(and a couple of mums, too)

Ten comedians talking about parenthood. Mainly men, to be honest. Far fewer female comics say their show’s about motherhood – maybe they just get on with the job without wanging on about it…

Jeremy Dooley: Daddy Cool

The Australian comedian launched his relatable hour about recently becoming a father as he underwent a career change: MMA fighter to full-time comedian… though he was a winner of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Class Clown competition for schoolkids when he was a teenager. Speaking to Beat magazine down under earlier this year he said: ‘I’m going to be dealing with fresh nappies and no sleep by the time I start Daddy Cool… I know my audience will be able to relate to the excitement and fears that come along with it.’

Laughing Horse @ The Brass Monkey, 12.15pm

2 Dad, or Not 2 Dad

Bolton comedian and former infantry soldier Jim Bob was just eight when his father left. Now that he’s become a dad himself, he’s having to figure out how to do the job from scratch. 

Laughing Horse @ Bar 50, 6.30pm

Cordelia Graham: Faint Heart Never F*cked A Pig

A woman’s very personal look back at her father, Cordelia Graham’s show takes its wonderful title from her father’s mantra. He was Martin Graham, a brickie-turned-property-developer who founded Longborough Festival Opera in the Cotswolds. He died of dementia at Easter last year, and she held him up as a hero. In writing the eulogy for his funeral, she was forced to reconcile his life story with her own, as a ‘comedian, a comprehensive schoolteacher and former teenage champion of classical Greek recitation competitions’.

 Laughing Horse @ The Three Sisters, 7.30pm

Jody Kamali: This is My Dad

Best known at the Fringe for his Ironing Board Man physical comedy show (being performed at Underbelly Bristo Square at 6.40pm), Kamali is another comedian forced to reappraise his father following his death. The result, inspired by going through his dad’s belongings, hoping for answers about the man he thought he knew, is this show.. 

Assembly George Square, 2.40pm

Les Keen: Dinosaur (How To Wipe Out The Human Race)

Les Keen has one testicle and two kids. But what if he'd never had them? So goes the blurb for this show, described as 'Parenting 101 from a man trapped in the Dadosphere’ and whose title is inspired by declining birth rates. ‘Until I was 35, I didn’t want children,’ says Les. ‘Then some strange biological urge kicked

in. 25 years later, I think people deserve to know exactly what they’re signing up for.’ Keen returned to live comedy last year after a career as a TV writer on projects such as The 11 O’Clock Show, 8 Out of 10 Cats, and Take Me Out, where he created the catchphrase: ‘No likey, no lighty’.

Just The Tonic at The Hive, 1.50pm

Sophia Wren: The Best Girl In The World

Time for a token mum, as Irish comedian Sophia Wren – a finalist in So You Think You’re Funny in 2024 – promises a look into the ‘delightfully twisted chaos of a young mother's mind’ as well as her own adolescent  damsel' syndrome, fantasising about injuries that would earn her the attention she craved.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 10pm

Tom Skelton: VIP (Visually Impaired Papa)

After losing his sight, Tom Skelton (pictured) thought he might never become a dad. But now he is. And he's a bit scared. The show covers ‘nappy changing, choking hazards, losing your toddler in the park as well as not being able to read to him, see his changing face, or his first goal on the football pitch’

Underbelly, George Square, 8.15pm

Rizal Van Geyzel: Single Fatherhood

Rizal Van Geyzel has two shows at the Fringe.  Arrested, at Laughing Horse @ The Counting House at 3.15pm, is about how he was jailed for telling jokes about his Islamic heritage and faced a year of torment from right wing extremists, a hostile government and a sedition hearing in Malaysia. The consequence of this was that he lost his business and his wife, leaving him to look after three kids on his own, which he calls his toughest gig yet, and which he covers in this unambiguously-titled show.

Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, 6pm

Adi Parmar: Sunny Boy

‘Is fatherhood real or is it a lie made up by big childhood to sell more therapy?’ That’s what Netherlands-based comedian Adi Parmar asks in his show as he reflects on his unexpected fatherhood (he’s gay) while looking back on his own childhood in North India.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 7pm

Rachel Creeger: Ultimate Jewish Mother 2026

Where would comedy be without the figure of the Jewish mother? Rachel Creeger embraces the stereotype in a redux of the show she brought to the Fringe last year – no thanks to the Whistle Binkies venue which pulled the run at the last minute as staff there said that having a Jewish performer made them feel ‘unsafe’. Not that there’s any politics here; a Times review after last year’s hoo-ha said: ‘It’s not cutting-edge comedy and doesn’t pretend to be, but it is a warm, witty hug of a lunchtime show: a very safe space indeed.’

Hoots @ The Apex, 11:20

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Published: 17 Jul 2026