They’re taking the mic

Phil Nichol

There are too many reasons to go and see this almost infinitely talented comic to list here. This year he is bringing a “Simple Hour” of jokes and funny songs. Which is a little like Heston Blumenthal offering to rustle you up a sandwich.

Stand Comedy Club V, 4-28 August

Mark Thomas

Still seeking out corruption and injustice, still battling valiantly against both and somehow managing to make you cry with laughter and anger at one and the same time, Mark Thomas is one of the very few who convince that comedy could change the world. This year he is looking at the Israeli West Bank Barrier from both sides and on foot.

Bongo Club, 8-20 August

Lewis Schaffer

An hour whirling in the comedy vortex created by Schaffer’s myriad neuroses is always worth the ticket price. And here the show is free. A man who makes Woody Allen look like Steve Davies. If you love self-loathing, you’ll adore this.

Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, 4-28 August

Robin Ince

Wherever, whenever, he pops up across the weeks of the Fringe, sit in and engage your thinking bits. The most gifted of Grumpy Old Men, Ince’s intellect and irritation combine to create an irresistible comedic force. See him before he gets so exasperated that he explodes.

Buffs Club, 7-24 August, and Canons’ Gait, 6-17 August

Peter Buckley Hill

The mere fact that this year’s show is entitled “Thirty-seven Ways Of Deceiving You, The Audience, Into Thinking That I’ve Written A New One-man Show For 2011 When I Probably Haven’t, Or Something” presages another Buckley Hill triumph of smarts and surrealism. It is “mainly about marching”, he says. It will be “mainly brilliant”, I predict.

Canons’ Gait, 6-27 August

Omid Djalili

One of the all too infrequent thrills of the Fringe is the possibility of seeing a comic whose live performance had previously cast him as a dot on a faraway stage and a face on a huge screen, back in an intimate space. Djalili is going to be working through new material for his tour down at the Stand Comedy Club. This is a Fringe Experience. I doubt the tour will be as enjoyable as this.

Stand Comedy Club III and IV, 18-28 August

Stewart Lee

Where Lee leads, Djalili has simply followed. The comedian described in his own blurb with a quote that reads “embarrassing old man ranting like a student” has long been giving Fringe-goers the exquisite pleasure of being the crash test dummies for his new material. Whiplash was never so enjoyable. He is back on TV, remember. Own show and everything. So catch him before success mellows him.

Stand Comedy Club, 3-29 August

Sam Simmons

His first Edinburgh show was brilliant, last year’s was, I thought, a work approaching dark comedy genius. Some people have “funny bones”. Simmons has comedic capillaries. Not so much surreal as para-real, his shows are transportingly funny. So, as you rush (and you must) to get seats for Sam, the impatient woman shoving you out of the way will probably be me.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 3-28 August

Andrew Lawrence

You never really know what you will get from Andrew Lawrence. But you can generally be sure that it will be better than the year before. More than any other comic I can think of, Lawrence is in a constant state of evolution from the strange Steerpike-like creature he was born as, comedically. Like comedy’s Dr Who, the anticipation of what the next incarnation will be like is almost unbearable. Roll on August.

Pleasance Courtyard, 3-28 August

SIMON MUNNERY

The comedy Magimix in the mind of Simon Munnery has created many memorable blends over the years. But none, I suspect, will be more memorable than his La Concepta. Munnery has leapt the barriers of mere intellectual surrealism, left behind the trammels of stand-up and launched himself (and La Concepta) upon the world of Fine Food. La Concepta is a pop-up “restaurant conceptuel”, featuring Munnery as the entire staff of four. I am so excited I can barely eat. Which is just as well, as food doesn’t feature much on the menu. “All the rigmarole of haute cuisine without the shame of eating.”

La Concepta, various times and venues, 5-29 August

PAUL PROVENZA

Paul Provenza is a passionately political, seriously smart, ferociously funny comic. Set List is a typically “Provenzal” show. It is generous (in that he takes on stage with him a select armoury of quick fire comics) and dangerous (in that those comics will only see the “Set List” of topics, around which they must build their set, as they go on stage). High-risk high-jinks from a man old enough to know better but who still does it anyway.

Set List: Stand-Up Without A Net, Just The Tonic at the Tron, 4-27 August

Wendy Wason