Tim Harding reveals his comedy tips

In a special edition of his diary, reviewer Tim Harding gives a personal rundown of the best comedy he's most looking forward to seeing at the Edinburgh Fringe, as most shows begin their previews in the Scottish capital tomorrow.

Call me a naïve simpleton with a heart of gold but I do still really love the Fringe. Every year when I start putting a schedule together I’m visited by a delightful festive feeling, contemplating and anticipating all the great shows on offer like they’re poorly-wrapped Mighty Maxes under the Christmas tree.

But as many have remarked, with all the infinite parallel worlds of the Fringe catalogue available to explore, where the hell do you start? Offered humbly, here are fifteen of my most anticipated shows for the 2024 Fringe Festival. See even a handful of them and you’ll have caught some of the best that comedy has to offer. See all fifteen and attain nirvana.

Recommendations are a mixture of shows I’ve already seen and loved its works in progress, hot tips from operatives on the ground, and scryings from the tea leaves.

Lou Wall: The Bisexual’s Lament

Smoking hot off a Most Outstanding Show nomination at Melbourne, The Bisexual’s Lament is a multimedia explosion of dance, video, memes and of course jokes, turning Lou Wall’s worst year ever into a neon internet opera. If you’ve never seen them perform before, go in highly-caffeinated with a clear head and let yourself be assailed by talent. 

Recommended if you like: Tim Minchin, getting brain damage from TikTok 

Lou Wall: The Bisexual’s Lament is at Pleasance Courtyard: Beneath at 22.20

Sophie Duker: But Daddy I Love Her

Duker’s clever, challenging debut show Venus was one of my favourites of the last decade, and on its strength she was very quickly press-ganged for Taskmaster, Frankie Boyle and Live At The Apollo. Although her 2022 show Hag felt like it had a few growing pains, the new one’s focus on sugar daddies and fantasies sounds compellingly outré. This one is likely to sell out.

RIYL: Nish Kumar, I May Destroy You

Sophie Duker: But Daddy I Love Her is at Pleasance Courtyard: Cabaret Bar at 19.00

John Tothill: Thank God This Lasts Forever

I’ve already written at length about my love for John Tothill, both his first show The Last Living Libertine and this new one in WIP have been revelatory for me. Camp, debonair and yet deeply probing, there’s no other comic with this Julian Clary meets Thomas Aquinas stage presence. Thank God has a tale to tell as well, of how Tothill found an unconventional way to fund his Edinburgh run and almost lost his life in the process.

RIYL: Julian Clary, Suzy Izzard

John Tothill: Thank God This Lasts Forever is at Pleasance Courtyard: Beside at 20.45

Nic Sampson: Yellow Power Ranger

Scratching that perennial itch for the next Joseph Morpurgo show, Yellow Power Ranger is a terrifically inventive hour structured around Sampson’s (real) tenure as the yellow power ranger on Power Rangers Mystic Force in the mid-2000s. Sampson mixes together real footage from the series with rapid-fire multimedia gags and some superb comic acting to bring together his portrait of a minor celebrity undergoing total psychological collapse on a comic-con panel.

RIYL: Joseph Morpurgo, Dave Gorman, Power Rangers Mystic Force

Nic Sampson: Yellow Power Ranger is at Assembly Roxy: Outside at 17.45

Anna Akana: It Gets Darker

Following ten years as a great stand-up, a successful career as a YouTtube comedian and a memorable cameo in Ant-Man, Anna Akana was forced to retire from stand-up for six years due to a stalking incident. Happily she’s now back on the scene, ‘armed with a restraining order and a plethora of new stories to tell,’ which may be underselling the mad, Baby Reindeer style scenario that led to her Fringe debut.

RIYL: Margaret Cho, Baby Reindeer

Anna Akana: It Gets Darker is at Pleasance Courtyard: Upstairs at 17.30

BriTANick: Dummy

We’re running a little low on exciting sketch acts this year but the sophomore show by former SNL and Always Sunny writers Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher is strong enough to hold up the tent for the artform as a whole. If you like your comedy delivered in a dizzyingly complex Faberge egg structure of nested jokes-within-jokes, this is the place to be.

RIYL: Pappy’s, Sheeps, Max & Ivan

BriTANick: Dummy is at Pleasance Courtyard: Above at 20.00

Marjolein Robertson: O

One of the most singular voices on the Scottish circuit, Robertson is a Shetland native who mixes earthy tales of nights out and pints drank with a haunting Celtic mysticism. Her new show O is all about blood, particularly the period that almost killed her. She’s been reliably building momentum year on year for a long time now while rarely coming down to perform in London, which is how you know she’s got the goods. 

