Alice-India picks her comedy favourites

Alice-India is making her Edinburgh Fringe debut about good and evil, having felt often misunderstood and even arrested 10 days before receiving an autism and ADHD diagnosis.  Here she shares her Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites.

The Goon Show:  Moriarty Murder Mystery

I can, almost word for word, recite this episode of the Goon Show from memory.

While The Goon Show is a potentially pretty outdated comedy relic now – see: quite a lot ofcasual racism – the intense silliness of this particular episode has never left me. And it makes  sense that from this I fell in love with Monty Python, and then The Mighty Boosh, and then the likes of Bob Mortimer, Lou Sanders and Sean Lock.

I was introduced to The Goon Show on the world’s longest drive to the South of France with my family during a biblical storm in what must have been 2002/2003? My parents purchased physical CD copies of Round The Horn, Dead Ringers, Just William and The Goon Show.

From the very first ‘Hello, folks it’s me!’, Spike Milligan et al had me in a chokehold. To this day when a comedian I don’t like gets a big laugh or applause break I recall to myself a line from the episode: ‘The listener must remember that was only recorded applause. Anyone can do it. I’ll show you.’ (Why be bitter, when you can be whimsical?)

The relentless absurdity nearly hospitalised me with laughter.

Following the traditional structure of a murder mystery, The Goons effortlessly pull apart your expectations at every turn. On the discovery of a dustbin with a body in it, they knock to see if anyone is in. An old man answers and a frustrated Inspector Seagoon asks: ‘Don’t waste time, are you a corpse or not?’

To which the frail voice responds: ‘I was, but I’m much better now thank you.’

Deliciously stupid.

I once played this episode to an ex boyfriend after he’d smoked a joint and he begged me to turn it off as the madness of the whole thing was triggering what turned out to be quite a severepanic attack. He probably deserved it.

Not to get all sentimental so early, but as a late- diagnosed autistic and ADHD adult, it makes sense that this world filled me with such visceral joy. 

The world I was living in as an 8/9 year old didn’t make sense to me and it was terrifying. The world of The Goon Show didn’t make sense and that was the fun of it. Nothing scary here, just Modern Min at the brass polish again.

The Simpsons

I never said I wasn’t basic.

Much like the rest of this list, it’s the absurdity of early Simpsons that has always captured my imagination. The deadpan silliness of Matt Groening’s world is a safe space for those of us who see the world from a skewed angle. I feel safe in the presence of one-liners that embrace the nonsense of day-to-day life with effortless to-the-pointness.

In a previous relationship, I was considering a pay cut to re-enter my career in education as a teaching assistant. My boyfriend near enough did backflips trying to explain to me, his chronic over spending liability, that it wasn’t a good idea. Eventually, after we reached the heightened tones of pre-argument vocals he turned to me and simply said: ‘Money can be exchanged for goods and services.’

We collapsed into fits. The relationship was saved. For at least five  more weeks.

There is a community that comes with being an early Simpsons simp. Even recently when I started a new job in September, I confessed to a line manager that I had been failing to complete a day-to-day task at work. He promptly responded with: ‘Dig up, stupid.’

I knew immediately that I would trust this man with my life. Or at least with questions about marking mock papers.

The Midwest Teen Sex Show

Stay with me.

The Midwest Teen Sex Show was the OG comedy sex education show. A web series that utilised sometimes completely off-the-wall sketches to provide both informative and hilarious sex education to a very soft brained teenage Alice-India.

I still frequently quote this show without realising. I have done a rewatch as part of writing this article and so much of my vernacular comes from this series. The deadpan approach of Nikol Hasler as she presents an episode on sex, drugs and alcohol is perfect. She opens with: ‘Of course we aren’t advocating for underage drug and alcohol use - you have other media sources for that.'

Even now, with my form group of 13-year-olds, when they tell me about an age inappropriate TV show they have watched I will tell them that ‘I can’t support you watching XYZ – you have other sources for that.’ And then I promptly fill out the necessary safeguarding forms.

Lines like: ‘If you want proof [that you’re not sexier when you’re drunk or high], next time yourdog gets high ask yourself if he’s sexier than usual’ are seared into my memory. Perhaps when I’m old and grey they will be the only words I’m able to utter as my family wheel me in front of the TV at Christmas.

