They’re taking the mic

Phil Nichol

There are too many reasons to go and see this almost infinitely talented comic to list here. This year he is bringing a “Simple Hour” of jokes and funny songs. Which is a little like Heston Blumenthal offering to rustle you up a sandwich.

Stand Comedy Club V, 4-28 August

Mark Thomas

Still seeking out corruption and injustice, still battling valiantly against both and somehow managing to make you cry with laughter and anger at one and the same time, Mark Thomas is one of the very few who convince that comedy could change the world. This year he is looking at the Israeli West Bank Barrier from both sides and on foot.

Bongo Club, 8-20 August

Lewis Schaffer

An hour whirling in the comedy vortex created by Schaffer’s myriad neuroses is always worth the ticket price. And here the show is free. A man who makes Woody Allen look like Steve Davies. If you love self-loathing, you’ll adore this.

Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, 4-28 August

Robin Ince

Wherever, whenever, he pops up across the weeks of the Fringe, sit in and engage your thinking bits. The most gifted of Grumpy Old Men, Ince’s intellect and irritation combine to create an irresistible comedic force. See him before he gets so exasperated that he explodes.

Buffs Club, 7-24 August, and Canons’ Gait, 6-17 August

Peter Buckley Hill

The mere fact that this year’s show is entitled “Thirty-seven Ways Of Deceiving You, The Audience, Into Thinking That I’ve Written A New One-man Show For 2011 When I Probably Haven’t, Or Something” presages another Buckley Hill triumph of smarts and surrealism. It is “mainly about marching”, he says. It will be “mainly brilliant”, I predict.

Canons’ Gait, 6-27 August

Omid Djalili

One of the all too infrequent thrills of the Fringe is the possibility of seeing a comic whose live performance had previously cast him as a dot on a faraway stage and a face on a huge screen, back in an intimate space. Djalili is going to be working through new material for his tour down at the Stand Comedy Club. This is a Fringe Experience. I doubt the tour will be as enjoyable as this.

Stand Comedy Club III and IV, 18-28 August

Stewart Lee

Where Lee leads, Djalili has simply followed. The comedian described in his own blurb with a quote that reads “embarrassing old man ranting like a student” has long been giving Fringe-goers the exquisite pleasure of being the crash test dummies for his new material. Whiplash was never so enjoyable. He is back on TV, remember. Own show and everything. So catch him before success mellows him.

Stand Comedy Club, 3-29 August

Sam Simmons

His first Edinburgh show was brilliant, last year’s was, I thought, a work approaching dark comedy genius. Some people have “funny bones”. Simmons has comedic capillaries. Not so much surreal as para-real, his shows are transportingly funny. So, as you rush (and you must) to get seats for Sam, the impatient woman shoving you out of the way will probably be me.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 3-28 August

Andrew Lawrence

You never really know what you will get from Andrew Lawrence. But you can generally be sure that it will be better than the year before. More than any other comic I can think of, Lawrence is in a constant state of evolution from the strange Steerpike-like creature he was born as, comedically. Like comedy’s Dr Who, the anticipation of what the next incarnation will be like is almost unbearable. Roll on August.

Pleasance Courtyard, 3-28 August

SIMON MUNNERY

The comedy Magimix in the mind of Simon Munnery has created many memorable blends over the years. But none, I suspect, will be more memorable than his La Concepta. Munnery has leapt the barriers of mere intellectual surrealism, left behind the trammels of stand-up and launched himself (and La Concepta) upon the world of Fine Food. La Concepta is a pop-up “restaurant conceptuel”, featuring Munnery as the entire staff of four. I am so excited I can barely eat. Which is just as well, as food doesn’t feature much on the menu. “All the rigmarole of haute cuisine without the shame of eating.”

La Concepta, various times and venues, 5-29 August

PAUL PROVENZA

Paul Provenza is a passionately political, seriously smart, ferociously funny comic. Set List is a typically “Provenzal” show. It is generous (in that he takes on stage with him a select armoury of quick fire comics) and dangerous (in that those comics will only see the “Set List” of topics, around which they must build their set, as they go on stage). High-risk high-jinks from a man old enough to know better but who still does it anyway.

