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, and here they tell us what makes this show different to their previous ones, their thoughts on philosophy and... sex with puppets...?!

Can you sum up Dummy for us? Are we talking like pacifier, or crash test?

Technically it's not either of those types of dummies, but we can't say much more. This show is an experimental expansion of what we've done before. It's a sketch show but the seams of the sketches are hidden a bit, they flow from one to another with a loose narrative thread. We were heavily influenced by the clowns we've seen at the fringe these past few years, and you'll see a lot of that influence in the show. But at its heart this show is exploring how our past childhood trauma controls our current actions and how the roles we play in relationships can start to feel claustrophobic as time goes on.

What's one thing about each of you that would totally surprise your fans?

When people meet us in person they almost always say, "Wow you're much taller than I thought you'd be." Apparently we give off big "not tall" energy.

If you could switch places with any other comedy duo for the day, who would it be?

If we could swap with Trey Parker and Matt Stone and write a South Park we could die happy. We're already kind of like Lucy & Ethel in real life (Brian's dream is to be in a bongo cabaret, Nick can't do laundry).

Your comedy is described as pseudo-philosophical. Are you comedians who sneak in philosophy or philosophers who use comedy to make their point?

Let us make one thing clear: If you ever hear us referring to ourselves as "philosophers", you can go ahead and rightfully give us a good roundhouse kick in the neck. Philosophy is deep, complicated, and divine, not a witticism that makes tipsy people go "ah, clever". We will always be comedians who occasionally try to hit at something near the heart of humanity. Maybe we'll touch a glimmer of something philosophical. But we will always be "pseudo" and don't forget it.

Do you ever have moments where you think "is this too many sex-with-puppets jokes?" or is there no such thing in your world?

All. The. Time. In fact, all of the (many) current puppet sex jokes might be entirely out of the show by the time it gets to Fringe.

We're in our late thirties. Puppet sex? What are we, 12? Our father's had their own businesses at this age and here we are, relying on the laziest of punchlines and building a show around it. Shame on us. (There's also a good chance we double the amount of puppet sex jokes).