...and immediately lands a Fringe slot too

Sam Serrano has become the latest addition to Chortle’s Hotshots for 2025.

The comic will receive help staging their Edinburgh Fringe show following a showcase in Manchester’s Cultplex last night. 

Serrano’s festival show will be called Mars and revolves around an incident in which they were spat at in the street for wearing make-up, with the comic examining where such bigotry stems from.

They landed a slot as part of The Stand’s Fringe programme this morning on the back of their Hotshots success:

Here’s an extract from the set:

Serrano joins Omar Badawy and Paul Hilleard in the Hotshots’ class of 2026.

The next showcase is at Birmingham’s Glee Club on Wednesday featuring Henning Nilsen, Tal Davies, Alex Lennox Lawrence Dodd, Daniel Tizon, Kat Higgins, Shawn Uyosa,  Mark O’Keeffe, David Ferguson and Aalex Mandel-Dallal. Tickets are available here. 

Here are clips from the other comedians who performed in Manchester. 

Verity Sharpe

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Clementine Bogg-Hargroves as Shaun Guff

Oliver Yates presents Ollie’s Dating Everybody

Andrew Marsh as Balthazar Dark

Mike Carter

Published: 9 Mar 2026