This Guardian feature ahead of the 2026 Edinburgh festival gathers comedians who describe how they invented the eccentric characters at the heart of their shows, exploring the creative process, physical demands and legal caution behind acts such as a baking-obsessed Elton John spoof and a grotesque elderly man built from an anonymous Twitter experiment. The piece matters as a behind-the-scenes look at the craft and personal risk (including physical discomfort) comedians take on to create memorable, absurd stage personas for the festival.

Katie Pritchard explains how a lockdown doodle of "Elton John as a scone" evolved into Sir Elton Scone, a towering, exaggerated "drag" character hosting a nonsensical oven-free baking gameshow, built using manspread-inspired confidence and an oversized suit made from charity-shop velvet curtains, which she had to preview in 30C heat. Sam Eley describes creating Basil Crumbwick, "possibly the most horrible man in the world," from an anonymous, blocked-follower Twitter account of surreal tweets, now performed as a 7ft-tall figure wearing a giant papier-mâché head to preserve the character's anonymous, cartoonish confusion, while acknowledging inevitable comparisons to Frank Sidebottom.