RIYL: Billy Connelly, Dylan Moran

Marjolein Robertson: O is at Monkey Barrel: Hive 1 at 17.40

Rachel Kaly: Hospital Hour

New York comic Rachel Kaly debuts at the Fringe this year with some pretty ferocious buzz and previous associations including Clickhole, Joe Pera and Conner O’Malley. Early reports indicate a show of white-hot deadpan honesty, and personal revelations about her mental health and relationship with her father that will make your jaw hit the floor and stay there.

RIYL: Hannah Gadsby, Bryony Kimmings

Rachel Kaly: Hospital Hour is at Pleasance Courtyard: Bunker Two at 18.55

Dan Rath: Pariah Carey

Always brilliant, often-underseen, Australian grub Dan Rath has been coming up to the Fringe for a few years without getting the respect he deserves (which is happily very much in line with his stage persona). Much is made of his discomfiting presence and the bleakness of his outlook but his real strength is his gnarled sense of language. His jokes are so often perfect, and immediately identifiable as his own.

RIYL: Daniel Sloss, Jordan Brookes

Dan Rath: Pariah Carey is at Underbelly Bristo Square: Friesian at 21.50

Amy Gledhill: Make Me Look Fit on the Poster

The Delightful Sausage pioneer’s solo act probably doesn’t need my attention after three consecutive award nominations and a rapidly rising profile, but the WIP of this show at the Bill Murray last month was simply the hardest I’ve laughed all year. If you caught her solo debut this is similar – more stories of a dating life perpetually in disarray, delivered with gale-force charm.

RIYL: Sarah Millican, Sophie Willan

Amy Gledhill: Make Me Look Fit on the Poster is at Monkey Barrel 1 at 18.10

Katie Norris: Farm Fatale

Once a member of the great gothic sketch group Norris & Parker, hysterical vamp queen Katie Norris is making her solo debut this year with Farm Fatale, a memoir of madness and growing up on a farm, interspersed with banger songs about the horrors of sleeping with French amateur DJs. While I’ve not seen the full WIP, her shorter spots at nights like The Paddock have been bringing the house down. Very excited for this.

RIYL: Catherine Cohen, Edgar Allan Poe

Katie Norris: Farm Fatale is at Pleasance Courtyard: Below at 20.30

Edward Aczel: Running On Empty

Crafter of such perfect koans of inanity as ‘What can you say about the Spanish Armada? I’m not 100 per cent sure…’ Ed Aczel is one of my favourite performers alive, even when he’s deliberately trying to bore me to tears. If you’ve ever been curious about the murky shadow-world of anti-comedy and its counterintuitive delights, there’s no better place to start. 

RIYL: Mark Silcox, confusing geography teachers from Aylesbury

Edward Aczel: Running on Empty is at Hoots@Potterrow: The Wee Yurt at 18.25

Jin Hao Li: Swimming In A Submarine

Probably this year’s buzziest debut, Jin Hao Li has been turning a lot of heads with his whimsical, spectral WIP about ghosts, nightmares and the yakuza. Soft but gritty, joyful but shot through with melancholy, beautifully-written but fantastic off the cuff, Li is a study in charismatic contradictions.

RIYL: Johnny White Really Really, Mike Wozniak

Jin Hao Li: Swimming in a Submarine is at Pleasance Courtyard: Below at 19.10

Alex Franklin: Gurl Code

I first saw Franklin a couple of years ago as the standout performer in sketch group Chuck Salmon and their very silly narrative sketch show Pool Noodles at the Brighton Fringe. Well, a few things have changed, and Franklin is now making her solo debut having come out as a trans woman and started HRT this year. I’m fascinated to see how the confidence and wackiness of her sketch persona translates into a much more personal show.

RIYL: Jordan Gray, Sam Nicoresti

Alex Franklin: Gurl Code is at Underbelly Cowgate: Delhi Belly at 20.25

Bedlam Lates

If all the above feels like it might lack the anarchic late night spirit of the True Fringe, please allow me to direct you to the Bedlam Theatre, where ludic comedy kingpin Benjamin Alborough is programming an incredible series of one-off concept shows by comedy’s biggest weirdos. 

Come to see live movie interpretation by Frankie Thompson, Eleanor Morton’s chat show where all the guests are dead, the infinite malleability of The Glang Show and, of course, a biopic of the inventor of the Segway performed entirely on Segways. 

Fingers crossed I’ll be seeing every one of these shows so do come up and say hi. Also the seats at this venue are the comfiest in Edinburgh and it's not even close.

RIYL: Shooting Stars, Banzai

Bedlam Lates is at the Bedlam Theatre at half past midnight on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays throughout the Fringe

Published: 30 Jul 2024