The world's biggest comedy festival is an awkward place for Scottish comics to perform. I wish they'd give us more material tailored to their local audienceIs the fringe a Scottish festival?…
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghLycett's scrapbook set of stories and pranks is consistently amusing and greatly enhanced by his playful, laidback mannerOnly on the fringe do you see the same …
Comedian claims satirists are pulling their punches, teen comedy actor turns on the show that made him a star and Brian Conley Gets Out of thereFrankie Boyle is back in the headlines, after …
Liquid Room, EdinburghAn interactive golden-age detective movie is created on stage with Deanna Fleysher's alter-ego Kapinski leaning heavily on the audience for laughsA gumshoe in a mac and…
Comedians rarely repeat material by their peers. But plenty of comics are referencing each other at this year's fringe " for good and illComedy has no equivalent to the cover version; comics…
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe Australian comedian's experiences of anxiety, depression and irritable bowel syndrome are turned to fine comic use in this confident, fast-paced show"I love…
Voodoo Rooms, EdinburghHodgson draws on youthful memories, the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong and northern characters for plentiful laughs and bittersweet sentimentJust do it, cyclist Lanc…
Assembly Roxy, EdinburghThe US duo deliver several very funny moments but their show that is let down by its disjointed characters and hard-to-follow plotlineShenoah Allen has created many a…
Pleasance Grand, EdinburghTwenty standups and wrestlers clamber into the ring and smack down in Max and Ivan's spectacular sporting-panto free-for-all "Comedians. Wrestlers. Blood." It's a p…
The perception of the festival crowd as entirely middle-class leads standups such as Sarah Callaghan and Kevin J to package their working-class backgrounds as exoticIt's a cliche that the Ed…
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghBulletproof set-pieces exploring the theme of cultural identity confirm this Bostonian as a talent to watchAlex Edelman won the best newcomer gong at last year'…
Summerhall, EdinburghIt may not by very funny, but the standup and activist's vehement, animated piece about the privatisation of public spaces certainly has a lot of convictionPicking up wh…
Gilded Balloon, EdinburghOptimistic and less militant than in the past, the standup makes a welcome return to the fringe. Unfortunately, it's with raw, under-rehearsed material"I was emotion…
Comedian Sam Simmons's rant against 'relatable' comics in his Edinburgh show does both him and the festival a disserviceAussie absurdist Sam Simmons is one of the best-loved comedians on the…
Gilded Balloon, EdinburghNo stage frippery required " this comedy trio are strong enough to stand on their own, with sharp writing and some fine skewering of middle-class moresIt takes confi…
Assembly George Square, EdinburghWith its explorations of identity, Mark Steel's account of how he traced his birth parents is astonishingWhen the story is extraordinary and the comic's main…
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghIn Lolly, her first fringe solo show, the up-and-coming comedian introduces many personas with varying degrees of success, but is never short of charismaFrom Ca…
Laughing Horse @ The Free Sisters, EdinburghThe Man Down star delivers a neurotic, convoluted tale of a stowaway cat that channels the Basil Fawlty archetype of the beleaguered EnglishmanTwo…
Banshee Labyrinth, EdinburghWaiting for Gaddot, which enlists Ben Target and Ian Smith in the tale of a love rivalry amid a collapsing gig, could be the underground comedy hit of the fringeI…
From the attractively impish Matt Winning to the pitch-perfect puerility of Gein's Family Giftshop, here are seven festival sets I haven't managed to write about yetOne week down, two to go.…
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThere's no one better at constructing a show than Acaster " and half the fun is how emphatically he addresses vanishingly small subjectsSerial award-nominee Jam…
Sneaky Pete's, EdinburghThe audience are treated for head lice and a grandad plays chicken with his life-support machine in a show that explores a whole spectrum of strangeEcole Philippe Gau…
The festival's comedians were historically young, gifted and white. Now, shows by black and minority ethnic acts are popular, diverse and nothing to do with skin colour"Diversity in the arts…
Gilded Balloon, EdinburghBea is an energetic storyteller with charm to spare but she's going through the motions a bit with these observations about shame and confidenceMost comics perform h…
The Stand, EdinburghRyan excels at the barbed comedy of supercilious abuse in a disjointed set that riffs on the Taylor Swift/Nicki Minaj row and has a standout section on Bill CosbyReported…