Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Ele McKenzie brings her debut to Edinburgh in somewhat overdue fashion, after being a great value-add to London mixed bills for many years and playing a central role in the BBC Three sitcom Funboys.  

Describing herself as ‘looking like the kind of person who has a verruca problem ’, she has a unique, faintly spectral demeanour, and styles her comedy accordingly, adopting the persona of a ghoulish, basement-dwelling female version of the manchild. 

Part of her narrative in this introductory show is that she’s broken up with her boyfriend, doesn’t have a job, and has moved back in with her ‘rancid bitch’ mum to vegetate and masturbate.

She’s at her most gleeful when framing herself in these grotesque terms, and she’s liable to get pretty graphic about all manner of things, but perhaps wisely dials it back a little for the debut hour, although I worry she dilutes a little of her distinctiveness in the process. There are a lot of losers in stand-up, female or otherwise, and McKenzie’s USP historically lies in how far she’s been willing to push it.

Accounts of herself as a hypersexual child (‘a table corner used to hate to see me coming’) are leavened a little with material about her OCD and generalised anxiety, particularly the period where she was ‘utterly obsessed with house fires’ to the extent that it severely impinged on her teenage social life.

As a writer, McKenzie’s imagery is never less than completely vivid, and serves her well throughout. 

The climax, an extended reverie about getting fingered by the claws of an 85-year-old Bob Dylan and the beautiful relationship that subsequently develops, is a minor masterpiece of comic writing, and shows her as a performer completely in sync with her material, with a persona that's equally adaptable to stage or screen.

Review date: 21 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard