The stand-outs for me – and, as a judge, I advocated for them, and agonised as to who to vote for – were Gledhill and Sarah Keyworth, 31, both of whom could become national treasures.
Keyworth’s most succinct one-liner, about being an “emotionally unstable non-binary person”, whose “pronouns are ‘there/ there’”, has been widely touted but almost every line uttered by the Nottingham-born comic in My Eyes Are Up Here betrayed a cherishable wit. Whether it’s the cheeky grins, knowing looks or the arch eyebrow-work, there are joyous shades of Victoria Wood in Keyworth’s well-mannered, middle-class shtick as the discussion roves across relatable family foibles, reductive generalisations and the stand-up’s recent top-surgery, recounted with droll candour and celebratory inclusivity.
If Keyworth’s keynote style is smirking self-possession, Gledhill is the antithesis – larger than life, gleeful, salacious and as warm as any heatwave. Her show Make Me Look Fit on the Poster enlists conviviality at the start by dispensing knickers to be flung in her direction. Thereafter are tales at her own expense, not least the relived embarrassment of a disastrous visit to an outdoor activities centre, rendered with immaculate, toe-curling physicality. What emerges through the hilarity, though, is a sense of someone facing self-esteem issues, our laughter in itself becoming an invitation to make us consider our assumptions.
Another instance of difficult home truths arriving through a haze of convivial chatter is found in Easily Swayed, by Gledhill’s pal and comedy partner Chris Cantrill. What begins as a natter about his mates, and an oddball decision to introduce a cape-flourishing sense of medieval mission to his mid-life, craftily arrives at ambushing reflections about unspoken male mental health issues.
Not to bang that drum too loudly, but elsewhere the stresses of the age have borne nutritious fruit. With its constant re-starts, reprised songs and deflection from getting on with the show, watching the award-nominated Family Man by Australian comic Josh Glanc (pronounced Glance) feels a bit like being inside a breakdown, where the overload is hypnotically carnivalesque not blokily crushing.
It’s impossible to do justice to the Fringe in all its mad glory – but among the most memorably, therapeutically bonkers hours I’d hail Best Newcomer winner Joe Kent-Walters in demented, Sudocrem-plastered character as Frankie Monroe, the growling old-school emcee of an infernal working-men’s club in Rotherham; the spirit of the fringe ‘panel prize’ winner Rob Copland, who bundled mind-expanding zaniness into a cramped basement – oh, and Elf Lyons prancingly (and brilliantly) evoking equine experience in Horses.
Richard Osman – co-hosting the awards ceremony on Saturday – recently warned that, owing to the decline of the TV comedy industry, Edinburgh is no longer the springboard for comic talent that it used to be. Even if that’s true, it’s not so much a case of “more fool” hundreds of comics for trying their luck there, as more fool anyone daft enough to ignore the UK’s creatively supercharged comedy central.