Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Paul Foot’s last Edinburgh hour was the mysterious and brilliant Dissolve, a show that contained, in a small way, one of the most astonishing stories that’s ever been put on stage – it was a wild departure from his usual idiosyncratic nonsense. How possibly to follow that up? With more nonsense, quelle surprise!

That’s actually not quite true because, although he remains a very silly man, he’s more overtly political than he used to be, and his new show The Future alternates between observational flights of fancy and broadsides against the right. Between these ‘13 or 14 pieces of humour’ he leaves long passages of comfortable silence, as if allowing us to rest our palates for a new course.

His observations usually hinge on a simple formula: he sees something whimsical and commonplace, like the universal British amazement at a plate of sizzling fajitas, and slowly accelerates the premise until the dish is so hot that it obliterates Surbiton High Street as soon as it’s set down on the table. 

His politics are a little less finely tuned, and you could argue his targets are kind of easy, but the material itself is still wonderful. His suggestion to tackle the trans sports question is just to stop doing sports. ‘The two-man bobsleigh is not a human right.’ 

His wider point is a powerful one – can you think of another time in history where people weren’t excited about the future? Telling the story of how his grandmother escaped Nazi Germany as a girl, he heartbreakingly wonders if that story would even be possible today, with the rhetoric around immigration in its current state. 

It’s thanks to immigration that he’s here at all, inhabiting his comic persona so beautifully, pecking around and drawling in his incredible voice, like a cracked version of Kenneth Williams.

 As in Dissolve, he offers a long and earnest message of hope at the end, but this time it rings a little fainter, at odds with his experience rather than in accordance with it.

Review date: 25 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Tim Harding