I saw Sara Barron and Sophie Duker at the lovely Tap Social Brewery - a social enterprise brewery with a warm and welcoming tap room, plus excellent street food pizza outside. This unconventional but warm and welcoming venue offered a comfortable backdrop to an extremely impressive night of comedy.

Sara Barron delivered an incredibly well constructed show, taking in subjects like fertility, sex, bitching and love, set against a gentle arc of ageing and self acceptance. This was all heartfelt and clever and delightfully brash and shot through with surprising moments of sweetness. The balance here was perfectly judged. Barron is confident and at ease in front of a crowd, showing a very assured command of stage craft. This kind of filthy and cheeky comedy is at its best when there’s some real substance to it and this was perfectly delivered.

Sophie Duker gave us an hour of super-tight punchline control delivered with an almost poetry-like metre which gave the show a dreamy, theatrical air. She was silky-voiced, confrontational and extremely self possessed, examining issues of race, class and sexuality with a magnetic stage presence and an evident command of timing. I had been excited about seeing Sophie after watching her on Taskmaster and I was delighted to find the same persona backed up with the depth and breadth allowed by a full hour long show.

It’s worth pointing out that these shows are an absolute bargain. Both acts together are priced at what I’d expect to pay for one show at preview prices at Edinburgh. These shows are basically festival ready with only small adjustments still to come - the odd joke that’ll be cut, or a short sequence not memorised. I like seeing shows at this stage of development - it can be fun to see a little peek behind the curtain of how a show develops, but at a stage where the audience experience is very much intact, and the early material that definitely didn’t work has already been erased.

In different ways, both of these are my idea of ideal Edinburgh shows. They are both punchline-focussed and deliver a high laugh per minute ratio, but are structured towards a more satisfying arc, saying something more profound than an hour of random observation. Both comics had bags of charisma and well developed personas with distinctive voices and stage presence. And both delivered a challenge - a prompt to think slightly outside an established comfort zone. I recommend both these shows wholeheartedly for fans of thoughtful, issue-based and sometimes dirty comedy.

Some people say politics and comedy don’t mix, but I believe the opposite; neither really makes sense without the other. Without a sense of the absurdity of our current predicament, politics cannot be fully understood; whilst comedy without any commentary, however implicit, on power dynamics tends to be either bland or complicit, if not both.

That definitely doesn’t mean that every comedian should feel obliged to chuck in their tuppenny worth on the latest Tory outrage. Great comedy, rather, is about unveiling the politics hidden in everyday life, revealing the underlying ideologies of power inherent in our social interactions and encounters - and to do all that whilst being funny. It’s no mean feat. Yet both tonight’s performers pull it off with great aplomb.

Sasha Ellen’s set is loosely hinged (with plenty of digressions, natch) around a story of getting home after a messy night out. Along the way we are introduced to a host of the eponymous creeps (not all encountered in the same night I should reassure you) - a gym masturbator, a misogynistic contributor to the urban dictionary, and a host of obscenity-yellers, amongst others - whose scariness seems to melt into pathetic hilarity under the harsh light of Sasha’s retelling. Lest we think its all just fun, japes and bants, however, the set climaxes with a genuinely unnerving recollection of an uber ride that goes off-route. Sasha revisits her earlier conclusion that “we’re all cool boss bitches now...not allowed to be scared of anything,” concluding that “we don’t want to be cool, we want to be safe.” Her solution - the application of her favourite piece of Brighton subway graffiti (spoiler alert - it’s Chat Shit, Get Pegged) - is an apposite imagining of men being plunged into the never-quite-at-ease world women are so often made to inhabit. And she is funny throughout.

With Jamie Mykaela, there is no separation between the discomfort and the hilarity - it is all of a piece, right from the start. And with this show’s theme, it could hardly be otherwise - an exploration (with ukulele) of some of the greatest paedophilic rock n roll hits ever written. A trained opera singer, Jamie has an incredible, and incredibly versatile, voice which veers from husky 1940s balladeer, to saccharine sweet popette, to throaty devil pervert with consummate east. As a result, the songs sound great, which only serves to intensify our unease with their unavoidably dodgy content. As she puts it of the second song - Gary Puckett’s Young Girl - “don’t get me wrong, it’s a banger but also pretty sketch - welcome to the crux of the show…yeah, we’re going to end up laughing at a lot of noncy shit!” Between tunes, Jamie becomes a combination of rockumentary narrator, feminist philosopher, and raconteur - but always potty-mouthed comedian, in total control of the room, smacking down potential hecklers even before they’ve opened their mouths. As the show progresses, the girls get younger and younger, and no one is spared, until the set lies strewn with the humiliated corpses of revered national institutions from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to David Bowie; the arguments of their would-be defenders mercilessly torn apart (“It was a different time! Maybe John Lennon didn’t know it wasn’t OK to hit a bitch! Maybe David Bowie didn’t know she was fourteen, maybe he thought she just had really small hands!”) A complete tour-de-force, this is a performer so completely born for the stage it makes you wonder what you did to earn a place in the one universe where she didn’t decide to do something sensible with her life. Hilarious, thought-provoking and disturbing all at once - the hat trick of comedy genius.