Set List: Stand-Up Without A Net, Just The Tonic at the Tron, 4-27 August

Wendy Wason

“You are pregnant again!” I observed, when bumping (almost literally) into Ms Wason at Jerry Seinfeld’s O2 gig. “I’m always pregnant,” she laughed. “I’m just a slut.” How can you resist going to spend an hour with a woman like that? Wendy will be eight months’ pregnant in August. This is a show which could have the most spectacular ‘big finish’ in Fringe history. Whatever happens, Wason is a genuinely, engagingly funny woman. See her before she gets pregnant again.

Stand Comedy Club, II, 4-28 August

Scott Capurro

Edinburgh welcomes back one of its most incorrigibly prodigal sons. Age has neither mellowed nor withered him, albeit in gay years he is now older than God. Lucky Fringe-goers get three bites at Scott’s comedy cherry as the missing link between human and Velociraptor is bringing an hour of stand-up called Who Are The Jocks? (he means American jocks, not Scots), plus his now-acclaimed chat show Scott Capurro’s Position, as well as directing newcomer Andrew Doyle’s stand-up debut at Just The Tonic at the Store (formerly the GRV). Take your inner bitch queen and have a ball.

Scott Capurro’s Position, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 3-29 August; Who Are The Jocks?, Pleasance Dome, 3-28 August

Jimmy McGhie

It is great to see young Mr McGhie back on-Fringe after time away doing whatever it is that baby comics do when they are swallowed whole by big management. Last time out I loved his class, his smarts and his willingness to take risks with his comedy. He seemed then to be a three-dimensional version of Jack Whitehall. I hope he still is.

Pleasance Dome, 3-28 August

Frank Sanazi

I first saw Herr Sanazi at the Holyrood Tavern where the show’s performance and production wasn’t quite up to carrying the full weight of the appallingly funny concept. He is now much improved, albeit now appalling and funny in almost equal measure, and his Comedy Blitzkrieg brings new depth of meaning to our love for “Ol’ Blue Eyes”.

Laughing Horse @ The Hive, 4-21 August

Wil Hodgson

About as personal as comedy gets, an hour with Hodgson doesn’t really feel like a show, more a relationship with laughs. Wrestling, Care Bears, tattoos and the politics of the street (if that Street is in Cheltenham) will undoubtedly feature in this, an hour that promises to be Hodgson’s “coming of age” show. I am looking forward to it immensely.

The Stand Comedy Club III & IV, 4-28 August

Laurence Clark

Clark hits pretty hard for a bloke on wheels. Painful, political stuff comes garlanded with laughs and hilarious Powerpoint illustration. He is incredibly likeable and engaging and has a quality (shared by Michael McIntyre) that makes audience members love being singled out for attention. Just don’t even THINK about jumping the queue by using the disabled loo while Clark’s around.

Udderbelly’s Pasture, 6-28 August

Hannah Gadsby

She doesn’t laugh much, but you will. A proper, smart, confident, point-and-shoot comic who knows who and what she is and gives you an hour of entertainment telling you about it. Hannah comes to us this year packing two shows, her stand-up and an hour about the Virgin. Not many of them on the Fringe.

Hannah Gadsby – Mrs Chuckles, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 3-29 August; Hannah Gadsby - Mary. Contrary, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 17-26 August

Tom Stade

When Tom Stade is bad he is very, very bad, but when he is good he is awesome. I hear great things. And I expect great things of this laconic comeback comic who has crashed and burned more times than Eddie Kidd.

Pleasance Courtyard, 3-28 August

The Axis of Awesome

Okay, call me predictable but the big one who looks like Jack Black just makes me laugh and the titchy one who looks like a Thunderbird puppet is unbelievably talented. More laughs and more sweat per minute than most shows you will see.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 3-29 August