Grab your bucket and spade as The Old Market hosts a double bill of seaside-themed Edinburgh Fringe shows

It was a text from his (spoiler alert) ex-girlfriend, writer Amy Mason, which led Art Brut singer Eddie Argos down memory lane with The Islanders.

“She sent me a text saying, ‘Do you want to make a very little bit of money out of our teenage years?’” recalls Argos from his Berlin home, fresh from putting his eight-week-old baby to bed.

“I always write quite autobiographical stuff and she does too. The difference is I can only talk if there’s music, and she can only talk if there isn’t.”

The subject was the pair’s last holiday together on the Isle Of Wight, having shared a damp bedsit in the late 1990s.

“I had left home and she was thrown out and came to live with me,” says Argos. “We had a pretty abysmal time – we were living off orange food such as baked beans and Tesco Value tomato soup.

“I didn’t realise how bleak it all was. The show has projections from that time and I look thin and ill. We weren’t really old enough to make it – I was working in Comet and was so stressed out I didn’t realise everything that was going on.

“At the time, the holiday was make or break. In hindsight, it was break really.

“I used to make people laugh with stories from that time. The first time we did the show as a scratch performance at the Bristol Old Vic people were crying – in a good way – which was a surprise.”

The story is told through Mason’s spoken-word point of view and a series of songs Argos penned for the show with folk musician Jim Moray.

“We thought we had different views,” says Argos, who is currently working on new material with a revamped Art Brut line-up featuring Graham Coxon’s live drummer Stephen “Stuffy” Gilchrist and Brighton’s own Toby MacFarlaine on guitar.

“It turned out we were very similar. Doing the show every day for 30 days in Edinburgh made it less real in a way, although it’s all true.

“It’s hard to listen to Amy recount my life as I sit in a chair on stage. There are some things I didn’t realise but I come out of it quite well – she’s really nice about me!”

Argos had already written about their teenage relationship in the Art Brut song Post Soothing Out from their second album, It’s A Bit Complicated, with its repeated line: “Every day is just like starting over / we try so hard but we keep on falling over.”

For the stage show, he created more songs based on Mason’s script to fit around the story, mixing both the emotions he was feeling at the time and pushing the story along.

The pair also relived their teenage years when they went to Edinburgh – sharing a living space again for 30 days.

“I didn’t think how hard that would be but I’m very proud of the piece,” he says. “I don’t think many ex-couples could do that.”

The link with On The Beach came partly through the two pieces’ seaside locations, but Argos did catch a preview performance of John Osborne’s one-man show.

“Both pieces have an indie sensibility,” he says. “There’s a weird coincidence in that he has a Helen Love song at the end of his show, and we play the same song at the start of ours. We should get Helen Love to play live with us!”

On The Beach

“There's some weird fact that you’re never more than 70 miles from the beach in the UK, which is quite staggering really. It’s impossible for an audience member not to bring their own memories of or connections to the seaside with them.”

John Osborne has been thinking a lot about the seaside recently. Not only has he penned the stage show On The Beach, based around an hour-long walk on Weymouth’s sands, but he has also penned a book, Don’t Need The Sunshine, about the beach experience across the UK.

“I felt a bit guilty when I started writing my book,” he admits. “Living in Norwich, I only live a 20-minute drive from Great Yarmouth but I never went there.”

He has happy memories of travelling up the north Norfolk coast on the train.

“There’s something nice about getting on a train to Sheringham full of people excited to go to the seaside. It’s something I try to recreate in the book and the show – that sense of excitement.

“The seaside is always there – it’s free, you can go there, have a good time, read a book, explore or exercise. It brings out a different state of mind – the relaxed side of you. It’s a very positive environment. I hope that people will go away from the show or book and plan a trip to the seaside.”

The show was inspired by a trip Osborne undertook while on his lunch hour at a Weymouth summer school.

“It was stressful, the kids I was teaching were badly behaved, so I went for a walk to the beach,” remembers Osborne.

“The show is in real-time – the audience is spending their lunch hour with me.

“It’s nothing too controversial, alarming or difficult to understand. It’s a celebration of the seaside really.”

Osborne’s previous hit show John Peel’s Shed was inspired by a box of records he won in a competition on the late DJ’s BBC Radio 1 show. Allied to his own memories of teenage angst and his connections with the music Peel played was the story of what he found going up and down the digital radio dial.

“This is the least personal show it is possible to write,” he says of On The Beach. “You don’t learn anything about me at all, which was quite deliberate. John Peel’s Shed was very personal – I didn’t want to expose any more of myself.”

Instead the show contains stories about the people Osborne saw while on his lunchtime wander, from beach cricketers to old people having a snooze in a deckchair.

“I didn’t talk to anyone on that lunch break,” says Osborne. “I just wrote down everything I saw and made up little stories about them. The show drifts from person to person, going into anecdotes, not all of them positive, about the seaside, with snippets of overheard conversations.”

Weymouth is only mentioned once in the show and Brighton doesn’t receive a mention at all – although it was the first place Osborne visited when he began writing his book.

“The first thing I did when putting the book together was go to the Palace Pier and interview the manager there,” he says. “You never think of piers having managers...”

Osborne has also considered the sad decline of the seaside in the 21st century.

“One of the big things that used to be exciting about going to the seaside was going on the arcades,” he says. “Now most people have computer games at home.

“Most aspects of the seaside experience have been overtaken by something else – the little bed and breakfasts are closing down as people are staying in Travelodges.

“You’re more likely to see a chain cafe rather than a characterful little local cafe.

“There are lots of things that are negative in the 21st century about the seaside. I’m trying to explore the little bit which is still special – like crazy golf and beach cricket – that bring smiles to people’s faces.”

• The Islanders / On The Beach is at The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, on Tuesday, April 29. Starts 7.30pm, £12/£10. Call 01273 201801