There are but three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and the streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town being overrun with people flyering for shows during every Summer holiday.

Yes, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is back, continuing that proud tradition which dates all the way back to 1947, with a programme of more than 3,000 acts packed into the roughly month-long run, across 265 venues. But with so much being out there to choose from, where do you start? Well, here are a few picks which caught our eye.

Mitch Benn: The Lehrer Effect

To many, Tom Lehrer is possibly the most famous satirical songwriter they really should have heard of. For the lucky ones in the know, Lehrer – who just left us, aged 97 years young – came to prominence in the 1950s and ‘60s, with a signature brand of political commentary and dark humour, before retiring from the public gaze in the ‘70s in order to devote himself to teaching.

 

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Coming Out With Doctor Who

For those among us who were the oddballs, the strange, the dreamers, the dispossessed, there was a hero(ine) out there who was tailor made for us. An eccentric time traveller from the planet Gallifrey, with their itinerant, anti-authoritarian lifestyle, proudly standing up for the downtrodden and the oppressed, the Doctor was always fighting our corner on Saturday teatimes. Having two hearts just meant loving twice as much as everyone else.

 

Skip forward to the show’s revival in 2005 at the hands of writer and showrunner Russell T. Davies, Doctor Who has forged a new path in TV sci-fi, blazing a path across infinity (and heteronormativity) with its bold, unashamed drum beating for queer representation, which even included the lead changing gender.

 

SJ Wyatt – a self-proclaimed “bisexual, bipolar, geeky queer activist” – identified with the series, its main character and its message, and found Doctor Who helped them to come to terms with their identity. Coming Out With Doctor Who is Wyatt’s show about their self-discovery, and – with the help of the audience, bejewelled props, and sound effects – turns their ‘coming out’ story into an episode of the TV institution.

 

Coming Out With Doctor Who is at Games Room at Laughing Horse @ The Brass Monkey from 13th to 24th August 2025

 

Sooz Kempner is Ugly

Beauty is apparently only skin deep, as well as in the eye of the beholder. In an era of airbrushing and Botox, as well as the sometimes harsh gaze of social media, it appears woman are now perhaps more than ever having to try to achieve an unreachable standard when it comes to their appearance. Ulrika Jonsson recently hit back at online trolls who constantly judge women for how they look.

Friz Frizzle’s Funny Turn

Musical comedian Friz Frizzle is something of an old hand when it comes to the Edinburgh Fringe, having racked up a total of fourteen previous shows there. An ‘old hand’ which unfortunately became a bit less complete, due to a recent ‘fingerectomy’, which is the latest in a series of health-related woes to have plagued them.

 

Frizzle has been honing their craft for two decades now, having written for Mock The Week, BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show (like fellow Fringe act Mitch Benn), and – perhaps most unexpectedly of all – Len Goodman’s Partners In Rhyme. They also won Leicester Comedy Festival’s Best Show in 2020, so Frizzle has certainly paid their dues.

 

However, it nearly came to an end in 2022, when they got a diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy, a development which almost made them bow out of comedy altogether. All that changed, however, when they got a big knee which ended up changing their life. Friz Frizzle’s Funny Turn is the tale of that knee, accompanied by selections from their big book of musical parodies.

 

Friz Frizzle’s Funny Turn is at Binkies Lounge at PBH’s Free Fringe @ Whistlebinkies from 2nd to 24th August 2025

The Electric Head

2025 may mark the first Edinburgh Fringe appearance by The Electric Head (AKA Al Ronald and Cy Henty), but they made their debut way back at the Camden Fringe back in 2007. Since then, the duo have developed their skills by moving away from pre-scripted skits to the high wire thrill ride that is improv, with their show Improvised Head.

 

While you may not know them now, The Electric Head look to have a bright future ahead of them, and at the end of 2023 had the accolade of winning the inaugural Galton & Simpson Godfathers of Comedy Award (created in honour of the late, great writing pair Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, of Steptoe & Son and Hancock’s Half Hour fame), with their script having been the top pick in The Big Finish Comedy Playhouse Script Writing Competition.

 

Exciting times are in prospect for The Electric Head, and each of their shows promises to be a wholly unique, completely improvised experience, with no two performances being alike, as Henty and Ronald take their audiences away with them on their epic flights of fancy. This seems like the perfect opportunity to hop on board, and make 2025 the year of the Headinburgh Fringe.

 

The Electric Head are at Just the Snifter Room at Just the Tonic at The Mash House from 31st July to 24th August 2025

 

Perhaps one of the most sure-fire ways to ruffle the feathers of the nerd in your life is to mix up – either accidentally or, more perversely, on purpose – those two sci-fi franchises which happen to both share 50% of the same title. That, and calling characters from said franchises ‘Hans Solo’ and ‘Dr. Spock’.

 

Yes, Star Wars and Star Trek are both firmly established institutions and part of our cultural and media landscape, and seem in rude health, with streaming the home of both properties. But which one is best? Well, Harry Hill would likely have a way to settle the argument, and here at 2025’s Edinburgh Fringe we have the opportunity to try and settle things once and for all (at least until the next time it rears its ugly head).

 

Rik Carranza Presents: Star Trek vs Star Wars – now in its seventh year – is a show that boldly goes to a galaxy far, far away, with guests trying  over the course of an hour to win the audience over in favour of their side (whether that happens to be Dark, or not). Hopefully, fans of Wars and Trek alike will be able to break bread  together at the end of it all and acknowledge that JJ Abrams impressively managed to fuck all of them over equally.

