The Scottish comedian has drawn on her horrific Glaswegian childhood to create comedy gold. She talks about saying the unsayable, escaping her gangster in-laws and taking on Donald Trump and Boris JohnsonJaney Godley prods her chin lovingly, as she tal…
Continue ReadingSwedish comedian feasts on the acclaim after his food-themed quip tops list of 10 best gags from this year’s fringeThe surrealist Swedish comedian Olaf Falafel has won the Dave funniest joke of the fringe award for 2019. He received the prize for a rib…
Continue ReadingThe Caves, EdinburghThe comic turns his childhood trauma into a warm and deeply reflective show laced with jet-back humourAn iron law of Edinburgh shows is that your trauma is your big reveal. So it’s a jolt in more ways than one when Jonny Pelham tell…
Continue ReadingThe Hive, EdinburghA hallucinogenic trip through the desert provides the basis for a standup show teeming with ideas but lacking true cohesionDesiree Burch is out of the traps at a gallop in her new show: the first 10 minutes all but pin you to the bac…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghKatie Arnstein uses Dorothy’s yellow-brick road to map her own struggles and issue a raw reminder of the urgency of #MeToo‘We saw your boobs! We saw your boobs!” The words from Seth MacFarlane’s opening number at the 2013 …
Continue ReadingPersonal stories – of exile, homelessness, illness and existential terror – jostle for hearts and minds with farts and live bread-bakingIt will come as no great shock that much of the Edinburgh fringe is taken up with people talking about themselves, w…
Continue ReadingIt used to be that just wearing a dress and lip-syncing was enough. But now drag is mainstream, the bar for this most creative and transgressive art form has been raisedIt’s Friday night at the Edinburgh fringe. Artists are running all over town, weavi…
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh The standup rails against old-fashioned ideals of femininity, the diet industry and society’s policing of women’s bodies. It’s strong stuff.Who decides what’s womanly? Culture, you might say, or tradition, or the patriar…
Continue ReadingThe singular standup’s new show FaceTime is a delightful, devastating and stealthy account of his domestic woesThe 2004 winner of the Perrier award (as it was known then) pops up every few years with a show that bears no resemblance to the last. Withou…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghWang is back with a new no-messing, harder-nosed attitude, along with excellent jokes including some choice one-linersPhil Wang made a little piece of fringe history this year before the festival even began, when he sold o…
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