Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

A very intriguing foray into stand-up here for Bróccán Tyzack-Carlin, a performer from Hartlepool who’s better known as a poet and spoken word artist. This is definitely not the show where it all comes together for him, but it contains glimpses of something very special.

He says he’s been accused of being too ‘intense’ on stage before, which was exactly the same word that had been in my mind since he started speaking. Tyzack-Carlin is broad and commanding, performing with a mirthless grin and a gravelly voice. ‘Don’t groan!’ he barks, after delivering a series of indisputable and intentional groaners. The audience are fascinated but shrink away nervously.

It’s an eccentric hour, more of a scrapbook than a coherent show, although a very personal story about his Mum runs through the centre of it. 

Otherwise, though, it lurches strangely between ideas. He has a number of poems – not Tim Key-style short stories but actual rhyming comedy poems like Roger McGough used to do; he has an extended reverie on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel, in which he recasts McIntyre as Satan and The Wheel as his infernal instrument, and towards the end he gets more overtly political than just about any other act at this festival.

Tyzack-Carlin’s politics, it should be said, are not conducive to affectionate parliamentary sketches; there is real, seething anger here, most of it directed towards the centre-left. He even takes the time to go through Keir Starmer’s entire cabinet like a Soviet executioner, character-assassinating them one by one, some of them for things they’ve actually done and some of them for crimes he’s happy to admit he’s imagined them doing. 

No member of the establishment is safe, no matter how cuddly – even Rylan Clark gets pinned to the wall for his uninformed comments on asylum seekers.

This firebrand side of him sits oddly alongside his tendency to daydream. At times he’s like an angry version of Johnny White Really Really, and then he’ll snap into uncomfortable reality like he’s woken up with a start. 

Careening from one bit to the next, you get the sense of an artist being pulled around by the galloping stallions of his impulses. If he can get them all facing the same direction at once, this abrasive and compelling performer could have something very powerful on his hands.

Review date: 28 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard