Abnormally Funny People returns to Edinburgh Fringe this year. Co-producer Simon Mint offered some insights on how the showcase works in its 20th anniversary year.
“A brilliant mix of stand-up comedy, funny stories, improvisation and music from famous names and rising stars, celebrating 20 years of top-tier disability comedy! Expect sharp wit, fresh perspectives and guaranteed laughs from a changing line-up of the world’s funniest disabled comedians.”
Where: Beside at Pleasance Courtyard
When: 30 Jul-25 Aug
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/abnormally-funny-people
Abnormally Funny People gives a platform to performers with disabilities. What’s on this year’s menu?
This is our 20th anniversary of the show. We created Abnormally Funny People 2005. Disability in comedy was a relatively new thing then. There were some performers, of course.
We went back to the fringe in 2015 for our 10th birthday, and now we’re coming back for our 20th birthday.
We have some of our original acts, like Liz Carr, Steve Day, Tanya Lee Davis. We have acts that have joined us along the way.
That’s Rihalina, Shappi Korsandi, Harriet Dyer, Lawrence Clark, and we’ve got actually quite new to us people like Will Robbins, Esther Manito. I won’t list them all.
If you go to abnormallyfunnypeople.com, we’ve got the listings up there for every day of the run.
We will be doing stand-up from each of the acts. We’ll also do improvisation, which is always a joy with complex disabilities.
And, oh, Lost Voice Guy, just reminded that he’s going to be fun doing the improv. And we will also hopefully get our song together. We’re working on that. That will be a video.
Your show has to touch on dark themes with a funny lens. Has it been easy to get that balance?
Individual acts go where they want to go. We’ve never censored people. We’ve just said, you’ve got to be funny. And you know, if they use a very old-fashioned word, we might nudge them.
But we don’t know if they think they are dark themes. It’s our lives. It’s our reality. I think if people are not disabled, they may be thinking, oh, what’s going on here?
But to us, and even to be honest, the stuff we love about behind stage is even darker than the stuff you see in public.
Of course we do have to balance it out and the nice bit some of our comedians just mess about hardly even touch on their disability are very joyous.
There are others that will be a little bit more edgy and go to some awkward places but so long as people laugh – that’s the deal.
How did you make a start in the business? Do Fringe Festivals inspire you?
I mentioned Abnormally Funny People started in 2005. It was Sky Television. They wanted to do something around disability.
They didn’t make their own program, so they said, what ideas do you have? And we said, let’s go to Edinburgh. We can film a documentary, us putting it together, and we’ve got a show at the end of it.
Inspire us? What Fringe Festivals do is get us to sort ourselves out and get there. We do lots of gigs along the way, you know, different people ask us and we’ve done festivals like Liberty, the Royal Festival Hall and they’re great. We’ve even done, you know, parliamentary conferences.
But the thing about the Edinburgh Fringe, it is a big beast. And so we’ve spent a year and a half pulling this all together. So it inspires us to do our best work, to do everything we can possibly can.
It really focuses us because sometimes Abnormally Funny People is a little bit more reactive when we are asked to do something rather than constantly out there.
I should mention all the comedians are, you know, their own entity. They perform on their own and they’re living from comedy and every now and again we pull them all together and do what we do.
What are you looking forward to most in Edinburgh?
I just love the joy of Edinburgh. That’s me speaking personally. That whole month of doing this wild and different thing. And we will obviously go and see lots of other shows, which I’m really looking forward to.
But just to have all of us together, 18, 20 different comedians, mixing it up, sharing a big flat. I kind of think, you know, we’re all a little bit older now, but it’s still joyous to relive student days almost.
So yeah, I’m looking forward to the friendship, the laughter, both on stage and off stage, and just getting to see the whole machinery that Edinburgh Fringe is.
And where can you see her work after The Fringe?
Well, that’s a really good question. I don’t know, because this might be it. We’ve been around for 20 years.
Do we need a show that has a lineup of disabled comedians? Are there enough comedians now who have disabilities making their way in the world today? I don’t know.
Steve Best (co-producer) and me, we’re tired. We’ve done this a long time. I don’t know. I suspect we’ll be on request.
So if anybody wants us, we will always try and put a show together. But I don’t know whether we’ll be doing a big gig like this again.