A couple of years ago, I reached out to Nikol Hasler on Instagram because I just couldn’t leave the itch of this show unscratched. We now follow each other hich would have 14-year-old Alice practically glowing with elation.

All comedy aside, the show was – by early 2000s standards at least –pretty informative. Certainly 100 times more so than whatever Miss Cooper was spouting in PSHE in my Wiltshire comprehensive that’s for sure.

While writing this article, I wanted to know more about the show and how it came about so I reached out to Nikol again. She told me that the whole thing came about because of a conversation at her birthday party. A combined desire to make something funny, but also educational was the first step in the Midwest Teen Sex Show coming to life. In her own words, they had no idea they were creating something that anybody would watch.

Well, a baby Alice-India watched it and was almost definitely shaped by it comedically. And sexually.

Ackee and Salt Fish

I was introduced to the Ackee and Saltfish web series by a university housemate when we were too broke to go to the pub.

Written and directed by Cecile Emeke, what struck me about Ackee and Saltfish was the gentle humour of girl friendships captured so effortlessly. The drama. The hyperbole. The something out of nothing. But also the closeness that defines being one of the girls.

A sequence in which one girl breathes on the other before heading out for a job interview is inspired. The suddenness of the action. The reaction. The genuine horror of an introvert experiencing the whims of an extrovert – who they clearly love deeply as shown by the nuanced performances – as she is breathed on for a smell-check.

Sometimes I think friendships between girlinas is presented as cruelly layered and full of traps. I’m sure it can be, but I can’t relate. Ackee and Saltfish highlights the day-to-day ups and downs of friendships between women. A clash of energy on the wrong day. The need for silliness. Genuine love and support. 

An excellent episode unfolds when one of the girls’ boyfriends brings them ackee with no saltfish. Repeatedly she is asked if this, this is the man she wants to spend her life with. A man who will bring her ackee, but no saltfish.

Plenty of times I’ve eyeballed a friend's partner and prayed she finds something better.

Sometimes it’s about the saltfish. Sometimes it’s about something bigger.

Ali Wong: Baby Cobra

There comes in all stand-up comedians’ lives – I assume, I haven’t asked any of them – where stand-up comedy stops being as funny. Your brain starts filling in the punchlines for set-ups and you either guess what’s coming; or, sometimes, come up with something better.

This was not a problem during Baby Cobra.

I only saw Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra because my brother’s long-term partner suggested it one half-term in between spots at gong shows at the Frog and Bucket and the  Comedy Store. I must confess, I usually avoid US stand-up comedy. It’s never hit the same as British, Irish and Australian comedy.

I’ll leave time for people to hurl abuse into my inbox here. For fairness.

Wong threatened my life with Baby Cobra. Scream laughing. Struggling for breath. A tightness in my chest. Calls were made to 111.

She commented on every anxiety I had about a future as a ‘Mummy’. She said all the things I wished I had the nuance to say on stage at the time. I can’t poo with the door open withoutsending a telepathic salute to my sister-in-arms across the sea. 

 She did it all with such a fierce and unrelenting ludicrousness. No joke could be pushed too far or for too long.

Every single day of my working life since, I have heard her voice at the crescendo of the show crying out: ‘I don’t want to work anymore!!!!!’

Me too, queen. Me too.

The children I have taught

It doesn’t matter how much time I spend editing a show or a joke, I will never be as relentlessly funny as the absolute gremlins I have had the pleasure of teaching.

In the cold light of day, I am a secondary school English teacher with a specialism in SEND (autism, ADHD, dyslexia etc).

I have been rinsed by some of the sharpest one-liners you have ever seen, experienced horrendous cases of foot-in-mouth disease and watched some genuinely charming charactersdevelop their funny bones before my eyes.

 In my current cohort, I have a student who refuses to give up on his dad jokes first thing in the morning no matter how much his colleagues sigh and roll their eyes. I’ve had the joy of double entendre reignited. I’ve been slam dunked more times than I can remember.

At school, I am the least funny person in the room and it is an absolute pleasure. From being earnestly told during a lesson on romanticism to not worry because I’d find love one day, to one boy telling me he had been watching me cry from under a table all through break time, truly the nation’s teenagers are the funniest people on earth.

 But don’t tell them I said that.

• Alice-India: See You In Hell is on at Underbelly Bristo Square at 7.15pm until Monday.

Published: 23 Aug 2025