Magicians and margarine: 10 of the funniest jokes from the Edinburgh fringe 2026

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Emotionally open and a little weirder than usual, the Glaswegian comic updates us on his recent marriage When SNL UK hit big earlier this year, it made stars of several comics just starting their careers. That was not the case with Larry Dean, who has been peddling his brand of crowd-pleasing Glasgow comedy for well over a decade. You know what you’re going to get with a show from the fringe veteran: little in the way of depth or innovation, but plenty of expert standup craft from a man whose body, face, voice and words are all oriented directly towards the funny. While his act rarely changes, one discerns a scintilla more weirdness in 36-year-old Dean than in the cheeky-chappy, boy-next-door version of old. He’s got up in a smoking jacket and artist’s bow tonight, as he updates us on his recent engagement and marriage to his Black Country beau, and on the autism diagnosis first outlined in his 2024 show Dodger. There’s some riffing on the overlaps between gay and autistic, and a fun bit imagining the generation of “non-trauma gays” we might expect now homosexuality is no longer so stigmatised...

Assembly George Square, Edinburgh The US comic’s troupe tell the tale of a special guest’s romantic encounter, in this case Travis’s frontman – but their incoherence makes for a scatty if fun show It’s a lovely format for improv: a special guest tells David Magidoff the story of some romantic (mis)adventure from their past, and Magidoff and pals turn it into an extemporised musical. Shades of Improbable theatre’s tender and funny Lifegame, many moons ago – although Making Love is more knockabout than that. Between musicians and improvisers, US actor and comedian Magidoff assembles no fewer than nine bodies on stage. It’s a lot, populating the stage with a surfeit of comic ideas, occasionally at the expense of the affaire du coeur that Travis frontman Fran Healy has offered up as raw material. Magidoff is a Travis fanboy; he has Healy sing two songs, and gets starry-eyed about it, before the show proper begins. In conversation, the genial Healy then volunteers a droll story of teenage infidelity, a drunken tryst with a girl from another part of Glasgow, which he wrongly thinks will insulate him from discovery. The improvisers, led by Magidoff, then take over, goofing into being several scenes in which young Fran and his pal cop off with two Protestant schoolgirls, then must face the music when their misdemeanour is exposed. At Assembly George Square, Edinburgh, until 23 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews..

On its anniversary, the author of a new book about the album explains the complex legacy and masterful musicianship of the 1986 classic It was the summer of 1984 and things weren’t going well for Paul Simon. The year prior, a blockbuster Simon and Garfunkel tour ended in bickering. Meanwhile, even though the 1980 single Late in the Evening reached the US Top 10, Simon’s last two albums had not sold very well, and his marriage to Carrie Fisher was starting to unravel. In the midst of all that the 43-year-old folk icon was steadily working on building a beach home out on the far end of Long Island. Many of Simon’s pilgrimages from Manhattan out to Montauk were soundtracked by a bootleg tape of accordion-heavy mbaqanga, a South African music style with jazz rhythms and bright guitar chords, he had received from a friend. It was on those drives that the seeds of Graceland, the crown jewel of Simon’s discography, were planted. “Many of us, in that day and age, found a moment of self-reflection – of being able to go deep inside ourselves – when we were in the car on these road trips,” said Ashley Kahn, whose new book, Days of Miracle and Wonder, follows the gestation process of Graceland. “If it wasn’t the radio, it was cassettes.”..