The most popular comedy shows in London

This review is from the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. High-concept verging on slightly terrifying, comic Jordan Brookes’s latest is show is about the not uncommon subject of getting older. Kind of. In a way. Brookes’s response to the ongoing passing of his thirties is, apparently, to get really into the story of the RMS Titanic, ‘because that’s the sort of thing that people do’. Perversely, Fontanelle takes its name from a digressionary passage in which Brookes goes off on one about his fascination with the titular soft bit of babies’ heads and how if adults still had it, it would probably get used as a really dumb suicide button. If we’re saying everything has its place here, then I think the inference is the Titanic is what Brookes has gotten into in lieu of having children of his own to focus on. But that may be overthinking it. And the show really is quite a lot about the Titanic.  Coming out wearing what turns out to be a miniature captain’s hat the actual boat, the film and most crucially the relatively obscure stage musical all feature heavily in the material. Brookes apparently made a three hour round trip to see the musical in Southampton and thought it was shit, and therefore decided he'd write his own, which we’re subjected to in increasingly larger, madder doses as the show wears on. There are things about Fontanelle that it would be unfair to spoil. But easiest to say that it’s remarkable Brookes thinks of this stuff and even more so that he has managed to...

Cat Cohen has become something of a comedy superstar with her two hit shows The Twist… ? She’s Gorgeous and Come For Me – plus last year’s album OVERDRESSED – and despite being about as American as it’s physically possible to be, the singing comic has long been a success over here, from Edinburgh Fringe beginnings to apperances on various beloved panel shows and podcasts. Now she’s back in town trying out something new for a couple of weeks: at time of writing there were still a few tickets left for most of these intimate dates.

In his latest dizzyingly high concept show, avant comedy legend Stewart Lee bemoans his irrelevance – something he’s been been bemoaning for decades, often with zeitgeisty results – in a new show in which he promises to unleash a new, callously offensive stage persona to compete with the likes of Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle. The Man-Wulf is, apparently, ‘a tough-talking werewolf comedian from the dark forests of the subconscious who hates humanity’. Expect nuclear levels of irony. 

Agit prop comic Mark Thomas spent much of his middle years crafting high concept shows that were closer to storytelling theatre than stand up per se. Now in his sixties, he’s gone back to his roots – kind of – with Gaffa Tapes, which forgoes a grandiose overarching theme in favour of ‘jokes, rants, politics, play and the occasional sing song’.

15 acts compete in this heat of the 2013 Laughing Horse New Act of the Year competition, plus MC Lewis Bryan.