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Fringe Spotlight: Looking Fab at Fifty

Will Owen shares his insights (he's only 26).

Gaydar

01 Jul 2025 — 2 min read

Will Owen is returning to the Edinburgh Fringe with his solo show, Looking Fab at Fifty.

In the show, Will is exploring connection, commitment issues, and why Bake Off is easier to love than people.

As a teenager, coming out years before any of his friends and as the only gay man in his family, Will believed his queerness made him singular and interesting – a self-styled outsider with niche tastes and sharp opinions, convinced his lack of romantic connection was partly a mark of individuality and partly the result of being the only out gay man in his circle. Then he joined the adult world and met other gay people.

Suddenly, Will had to face a more unsettling truth: he wasn’t so very unique at all. The traits he thought made him a one-off – the niche tastes, the sharp opinions, the self-consciously “different” quirks – turned out to be remarkably common.

And with his queer friends coming out and building real relationships, Will has been left questioning why he finds it so hard to connect to people.

Will’s attempts at connection might be tragic if they weren’t also very, very funny – a slow-motion car crash of missed signals, misplaced confidence, and well-timed distractions. From shunning his neighbour’s unsolicited dick pic with a polite reminder about bin day, to maintaining a chaotic, semi-annual sexual round robin with the same handful of random men – the kind of relationship you convince yourself counts as meaningful if you squint at it from the right angle.

But then he realised - maybe the quest for uniqueness is just a long, slightly tragic audition for a part no one is casting.

Maybe it’s time to let go of the pressure to be truly original, embrace the calm predictability of a quiet, comfortable life at 26 – the kind that usually takes fifty years to settle into – and just enjoy being part of the chaotic, crowded, and quietly comforting human mess. And for Will, this self-acceptance comes at least in part, from being on stage.

“I rarely put myself out there, I always talk myself out of doing something bold and individual..." explains Will. "Stand-up is the most vulnerable thing I do in my life.”