Tim Harding at the ARG Comedy Festival

Reviewer Tim Harding gives a rundown of the best comedy he's been watching in London this past fortnight... 

In 2017, having only dipped a small toe into watching live comedy, I found myself with an unexpected free weekend in July – a weekend that fatefully coincided with Actually Rather Good (ARG) Comedy Festival.

I went in without knowing any of the names on the line-up or what to expect, and after two full days of sitting on torturous folding chairs, watching back-to-back stand-up shows in a dank crypt, I left with a working knowledge of the UK alternative comedy scene.

ARG, held at Shoreditch Town Hall in East London, is a condensed version of the festivals found around the country. For one absurdly low entry fee, you can come and go all weekend, with unrestricted access to 48 work-in-progress shows from the cream of the crop – and they really are among the best. Festival founder and director Pax Lowey has some of the most reliably exciting instincts of any programmer. You’ll struggle to find a better overview of what’s good in stand-up right now.

This year was my sixth at the festival. The line-up was once again excellent, the folding chairs backbreaking (just like the Fringe, you need to incorporate a little extracurricular yoga into your daily routine), and once again it clashed with a major national sporting event, to the frustration of the comedians and absolute apathy of the punters. I’ll never forget Rob Oldham performing one of the most dejected sets I’ve ever seen to ten people while he missed England beating Sweden in the 2018 World Cup. 

As usual, ARG gave us a roadmap for the Fringe, highlighting some great new acts and building some buzz around promising shows. So with that in mind, here are some of the best things I saw at ARG 2024.

Clown king John-Luke Roberts is putting on a retrospective this year of all his previous shows, running through them in chronological order for the whole Fringe. For this engagement he was rehearsing his 2016 show Builds A Monster, which felt like it represented a transitional phase between his imaginative take on the ‘dead dad show’ Stdad-Up and his more recent hours of pure madness and parallel worlds. 

It wasn’t my favourite of his shows, but I love when comedians mount old work, and I would love it to happen more often. Given the density of his jokes, a JLR retrospective is an ambitious undertaking, and a great chance to fill in some gaps if you missed his older shows.

Lou Wall really bowled me over when I saw them for the first time last year. Lou Wall vs The Internet was an incredibly full-on multimedia experience, bristling with jokes, songs and video stings all delivered at hummingbird speed, like plunging your head into the roaring current of the internet for an hour. 

Their new show The Bisexual’s Lament is even better, slowing things down to a rate where it can now be perceived by the human head, and turning a genuinely horrific-sounding year into a tragicomic musical epic. This is the most excited I’ve been about a new comedian in a while.

Similarly spinning gold from some shitty, horrible straw, Celya AB continues to evolve as a performer. Following her introductory cultural differences show, last year’s offering was a progression into more whimsical, Milton Jones-style one-liners. 

This year, after a harrowing series of events that included a diagnosis of Complex PTSD, Of All People touches on her personal life in a substantive way for the first time, mixing her usual crop of world class one-liners with significant vulnerability. I never expected to come away from a Celya AB show feeling genuinely moved, but the unexpected depth makes her comedic persona that much more compelling.

I didn’t see as many genuinely new acts as I should have done, but Abby Wambaugh made a promising impression with their work-on-progress The First ​3 Minutes Of 17 Shows. Firstly, what a great high concept for a debut hour; it’s such a fun way to keep the show dynamic and entertaining when you’re regularly switching between mime, musical, props and other styles of stand-up. 

Secondly, to fulfil that brief while also telling the story of how they became a comedian after going through a miscarriage? That takes guts, and an impressive level of invention. The fully-realised version of this is going to be worth catching.

Finally, Milo Edwards is one of the more frequently mentioned names in this column, as he’s been on a burning hot streak over the last few years. His new show How Revolting! Sorry To Offend is another greased up super-smart hour of material that injected a bit of welcome savagery into the gentle, convivial landscape of ARG.

He’s once again using his family history as a jumping-off point while launching into a rangy exploration of cum and the British class system. Where so many political comics seem to be perpetually stuck in an old-fashioned parliamentary sketch mode, Edwards is dragging the form into the modern era.

Published: 12 Jul 2024