Luke McQueen’s return to the Fringe is an audacious bonfire of the vanities – both his own and the comedy ecosystem more generally; the gatekeepers, the chummy podcasts, the expensive clowning courses. Directed by Jordan Brookes, the show shares clear DNA with Brookes’s own solo work, playing with what’s real and what’s not, and interrogating stand-up’s promise of warmth and vulnerability.
The show is premised on McQueen’s resentment at not being asked on ‘The Comedian’s Comedian’, the long-running interview podcast hosted by Stuart Goldsmith, a significant marker of success in the UK comedy world, and the opportunity ‘for some extended navel-gazing and self-aggrandisement’ (Richardson). As the show begins, McQueen plays us an excruciating phone call in which he is rebuffed by Goldsmith, and what follows is both wish fulfilment and revenge: a staged interview with an unctuous, AI programmed version of Goldsmith. Then the AI worm turns, and McQueen is forced to confess his sins.
Part of what’s thrilling about the show is the way McQueen violates all kinds of unspoken contracts and conventions. The use of Goldsmith – the theft of his identity, essentially – is just the beginning. Overturning the presumption of mutual respect between performers, there’s an implicit mockery of Goldsmith’s podcast, and McQueen is disdainful of other comedians, too, attacking the use of personal, even traumatic material, only ‘to set up the merch table’. Ideas of likeability or relatability, such essential qualities in comedy, are flagrantly overturned – McQueen’s egoism and sense of superiority are signalled by his onstage preening – dressed in a beautifully tailored suit, running his fingers through his hair. Similarly, rather than the humility implied by courtesy towards backstage crew, he is sardonic about being ‘all for women in tech’ and overtly dismissive of his female tech. That sense of imperiousness is also evident in McQueen’s disdain towards the audience; at one point he summons someone on stage and tells them to do a dance – ‘I’ve had time to prepare – you just do one’ (he’s disgusted by the delighted applause that greets their efforts – ‘the loudest clap of the evening is not going to be for someone else’).
Even the narrowly specific premise of the show feels audacious – almost high handed – with some critics worried about its lack of universal appeal, as ‘too inside baseball’ (Harding). And certainly, McQueen doesn’t stint on insider details: Taskmaster, exploitative clowning courses, the cost of props at the Fringe – as a systematic look at the workings of the comedy world, it almost amounts to a form of institutional critique. We’re accustomed to this kind of critique applied to galleries and museums, as a way of disrupting the otherwise transparent operations of art institutions, but it feels very new when applied to stand-up. McQueen is typically self-mocking about his ‘avant-garde pranks’, but in questioning the whole apparatus of his art form, he’s surely doing something close.
All of this violation is strategic, helping to establish McQueen’s egoist persona, and ensuring our satisfaction when the AI turns against him. Through the AI’s knowledge of his online habits and the contents of his laptop, McQueen goes from revealing the artifice of the comedy industry, to revealing the artifice of his own self-presentation. It’s one of the many achievements of the show that McQueen takes on the challenge of AI as hot topic so fruitfully – not as a mere add-on but as integral to the show’s concept. Showing rather than telling, we see AI as slavish stodge – feeding our fantasies, reinforcing our prejudices – and then as existential threat.
The satisfaction of McQueen’s fall isn’t straightforward – because the disclosure of his humiliating secrets is surprisingly touching. We see clips of him as a fame hungry teen on reality series Coach Trip, and his turn on Embarrassing Bodies. Both writhingly uncomfortable and very funny – it’s also rather sad – a still from Coach Trip, of McQueen’s young self being rejected is allowed to linger – his face unguarded, and his emotions rendered utterly transparent. There’s a similarly exposing recording of a phone call to an ex, where she muses about him at school – ‘a funny kid there, but there wasn’t really a place for you later.’ These revelations might be constructed, but they have the ring of truth. The fact that the confessions are ‘forced’ is interesting: a fair proportion of stand-up uses the vulnerability of autobiography to make rather crude appeals to an audience’s sympathies – but here the effect is of a kind of scrupulousness. It is effect only – all uses of autobiography are strategic, but the desired response tends to be somewhat limited (sympathy or commendation, mainly); this is a bit less clearcut – less manufactured (perversely, given just how manufactured it is) and strangely profound. The kinship with Brookes is clear, another performer whose handling of sincerity and vulnerability is at once artificial and authentic feeling.
Harding, Tim (2025) ‘Luke McQueen: Comedian’s Comedian’, Chortle, 13 August,
https://www.chortle.co.uk/review/2025/08/13/58762/luke_mcqueen%3A_comedians_comedian
Richardson, Jay (2025) ‘Luke McQueen: Comedian’s Comedian comedy review – Naughtily provocative’, The List, 23 August https://list.co.uk/news/luke-mcqueen-comedians-comedian-comedy-review-naughtily-provocative-47317
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