The Edinburgh comedy award-winning show Ends is a superb set about Shah’s grandfather, the standup’s imminent wedding and multicultural Britain The cliche about Edinburgh fringe comedy is that, instead of jokes, it’s all tears and dead loved ones. No o…
Continue Reading32-year-old comedian whose set explores race, class and migration becomes first British-Asian to take prizeA show about multiculturalism has won best show at the Edinburgh comedy awards. Ahir Shah, the first British-Asian to win the prestigious award, …
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel Comedy at The Hive, EdinburghThe Edinburgh comedy award nominee dials up the silly to 11 as he delivers a series of shambolic gagsThere is no more uproarious opening sequence at this year’s fringe than Phil Ellis’s. Yes, it’s really happe…
Continue ReadingEdinburgh fringe comics portraying cancelled standups and rightwing politicians talk about the dangers and successes of their satireThe US comedian Martin Urbano has always enjoyed mocking lazy standup jokes – the sort of routines that open with “Anyon…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe comic’s material on years lost to drugs, booze and drama school is delivered with energy but this show lacks context and heftYou know you’re in trouble – or you have been in trouble – when Paul Gascoigne hugs you after…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghHer material may be crude but there is no denying the bawdy Brummie comedian’s craft, nor her gift for getting the audience onsideThe defining routine of Lindsey Santoro’s full fringe debut, Pink Tinge, finds her laughing …
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel at The Tron, EdinburghIn an act mining similar territory to Rhod Gilbert, Smith flounders in everyday life and revels in being the butt of the jokeThe little guy floundering at life is a well-worn – and evergreen, in the right hands – com…
Continue ReadingSummerhall, EdinburghBritt Plummer is waiting to get married to fellow clown Otto in this playful and wistful comedy Clowns at the Edinburgh fringe are proving that banana gags are far from overripe. Bill O’Neill’s pulpy sideshow The Amazing Banana Bro…
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel Comedy, EdinburghWritten in the shadow of grief and nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award, this barnstorming set takes in race, class and migrationQuite the fringe journey for Ahir Shah this year, who arrived in town with an unready wo…
Continue ReadingOn Edinburgh fringe stages, pop is eating itself with a series of pastiches and tributes that riff on TV hits and surreal celebrity reimaginingsThis review goes out in honour of Gerard Slevin. He was the theatre director who in 1961 came up with a sugg…
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