 

Rik Carranza Presents: Star Trek vs Star Wars is at Little Cellar at Laughing Horse @ West Nic Records from 31st July to 17th August 2025

 

Late Night With Terry Wogan

We live in an age where death is not the career setback it used to be. Marlon Brando managed to reprise his role as Jor-El in 2006’s Superman Returns, despite having been as extinct and lifeless as the planet Krypton for the previous two years. Filmmakers initially wanted to include digital versions of Elvis Presley and Paul Newman alongside a resurrected James Dean in Vietnam movie Finding Jack. And Roy Orbison was surely rocking and rolling in his grave to end up as a hologram on a posthumous tour.

 

The latest celebrity to return from the Great Beyond is ‘The Togmeister’ himself, ‘El Tel’, AKA Sir Michael Terence Wogan. Yes, the national treasure is back, and resuming his duties as the chat show host who graced our screens thrice weekly for a decade. Benjamin Alborough is the vessel for Wogan’s revisitation of this mortal realm, as he attempts to get back to the world of light entertainment, no matter the cost.

 

Late Night With Terry Wogan is quite the mixed bill in which Alborough interviews comics in character as a whole host of celebs. Previous guests have included the likes of Kourtney & Khloe Kardashian, Eminem, George Lucas, Liz Truss, Jeff Goldblum, and a variety of Michael Caines. Promising to deliver part-improvised chaos, you may want to tune into Late Night With Terry Wogan to see whether this is actually a loving tribute to the dearly (and, it appears, almost nearly) departed broadcaster, or if it Floral Dances on his grave.

 

Late Night With Terry Wogan is at Studio One at Assembly George Square Studios on 1st, 8th, 15th & 22nd August 2025

 

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A Tribute To The Band

Time certainly flies, and although the last decade has hardly been conducive to having fun, it still seems incredible to think that it was ten years ago when the world lost the unique talent that was author Terry Pratchett. His series of novels based around the Discworld has continued to be such a source of enjoyment for readers, and the vivid light of his creations still burns brightly.

 

The Edinburgh Fringe 2025 sees a new show – A Tribute To The Band – which is described as “an interdimensional musical tribute inspired by the Discworld Universe”. First time Fringe performer Cazz Regan – AKA Honourabelle Mention – is our guide and ‘Chaos Bard’ on this special one woman “musical misadventure from a universe just next door”, which began as a creative spark during lockdown

 

 A Tribute To The Band is about a young woman who is growing up in one world a discovering there is so much more out there than she ever thought. It charts the journey and experiences of Honourabelle Mention through both stories and song, which is part musical parody, part fantasy quest, communicated through the power and passion of finding a beat that connects everybody, with tunes which the audience may recognise, but have a new spin to them.

 

A Tribute To The Band is at Lower Theatre at theSpace @ Niddry St from 18th to 22nd August 2025

 

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The Birds, The Birds! (WIP)

Nicola and Rosie Dempsey – better known under their professional names of Flo & Joan – came to prominence as the ‘singing sisters’ in an advertising campaign for a UK bank (they make a point in their stage act of emphasising that no-one can ever seem to remember exactly which one it was actually for, which means it was clearly money well spent by that particular financial institution).

 

Ever since then, Flo & Joan have gone from strength to strength, with appearances on Live At The Apollo, Comic Relief and The Royal Variety Performance, as well as having their own special – Flo & Joan: Alive On Stage – on Amazon Prime Video. In 2024 they took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm with their show One Man Musical, which was a parody of the life of Andrew Lloyd Webber, with George Fouracres in the lead.

 

One Man Musical transferred to off-West End for a six-week run from January 2025, before going over to Australia for a month at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which has certainly kept the Dempsey sisters busy. But they have still found time to create The Birds, The Birds!, a work in progress which is at the Edinburgh Fringe 2025 for one night only, and is based around a rebuttal by the Old Woman Who Lives In A Shoe about the poem which made her so very infamous.

 

The Birds, The Birds! (WIP) is at Shedinburgh at Shedinburgh on 3rd August 2025

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Smack The Pony: Back In The Saddle

One of the hoariest old arguments out there is that women aren’t funny; a fallacious claim which seems like a tale as old as time, and is certainly no laughing matter. The lack of proliferation of female comedians on panel shows has been used as one prop of that flimsy argument, yet it says more about the institutional glass ceilings which are in place to hinder them, rather than there being a dearth of talent.

 

For one thing, there have been so many female-led acts and shows out there during recent years, including in the area of sketch comedy, with the likes of Watson & Oliver, Anna & Katy, Ellie & Natasia, and Beehive. For another, look at the sheer number of women performing comedy at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, so it seems appropriate 2025’s festival should see the return of one of the best known female sketch comedy shows, Smack The Pony.

 

Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips – who first appeared on Channel 4 together back in 1999 – are bringing back the classic sketch show with Smack The Pony: Back In The Saddle, which sees the three of them in conversation with Kirsty Wark. The Smack The Pony trio will be lifting the curtain on the original series, as well as revisiting some classic sketches, and delivering a few new surprises as well, with no worries of them flogging a dead horse.

 

Smack The Pony: Back In The Saddle is at Auditorium at Gilded Balloon at the Museum from 17th to 20th August 2025