Credit: Richard Pohle / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
Are you going to the Edinburgh Festival fringe this year? Me neither! But that’s okay! Let’s put our own imaginary comedy festival on right here in the barn (and by barn, I do mean newspaper)!
BORIS JOHNSON in YOU SET ‘EM DOWN, I’LL KNOCK ‘EM UP
The tousle-haired funster and star of BBC Parliament’s weekly comedy hit “PMQs” (in which he found fame with his instantly recognisable catchphrase “Fwaffety fwaff fwaff world-beating fwaffety vaccine rollout fwaff”) takes a sideways look at how he’s somehow managed to rise to a position of absolute executive power without ever putting in an honest day’s work.
Not suitable for (anyone else’s) children.
8pm, The Stained Sofa (venue 10)
Shortlisted for the Viagra Award 2018, 2019 and 2020
MATT HANCOCK in SPENDING MORE TIME WITHOUT MY FAMILY
Well, what a year it’s been for the fresh-faced star of stage and CCTV screen! This time 12 months ago he was happily lashing out PPE contracts to anyone he met in a pub, now he’s living in his car and washing in McDonald’s gents.
Join him as he ponders where it all went wrong (assuming he remembers to turn up).
3.15pm, The Doghouse (venue 27)
JACOB REES-MOGG in SILENCE, PEASANTS
Comic genius Jake Mogg again adopts the persona of his hilarious character “Jacob Rees-Mogg” for another hour of peering disdainfully at the lower orders. Such a superbly crafted caricature of upper class entitlement and lofty ignorance, you’ll almost believe someone like him could actually exist.
(Not suitable for the likes of you)
4pm, The Ivory Tower (venue XXIII)
THE HUNT FOR KEIR STARMER
It’s the most relaxing walking tour of the festival as our guides conduct you through an exhaustive search of today’s papers, news broadcasts and social media to see if the hunky Labour leader has actually said or done anything about anything at all today, or yesterday, or for as long as anyone can remember.
12 noon (and every hour thereafter), Your Laptop (venue 2.1)
RISHI SUNAK in IF YOU HAVE TO ASK, YOU CAN’T AFFORD ME
The rising star of British comedy and economics – of, if you will, economedy – invites you to the most expensive show on the Fringe. Seriously. However much you’re thinking the tickets cost right now, it’s way more than that. “If you only see one show this festival, it had better be this one, because you won’t be able to afford any of the others afterwards” – Brian Brian, Festwatch
6pm, The Platinum Lounge (venue 1 billion)
TOTAL SELL OUT 2021: PIERS CORBYN’S AFTERNOON CHAT SHOW
Get your tin foil hats on and come
on down to hear the 2021 (joint) winner of the World’s Worst Piers Award as he talks about anything he hasn’t been paid a substantial sum of (fake) money NOT to talk about. Guests include: Acid Casualty Alex, Big Dave The Bus Nutter and Lee Hurst.
Free entry; contributions gratefully accepted (and encouraged)
2pm, The Nuthatch (venue 51)
DOMINIC CUMMINGS in THE SECOND CUMMINGS
He’s back, and he’s kept the
receipts! Following up his
roaring success with last year’s
show “I Am Much Cleverer Than
All Of You”, (shortlisted for the Breakthrough Award, the Best Newcomer award and the Royal Infirmary Secure Unit), the impressively craniumed “Greatest Political Thinker Of Our Age” (D. Cummings) returns with his new show about how although he’s now unemployable, friendless and reduced to ranting on Twitter for clicks, he is still much cleverer than all of you.
9pm, The Secret Underground Lair (venue ssshhhh…)
THE GB NEWS QUIZ
Showing those lefty wokeflakes how it’s done, the country’s finest conservative comedy minds get together to take a rightways look at the week’s events. Come along and double the audience by your mere presence, listen to them cracking endless minor variations on the same tired joke (“Liberals, eh? Tuh.”) and gaze into their lifeless eyes as it slowly dawns on them that they’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake which they can never now undo…
7pm, somewhere
PRITI PATEL in RESTING SMUG FACE
Join the hardest-smirking woman in politics as she reminds you, as if you needed reminding, that however wonderful and brilliant you think she is, you’ll never think she’s as wonderful or brilliant as SHE thinks she is. Please note that latecomers and hecklers will be removed. From the country.
8.30pm, The Detention Centre (venue 101)
THE LATE NIGHT ANTI-VAXXERS’ REVUE
Midnight, The Oxygen Tent (venue 130,000)
CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS
POEM OF THE WEEK
I wish I were in Edinburgh
Now the Fringe is sort-of on
Oh for a bunch of punters
And a stage to strut upon.
Though it’s always grey and rainy there
And colder than a freezer
This could be the last year I could go
Without needing a visa.
