Edinburgh Fringe Diary 2024 – Part Six

Some Of the Ones That Got Away

When the Edinburgh Comedy Awards nominations were announced on Wednesday afternoon there were cries of joy around the city but also cries of anguish. For every act that was shortlisted there were umpteen deserving acts that missed out. Everyone has their own favourites. I could easily compile my own alternative list of Award nominees. I’ve already written about some of them – Chloe Petts, Mat Ewins, for example. Others suggested that Dylan Mulvaney’s Faghag and Garry Starr should have been on the main list. You simply can’t please everyone.

Below is a round-up of other shows that deserved a bit more love this year. Maybe next year…

Finlay Christie (pictured below with medals, by Rebecca Need-Menear) was someone who I thought would be a contender for the main list before the Fringe began and when I saw his show I Deserve This (four stars) I was pretty sure he would be in the running for a nomination. Christie’s show was an unashamed celebration of the fact that he knows he has a comfy background that gives him a safety net. Like Ivo Graham and Olga Koch he is able to win over people who might otherwise despise him with a mix of charm and self-mocking wit.

Christie is certainly not afraid to send himself up, with clips and pictures on the venue’s screens underlining that being from an affluent family does not prevent one from making a prize prat of oneself. A case in point is footage of a teenage Christie and his posh white mates trying to be rappers. I should imagine a fair few teenage boys now working in the city have clips like this hidden away somewhere. At least Christie is getting comic mileage out of his murky private school past. He may have missed out at the Fringe, but stardom clearly beckons.

There were a number of names this year who might have made it onto the Best Newcomer list, but were maybe too raw and need a little more time. Liverpudlian Hannah Platt clearly has something. Her full-length debut Defence Mechanism (three stars), was an unflinchingly honest exploration of how issues such as body dysmorphia have affected her life.

This might not sound like a suitable subject for comedy but Platt (pictured above by Nicola Grimshaw-Mitchell) clearly has the smarts and the self-awareness to find the funny in anything, even a disturbing incident when she was abused on a bus. It’s a horrible story and one’s heart really goes out to Platt, but the way she tells it it will also make you laugh. Platt has made her mark with this comedic calling card and I’m keen to see what she returns with next year. (oh and while you wait for her return you can read a great interview with Platt here)

Will Owen is another name who has set out his stall this year and should probably make more of a splash with future shows. In Like, Nobody’s Watching (three stars) Owen slots neatly into a camp TV host lineage from Lily Savage to Alan Carr and Joe Lycett. Imagine an embryonic Gen Z Graham Norton. It’s still very early days but his ability to charm a crowd who probably didn’t have the foggiest idea who he was impressed me and suggested that he may well be going places. He is currently combining childminding with stand-up. He gets some good stories out of his day job but I suspect he will be giving it up pretty soon.

If Platt and Owen are newbies, Juliet Cowan has already made a splash at the Edinburgh Fringe – but it was 25 years ago when she was in the final of So You Think You’re Funny? in 1999 when other finalists included Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard and Andy Zaltzman. Since then however, Cowan has become more established as an actor. She recently played Amy Winehouse’s mum in Back to Black and Michelle De Swarte’s mum in the BBC hit Spent.

Cowan (picture below by Karla Gowlett) is now returning to her stand-up roots and has plenty to say as a middled-aged woman looking back at her past and examining her present. She has gone through her rebellious youth but is clearly not quite ready to settle down and stick on her slippers just yet. It’s not the smoothest of stand-up sets, in fact with props and fantasy sequences it is more like a pice of theatre at times. But there’s no doubting that on the night I saw it a lot of the women of a certain age in the audience found it overwhelmingly relatable. You can read a candid interview with Cowan here.

Elsewhere I was surprised Alice Snedden (four stars) didn’t get more love from the awards judges. She’s hardly unknown, having performed at the Fringe before and co-written BBC romcom Starstruck with fellow Kiwi Rose Matafeo. Maybe the problem was that while other comics went for the big themes of gender and mental health Snedden homed in on a more trivial story - the saga of her stolen car. But was it stolen or did she just forget where she had parked it for six months?

If you’ve ever got tied up by red tape and local authorities this should appeal to you. It certainly touched a nerve here as she recalled her correspondence, which culminated in a court case. It’s not quite the same as Lenny Bruce reading out his obscenity charges onstage but for me it’s the utterly trivial nature of Snedden’s story that made it so compelling. The devil is in the comic detail.

Read more Edinburgh reviews here.

The Edinburgh Fringe runs until August 26. To buy tickets go to edfringe.com.

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