The Oxford Comedy Festival is a great chance to see comedians honing new shows on the road to the Edinburgh Festival, and it always reminds me what a tremendous art stand up comedy really is. I first saw Matt Hobs on a Saturday night bill last year with 3 or 4 other comedians and he was brilliant, hence my attendance tonight. But that kind of knockabout environment is a very different beast to the one-hour one-person show format of tonight’s performance. My personal hypothesis being tested tonight is, will his hilarity translate into this format?

One difference between the two is that, for an hourlong show, you generally need a theme. Hobs’, as you might have guessed, is science. He begins by demonstrating his credentials for such an endeavour - namely, that he is actually a scientist, as evidenced by the journal paper he co-wrote; his name nestling in amongst the authors (“breaking convention,” he tells us, “in science, the one in the middle is definitely the best.”) From there, the show progresses on to woodlice (which are “probably in my top three types of lice”), DNA, sex, and the moon landing (spoiler alert - it DID happen). It’s this last part that is definitely the strongest material, not only where the funniest and most interesting bits are to be found, but also where his geeky passion is most able to shine gloriously through. We learn, for example, that the Apollo 11 pilots had a 50/50 chance of survival, that they were paid the equivalent in today’s money of $50 per day and that the Curiosity mars rover was so called because it ran over and killed a cat.

Another difference with an hourlong show is, of course, that you get to use a PowerPoint. This gives Matt the opportunity to run a little quiz game, in which we were invited to guess whether each phrase he displays is a type of woodlouse or a term relating to bedroom naughtiness (for those wanting to play at home, the options are roly-poly bug, cheese log, stumble bum, and badger giblets), as well as showing off some intricate and sexy bell curves.

One final difference is that there tends to be slightly less of the ad-libbed audience goading as you might get on a full bill of different comics. This is understandable given the slightly more formal format and less raucous midweek atmosphere. Nevertheless, we thankfully do get a bit of this, and some of the best moments are when Matt allows himself to go off-script a little in order to go down some rabbitholes with unsuspecting audience members; great stand up is all about the art of digression, after all.

It’s an incredible thing to hold an audience’s attention on your own for a full hour just by basically being silly, but Matt certainty pulls it off tonight. Hypothesis most certainly affirmed!

Angela Barnes

Those of us who braved the extreme heat for TAP Social’s double-bill were in for a treat - although, as Barnes joked, when you’re a menopausal woman, hot flushes come as standard. Her show was ostensibly about having ADHD, but was actually a series of diversions and distractions around politics, feminism, marriage and being left behind by technology. Like many comics, she leaned into some pandemic-related material, such as her impulse buying (“I’ve got so many unreturned clothes, the back of my wardrobe’s like a Narnia jumble sale”) and the irony of attending a speed awareness course on Zoom, but the jokes landed well enough for the audience not to get 2020 fatigue.

For anyone accustomed to Angela Barnes’ appearances on the News Quiz or Mock the Week, her frequent political references will come as no surprise. Boris Johnson provided plenty of material: he does make it easy, though some of the material felt a little too obvious (such as his approximate offspring). Barnes was on comfortable ground discussing feminism and, often, at her funniest, with jokes about Rose West and wedding-dress shopping particular standouts. It was when the political vitriol (and Barnes’ anger was palpable) didn’t end in a punchline that she lost the audience a bit.

Barnes is just the right mix of self-deprecation and comfortable-in-her-own-skin for the comedy to work. It didn’t all land: a poignant story about a former colleague, though clearly personal and well-intentioned, felt misplaced tonally. Having heard much of her material before on various platforms, I appreciated the newer anecdotes (the cling film story was a doozy), but it was testament to her delivery that even the tried-and-tested material still felt fresh and funny.

Jess Fostekew

Because I have been living under a comedy rock, I had no idea who Jess Fostekew was. It’s fair to say I was blown away. Whilst the audience were laughing loudly during the first hour, the second act saw the audience howling and crying with laughter. Some of the humour was physical (fist pumping or sexy dance routines), some political (a feminist slant on online dating), some pure silliness (the act’s finale will not disappoint). All of it, crucially, hilarious.

