Edinburgh Fringe 2024 Preview – Part One

The first post offering tips on what to see this summer - don't worry, more to follow...

With Edinburgh approaching faster than a speeding bullet heading for an ex-President people have started to ask me for my tips. I'm not sure whether they want to put a bet on like some laugh-fixated politician or they just want to buy tickets before the hottest shows sell out. Either way I'm happy to help . I'm not on the Edinburgh Comedy Awards panel this year so I have no inside knowledge. These are just my recommendations based on seeing shows, spending too much time on YouTube and studying form. And, please note, it's not a definitive list. More Edinburgh advice articles will follow, so my biggest hottest tip of all is sign up to my Substack to stay ahead of the pack.

Sarah Keyworth

I don't think I'm taking a major left-field punt suggesting that Keyworth will be a contender for this year's Edinburgh Comedy Award. After being nominated for the Best Newcomer Award in 2018 they have consistently delivered strong shows. I saw a rough draft of this latest show online when they performed it as part of Mark Watson's online Access Festival in the Spring and even watching Keyworth pootling around their home office it was obvious they had hit a rich vein of comedy. Fast forward and they picked up a Melbourne International Comedy Festival award for Best Show - previous winners include Hannah Gadsby and Sam Campbell so you do the math.

In My Eyes Are Up Here Keyworth (pictured, by Matt Crockett) gets personal, homing in, among other things, on family and the realisation that their parents were young and fun-loving once too. The title, presumably, refers to the fact that Keyworth, who identifies as non-binary, has latterly had an elective double mastectomy. But in the version of the show I saw, this was downplayed and the focus was more on well-crafted universal humour about the shifting sands of family dynamics. Sure there were gags about nipples and pronouns, but this is anything but woke - horrible word - comedy. If you don't enjoy it though, your sense of humour must be very much on snooze.

Emma Sidi

The surprise General Election and less surprising result may have caught a number of stand-ups on the hop and frantically re-writing their scripts (assuming they'd already got round to writing them). Emma Sidi is not particularly known as a political comedian, but given that in her latest show she plays Sue Gray, a little bit of tweaking might have been involved – at the time of writing this post she's only been Downing Street Chief of Staff for just over a week. Let's just hope Sue Gray is still in the job when the Fringe starts.

Then again, don't expect 55 minutes of in-depth cutting edge political humour. If previous Sidi outings are any guide I'm sure Gray will merely be the launch pad for a set that finds the funny in the most unexpected of places. As Sidi puts it, "it’s political, but nonsensical; it’s the distilled essence of an imagined Sue Gray, whatever that means.”

I've been watching Sidi's shows for a number of years. She is a terrific character comedian. TV fans with taste will recognise Sidi (pictured, ©Matt Stronge) from Starstruck. where she played Kate, the flatmate of Rose Matafeo's love-tangled Jessie. Elsewhere she playing the insufferable influencer Millipede in Liam Williams’s BBC series Pls Like and has appeared in Ghosts and Stath Lets Flats and starred in her own online comedy La Princesa de Woking, a ridiculous Spanish-Language soap opera set in a British cul-de-sac, based on her previous Fringe hit Telenovela. Could 2024 be Sidi's year?

Joe Kent-Walters

And finally, after two acts who I've followed in the past to a newer act who I definitely intend to follow in the future. Huddersfield's Kent-Walters has been making waves with his monstrous comic creation Frankie Monroe, a stooped, pasty-faced clown down on his luck but clawing his way back up the variety act food chain. Think Nick Helm, early Johnny Vegas. That sort of beast but even more desperate, more warped.

Frankie won him the 2023 BBC New Comedy Award at Glasgow’s Kings Theatre and Kent-Walters (pictured above) is already 'in development' with the BBC and Hat Trick Productions, though that's certainly not the sort of phrase you'd hear defiantly old school Frankie use.

Kent-Walters' debut solo show Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!! has already picked up the main award for Best Show at the Leicester Comedy Festival. Reports suggest we will not just be seeing Frankie onstage but further comic creations from Kent-Walters during his Fringe run at the Monkey Barrel.

So there’s three must-sees to start with…People often ask me if I ever get bored seeing so much comedy. If you want to know the honest truth the answer is 'sometimes' or 'of course' depending on my mood. But I've never been as excited about seeing lashings of comedy as I am about this year's crop.

Read more Fringe recommendations here

The Edinburgh Fringe runs from August 2- 26, previewing from the very end of July. To buy tickets for Sarah Keyworth, Emma Sidi and Joe Kent-Walters go to edfringe.com.