Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Two years ago Demi Adejuyigbe electrified Fringe-goers with his tricksy debut, promising to do one (1) back flip over an hour, a high-concept meta way of stringing together all sorts of silliness. 

This year's follow-up is a slightly more conventional assortment of sketches – although ‘conventional’ is a relative term – connected by only the loosest of threads. Indeed, the American comic admits he reverse-engineered a theme at the end of his writing process.

Nonetheless, as the title suggests, this is his attempt to follow the long-established American dream of shamelessly cashing in. Initially that manifests itself in doing a Christmas song – think of those annual royalties! – though coming from a comedian, Rock And Roll Santa Claus, doesn't unfold quite as expected for the ruddy-faced chimney-slider.

This track, and its follow-up about Halloween, are clearly comments on artists feeling the need to feed the algorithm. But they are quite long songs to get things going, even though their lyrics are enjoyably twisty.

To mix things up, Adejuyigbe has a number of super-short jokes, too, which he presents to the audience under the banner ‘prolly just a tweet’, which is definitely underselling the brilliant, concise wit that goes into writing these eminently quotable one-liners. 

Elsewhere in the hour we get an old-school 1990s rap about LeBron James - again with an unconventional narrative - an elaborate card trick, and his audition to be the next James Bond, now 007’s gone woke.

Adejuyigbe knows country music’s popular too, so pushes himself out of his regular demographic. He’s noticed that most male country stars sing about their possessions, so in the spirit of cashing in, does the same.

And, in a further warning against the advances of AI, we meet Robby the robot comedian, created by one of Adejuyigbe’s corporate sponsors, weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Appropriately (and deliberately), its crowd work bombs.

The tone of all this is playful and silly,  despite an earnest and out-of-place track very much in the style of one of Adejuyigbe’s comedy compatriots, plus a slightly trite message about being yourself.

The comic’s loose delivery of tight material neatly straddles the line between giving the impression that wheels might come off at any moment – and not just the literal ones Robby zips around on – and reassuring the audience that they’ll be in safe hands if they do. 

Don’t go expecting too many of the rug-pulls that characterised his debut (though there are some), and a stronger sense of something binding all this together wouldn’t go amiss. But a good time is guaranteed, so don’t be surprised if Adejuyigbe sells out in the less pejorative sense of the phrase.

Review date: 12 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Dome