Fostekew leans into her identity as a queer woman, but does so in such a weird and refreshing way, that most of the material is totally unexpected. We’ve heard comics discuss homophobia, for instance, but probably not from felines. Her discussions of parenting are so frank and relatable, you’ll find yourself wishing she’d been in your NCT group.

Time is a big theme: skills we lost during the pandemic, how language catches us out, even urination volume across a generation. The show’s title, Wench, should perhaps indicate that Fostekew’s is a no-holds-barred approach – just when you think she’s finished with a particular point, she still manages to wring more comedy out of it, often with nothing more than a facial expression. This is comedy at its finest: uber-confident delivery, lightning quick and finely-crafted jokes. All hail Jess Fostekew.

In the top room of The White House (one of the best pubs in Oxford, I would say) I went to see a double bill of comedy acts (though tickets were available separately) - It’s Debatable! an improv panel show based around the idea of debates, and Chloe Petts: Transience, the debut hour of a comedian I’d enjoyed seeing before when she supported Ed Gamble’s tour.

It’s Debatable! was a pleasant hour of improvised debates around silly subjects (should we wear shoes?) with some light audience interaction and some laughs. I would have preferred a bit more movement within the format (maybe an audience debate, or something more prepared to intersperse) as it felt like we saw a lot of quite similar debates. I also feel like this might have worked better for me as a later night show - it’s the kind of thing I can see myself enjoying at midnight at the Fringe. Honestly, that’s on me for only having my first beer of the night when the show was going on though. Of the four comedians on stage, two of them I’d seek out to see their solo shows or sets, which is a very decent hit rate.

Chloe Petts: Transience was a satisfying and hilarious hour of comedy gently exploring gender and sexuality through a lens of cheerful interactions, both related from the past and in real time with the audience. I am from Yorkshire and I find this kind of affectionate pisstaking very funny - but I was impressed she got buy in from an Oxford audience for her jubilant observational rudeness about them. There was a nice balance of audience interaction and prepared material, and though it felt a little messy towards the end, the hit rate of laughs was extremely high and Chloe is an engaging and magnetic presence, who I’ll be adding to my auto-book list. A fresh and competent show, satisfying political, but never po faced, which I was surprised to learn was a first full hour.

The Oxford Festival Fringe Comedy festival are presenting an impressive number of events around Oxford over the next few weeks, ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As a longtime comedy fan and Fringe attendee, it’s really great to be able to attend so many Edinburgh-ready shows, at preview prices (around half what the shows would cost in Edinburgh, which is cheaper again that what you could expect to pay on tour), in my own town. After a touch couple of years for live comedy, I love that this festival is presenting such a wealth of acts so accessibly.

After an absence since 2019, the Oxford Comedy Festival is back, with QED Comedy bringing together over 40 comedians to preview their Edinburgh Fringe sets. Nothing quite says that our city is ambling back to normality by this sensational month of travelling stand ups bringing their WIP sets to Oxford for an hour of chuckles.

Eleanor Morton Has Peaked is the latest show from the fiercely talented comedian with a knack for creating hilarious videos that go viral. And in person she is as warm, welcoming and, crucially, funny a presence as you might expect, proving terrific company for a Saturday night.

Morton takes us through her pandemic, where her highlight was climbing a Scottish mountain, hence the show’s punny name. This is a set peppered with great gags, witty insights and a handful of Jackie Chan facts (thanks to her pandemic job of writing content for a children’s website). It dwells on the weight and trauma of the past two years whilst keeping proceedings mostly light and breezy. Obviously the pandemic was a lot for all of us but as it has stretched out Morton has become an internet star (thanks to her rather sensational videos. Seriously, go off and watch all of her output). I suspect a great number of comedians at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe will dwell on their own experience of the pandemic, and it felt oddly cathartic to hear this skilled comedian’s take on hers (where she essentially became a costume drama character struggling to find purpose).

The hour is a near constant string of nuanced comedic bits, pieced together thanks to Morton’s inviting personality. A particular highlight was an extended riff on the television watched across lockdowns, with great gags on Location Location Location, Come Dine With Me and Don’t Tell the Bride, or shows where British people do things badly. Perhaps what is most impressive here is Morton’s slickness, even with four weeks before the Edinburgh Fringe kicks off this is a show that holds together well, with no comedic fat to be hued off.

As we left the venue I was certain of two things - Morton is a comedian who is going to have a very good Edinburgh in August with her terrifically entertaining hour of stand-up. And QED Comedy will, once again, be bringing some great acts to Oxford this July. You should absolutely book a show or two (check out the group’s founder Matthews' festival picks). I know I’ll be booking to see a few more acts shortly. Oxford Comedy Festival, it’s good to have you back.