Best of 2024: Comedy

Looking back over the past 12 months, it struck me how it has been the shows fashioned from personal stories that have stayed with me. It wasn't simply that the comics could make very good jokes about their travails or embarrassments, but that the material had a strong ring of authenticity. There's nothing wrong with delivering other people's gags (plenty of top-flight performers do it, of course) but when it rings true, it's somehow funnier.

So among the comics whose shows I've liked most were Kiri Pritchard-McLean's Peacock (tour restarts 25 January), in which she talks about her experiences of being a foster parent; Rose Matafeo's On and On and On, in which she dealt with some of her questionable dating choices (pictured right); Kemah Bob's Miss Fortunate (tour restarts 12 March), where she cleverly melds a tale about the holiday from hell with an exploration of what it means to be bipolar; and Chris Grace's Sardines (A Comedy About Death).

The last mentioned show is, as the title suggests, about grief and loss, and it was as funny as hell. Moving too, in an hour that, while not perfect, had the right mix of tears of laughter and tears of sadness, and never once felt manipulative.

Nor did two shows that dealt with the comics' own brush with mortality – Miles Jupp's On I Bang (tour restarts 8 January), and Rhod Gilbert's Rhod Gilbert and the Giant Grapefruit (tour restarts 30 January). Both are searingly honest – and mordantly funny – about their treatment and recovery from, respectively, a benign brain tumour and cancer. Long may they thrive.

I saw Chris Grace (pictured left by Eric Michaud) at the Edinburgh Fringe, a festival that I always used to describe as the biggest and the best, but that's a sobriquet I now hesitate to type. It's still by some way the world's biggest arts festival but increasingly it feels like a chore to be there; lots of indifferent comedy (it's largely non-curated), eye-watering accommodation prices and a general feeling of it living on past glories.

Like many, I often wonder what useful purpose the Fringe Society serves, but the local council – which benefits from the massive influx of performers and tourists during August but still can't manage to send out a few extra refuse collection crews to keep the city clean and pleasant – must take some responsibility. I thought all concerned parties might use the pandemic to reset, but no; perhaps a new Fringe Society chief starting in early 2025, as well as a recently installed new City of Edinburgh Council leader, will do the trick. I sincerely hope so.

Thankfully, 2024's Fringe threw up some marvellous new talent, chief among them being Joe Kent-Walters, who was given the DLT Entertainment Best Newcomer gong in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!! (tour restarts 22 February). It's a delightful, daft spoof of old-school variety entertainers, done with oodles of affection. Other comics that I recall laughing a lot at in dark and sweaty rooms in the Scottish capital were Emma Sidi (Emma Sidi Is Sue Gray) in her political spoof and Colin Hoult's autobiographical Colin (tour restarts 8 January).

The comedy world lost some favourites in 2024, on both sides of the pond, including Duncan Norville, Janey Godley, Bob Newhart and Ewen MacIntosh. A more personal loss was that of Katie Phillips, a popular and respected comedy PR whom I shall miss bumping into in Soho and at the Edinburgh Fringe after her shockingly early death at the age of 46.

But this time of year is about looking forward as well as back, so in 2025 I anticipate with glee reviewing, among others, Chris McCausland. The comic was the deserved winner of Strictly Come Dancing and is now back on the road with his new stand-up show, Yonks!, which promises to be a lot of fun.

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