Kicking off in just under two weeks, and with 220 shows and 451 artists taking part, Newcastle Fringe Festival has a schedule full of weird and wonderful acts.
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They range from science comedy talks to two-piece industrial cyber punk outfit Zipperclone.
The line-up also includes stand-up comedian, historian and ex-sex worker Kaytlin Bailey who will perform her Whore's Eye View show from March 15 to 17.
The New York City-based performer is also a sex workers' rights advocate who describes her show as a blend of education and entertainment "edutainment".
She's been working on the show since 2019. It explores 10,000 years of the history's oldest profession.
Bailey plays herself in the show.
"I describe it very early in the show as an aggressive lecture; all of it is factually accurate including the things I reveal about my own life. It's part history, part lecture, part stand-up, part personal storytelling," she says.
Her interest in sex work history predates her personal experience with sex work. Bailey studied history at the College of Charleston in South Carolina and wrote her senior thesis on the economic structure of brothels between 1890 and 1920 leading up to women's suffrage in the US.
"I felt called to sex work because of my obsession with sex work from history," she explains.
"Sex workers or courtesans especially as feminists seemed to be the exception to the limited gender expectations of their class.
"Sex work has served women in the same way that the military has served men. It is a vehicle to change your class."
At 37, Bailey no longer works in the industry, but she's done full-service hourly sex work and sugaring (also known as sugar dating) in part to subsidise her comedy career. She describes herself as a "relatively wealthy, white middle-class woman".
Growing up in the US during George W Bush's abstinence-only programs, she felt as though she'd been lied to about her body. Part of her desire to pursue the sex work industry was simply from curiousity (she points out that this is not unusual, sex work often funds artists and entrepreneurs).
"I was also driven by a sense of universal teenage rebellion; I wanted to do this thing that people said you can't come back from, and it was fine," she says.
Ultimately she found the comedy industry to be more exploitative than sex work.
"Comedy pays in nachos, in drink tickets and exposure," she jokes.
But after nearly a decade in comedy, she is now able to fully support herself and is touring internationally. She has plans to head to the acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe Festival later this year.
Along with stand-up comedy, she's established a non-profit media company called Old Pros which is creating conditions to change the status of sex workers in society.
When asked if she'd ever return to sex work, she says "never say never".
"At the moment I am happily married, Old Pros and Whore's Eye View are doing well," she says.
"I will say this though, I would never go back to waiting tables."
