Tim Harding’s top 20 shows of 2024 : Features 2025 : Chortle : The UK Comedy Guide
A day late and a dollar short, here is the first instalment of the best live comedy shows I saw in 2024, an otherwise best-forgotten era of indignity.
No one sees everything, even my all-seeing Chortle colleague Steve Bennett, and no one exercises flawless judgement, except my learned colleague Steve Bennett (whose most memorable gigs of the year were listed here), but if you ever have a chance to catch any of these shows, or to follow these acts as they take their next steps, I can promise your time will be well spent.
The top ten will be revealed tomorrow…
20. Bella Hull: Piggie
A pointed, precise wit with a poppy sheen, Bella Hull distilled a Gen Z malaise and questions about their place in the world into a delightful set that probed the relationship between consumption and spirituality.
19. Ed Aczel: Running on Empty
No one rejects comedic cliches quite like Ed Aczel, who has excised traditional notions of setups, punchlines and even entertainment from his material. His rambling stories and gripes about his network provider celebrate the meaningless and the banal in a way that’s profoundly funny, and a perfect antidote to stand-ups more mechanistic tendencies.
18. Demi Adejuyigbe: Demi Adejuyigbe is Going to Do One (1) Backflip
The American dynamo and font of creativity had one of the year’s most universally beloved shows here, all about building up to the titular stunt, but peppered liberally with other tricks, feints and musical interludes. An inevitable smash.
17. Aaron Chen: Funny Garden
I loved Chen’s analogy of his stand-up as being like tending to the plants in his funny garden, an image which perfectly captures his tender, unfussy patience as a comic, spinning traditional observational material into gold with his dry, charming style and sense of the absurd. Deservedly on his way to becoming a huge star
16. Lou Wall: The Bisexual’s Lament
Lou Wall’s account of the worst year of their life is blasted into your face at 300bpm in a frenetic mix of music, lightning-fast visual stings, jokes and poses, making it even more impressive that they find moments of pathos amidst the candy crush chaos. Digital natives are starting to make more of an impression on standup, but no one does it like Lou Wall. Standup for the Chappell Roan generation.
15. Ian Lockwood: The Farewell Tour
One hesitates to use the phrase ‘a star is born’, but Ian Lockwood made a huge first impression with his outstanding character comedy hour about the last hurrah of a megalomaniacal popstar, exploding on stage with the charisma of a drag queen and some of the catchiest pop bangers ever seen in musical comedy. Seeing him perform ‘Orbo’ at the LMAOnaise show was probably my single favourite moment of Edinburgh ’24.
14. Celya AB: Of All People
The French comic has been a significant rising star on the UK circuit for a few years now, but 2024 represented an evolution of her style. Of All People is a more honest, affecting show than ever before, tackling some serious big feelings and major life events with the skill of her generation’s pre-eminent joke writer.
13. Mike Rice: Nasty Character
Raucous, old school and close to the bone, Mike Rice’s show about growing up as a farmer’s son in Ireland is best suited to an audience of reprobates above a pub. It might not be sophisticated to scream at your audience and call them all paedophiles, but this had the highest pure fun quotient of any show I saw this year.
12. Trygve Wakenshaw: Silly Little Things
A real opus here from the contemporary master of mime – Wakenshaw has created a silent play about un unlucky stage magician that insistently expands in scope until all of life’s arc is described in a few perfectly chosen movements. A genuinely beautiful and meaningful comedic feat.
11. Flo & Joan: One Man Musical
Musical duo Flo & Joan cede the spotlight in their unauthorised biographical musical of Andrew Lloyd Webber, giving George Fouracres the opportunity to burn up the stage with the year’s best comedic performance. His ALW is a glorious supernova of talent, ego and cocaine, and he’s matched with some of Flo & Joan’s best ever songwriting. See it now before the real ALW catches wind.
Published: 2 Jan 2025
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