In many professions, the phenomenon of children following in the footsteps of their parents isn't uncommon. From Martin Amis to Hilary Benn and Stuart Broad, it seems that just about any walk of life can become a family business. The optimistic view would be that genetic predispositions account for all this success cascading down the generations, while a more cynical interpretation might suggest that a little bit of nepotism has feathered beds along the way (and before anyone suggests otherwise, no, I'm not related to Guardian columnist Martin Kettle).
Oddly enough, until recently comedy has seemed largely free of this sort of thing. Sure, there were plenty of father-and-son acts in the days of music hall, but this kind of thing is rare now. Aside from Michael McIntyre, whose father, Ray Cameron, helped to pen pun-heavy scripts for Kenny Everett in the 1970s and 80s, there haven't been many examples of kids following their parents into the laughter-making business – you can't really count the tragic story of Tommy Cooper's son, Thomas, who acted as a stooge and stage manager to his father and died just four years after him of liver failure. But this year on the Edinburgh fringe, things are different, with a number of new comics keeping it in the family.
Beattie Edmondson has an impressive pedigree for a young comedy performer, as the daughter of Adrian Edmondson and Jennifer Saunders. She's appearing nightly on the fringe with sketch group Lady Garden, offering a far funnier and more inventive show than their mildly unpleasant name suggests. Then there's Alfie Brown, an immensely self-assured and stylish comic who's the offspring of Dead Ringers star Jan Ravens and musician Steve Brown (best known as Alan Partridge's bandleader Glenn Ponder).
I suspect there'll be more of this in future, as children of performers from the standup boom in the early 90s come of age. It's a daunting experience taking your first steps on stage as a rookie comic, but some of the edge must surely be taken off if you know your parents have made money doing it.
The only worry is, isn't it all a little bit cosy? If you like comedy to be exciting and groundbreaking, and regard the birth of alternative comedy as akin to the start of punk rock, you'd probably prefer comedians to outrage their parents rather than carry on a family tradition. In the 90s, comedy was proclaimed to be the new rock'n'roll – but 15 years on, I'm not sure we're ready for comedy's Kelly Osbourne.
Nevertheless, like Kelly and Ozzy with their duet cover of Changes (but thankfully with less revolting results), there are also a few comics on the fringe who aren't just following in their parents' footsteps, but are actually working alongside them. Legendary blue-collar Scottish comedian Janey Godley has teamed up with her daughter Ashley Storrie to put on a madcap kids show at the Pleasance, while father-and-son team Philip and Charlie Talbot are co-producing each other's standup debuts on the Five Pound Fringe. In the case of the Talbots, the familial influence is the other way around – he became intrigued by his son's work as a standup and wanted to try it for himself. And Talbot Junior seems to have a healthy attitude towards his dad's efforts. "I'm way better at learning lines or routines than my dad," he told me. "And I'm funnier too – but every kid thinks that about their dad's jokes."
