So many shows, so little time. After three weeks of the Edinburgh Fringe I’ve seen more live comedy than many see in a lifetime. Some bad, some good, some absolutely fabulous. And now the best of the bunch have been shortlisted for the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award, previously won by Baby Reindeer's Richard Gadd, Netflix star Hannah Gadsby and film and TV regular Tim Key. It feels impossible to predict a winner of the Taffner Family Best Show £10,000 prize from the eight nominees below, but, heck, I’ll try.
At the start of the Fringe I noted how many stand-ups were talking about brushes with death. This trend has continued. John Tothill’s This Must Be Heaven (Pleasance, five stars) tells the vivid story, among other things, of how the dandyish stand-up nearly died of an “obliterated” appendix. If he had gone to A&E 24 hours later he would be in a box, not performing in a shoebox-sized venue.
Tothill seems to have a habit of getting seriously ill for his art. He previously underwent malaria trials to earn £2000 to fund a Fringe run only to end up much more sick than planned. But the struggles have paid off. He has really found his voice this year. Spoiler alert, he survived his appendix blow-out and has delivered the show of his life.
I was flagging a little when I arrived at Dan Tiernan’s show at 10.30pm but not for long. Tiernan has an onstage scream redolent of late fire and brimstone US comic Sam Kinison, and he’s not afraid to use it. I was a few rows back and it sent a jolt through me. Front row fans might have suffered whiplash. Tiernan’s set, All In (Monkey Barrel, four stars) charts how he turned his life around with what he dubs “the system”.
This involved cutting back on drugs, resolving relationships and getting to grips with his unruly brain. There's a particularly marvellous set-piece about his attempts at skiing and a riotous account of him watching the rapper Dave at Glastonbury in 2019. The TV channel Dave didn’t run its annual Joke of the Fringe competition this year, so you could say this off-the-wall anecdote is Tiernan’s very own Dave Joke of the Fringe. His show really is something to shout about.
Comedy is a huge industry but also a small world. The awards judges watched over 500 eligible shows and Tiernan’s flatmate Ed Night has also been shortlisted for the top prize. Night, the son of comedian Kevin Day, truly has comedy coursing through his veins. He’s only in his late twenties but has the pensiveness of someone much older.
His style in Your Old Mucker (Monkey Barrel Hive, four stars) has a jazzy beatnik vibe. Laid back to the point of horizontal. It looks as if he is just musing, about his grandad, his local supermarket, biscuits, but his set is full of deliciously offbeat observations, such as the thought that the best stick that a guide dog ever sees will never be thrown for him to retrieve. This is comedy as poetry with shades of late US cult figure Mitch Hedberg. So good it seems effortless.
Ian Smith picked up an Award nomination in 2023 for his show Crushing, in which he talked about having a breakdown and going to Slovakia with his hairdresser to drive a tank over a car as a form of therapy. He is back with the equally eccentric and even stronger Foot Spa Half Empty (Monkey Barrel, four stars), which is the show that made me laugh the hardest.
Earlier this year life was great for Smith. So great, in fact, he worried that he didn’t have any inspiration for a show. And then he discovered that he had a low sperm count. Not good for his fatherhood plans but for comedy “we’re back in business!”. His farcical hour charts his attempts to resolve the problem, employing various methods including crystals bought online. Did they work their magic? I won’t say, but Smith certainly cast a spell over the audience.
Katie Norris is a formidable double threat. A stand-up and also a musical act. In Go West, Old Maid (Pleasance, four stars) she sings sophisticated songs with smutty lyrics about being a godmother, being single in her mid-thirties and more. Between the tunes she discusses her late father, a man who was "so posh he looked homeless". It’s a touching, comical hour, maybe a little unfashionable for my tastes but so skilful it deserves its nomination.
A frustrating diary clash made it impossible for me to see American nominee Sam Jay's We the People at the Pleasance. Which was a pity as I’ve previously seen Jay in London and she’s a skilled, wide-ranging performer, sometimes personal, sometimes political, frequently both. Needless to say, given the state of the United States, politics is firmly on the agenda in this well-regarded set that also takes in rodeos and relationships.
Another Sam is also in the running. Since Sam Nicoresti's last show, her life as a trans woman has faced some snags, epitomised by a shopping incident in a familiar high street chain when she went to try on some women’s clothes only to have it pointed out that they were women’s clothes. In Baby Doomer (Pleasance, four stars) Nicoresti recalls dealing with the matter with her biggest weapon, humour.
From there Nicoresti reflects on the power of clothes, how a skirt suit is the ultimate business-meets-pleasure garment. She has immaculate comic timing, knows how to build a story and subtly shifts the mood during the narrative with the use of low lighting. Nicoresti is one of the strongest nominees this year.
And finally, to be completely candid, I was surprised to see Canadian duo Creepy Boys: SLUGS (Summerhall, three stars) on the shortlist. I would have thought their brand of full frontal comedy-meets-performance-art-meets-techno-meets-absurdism would be the ultimate jury splitter. It’s certainly the only comedy I’ve ever seen where a performer waves a gun, albeit a fake gun, in the face of an audience member.
Yet if it is popular enough to land a nomination who is to say Sam Kruger and SE Grummett, who describe their show as "a little bit niche and mostly gross” won’t be the first ever Canadian queer/trans act to win the Edinburgh Comedy Award? But if you held a fake gun to my head I’d wager that John Tothill will be the winner when the results are announced at lunchtime on Saturday.
The Edinburgh Fringe wraps up on August 25. For more information click here
