A kids’ film taught me the power of delusion – and helped me chase my standup dreams

The protagonist of A Little Princess wills reality to bend to her desires. Comedians need that same idiot confidence when we’re starting out, or else we’d all give up Explore the rest of our coverage of the Edinburgh festival 2026 I was 28 the first time I did standup. It was an open-mic competition where the audience decided the winner. As I held the tiny gold trophy, I decided to quit my job the next day. Some people might call that crazy, and it probably was. But I’d been honing that delusional self-belief since I was eight when I first watched the film adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story A Little Princess. I already almost had the same name as its protagonist, Sara, a young girl who is sent off to boarding school while her father fights in the war. I wanted to be exactly like her. She was so sure of herself, and believed so completely in the worlds she created, that all the other girls at school wanted to be her friend. My favourite scene is the one where the girls sit on Sara’s bed, forming a circle round her as she tells fantastical stories. I would watch it and think: I want to tell stories that make people gather round me. But unlike Sara, I was shy a