Scottish Comedy Highlights: February 2025

Start your month with a hand-picked showcase of the freshest new comedy talent. Chortle Hotshots (Monkey Barrel, 5 Feb, 7.30pm, £8-£10) is here to platform promising newbies and give you a heads-up on who to look out for at Fringe. Dean T. Beirne, Amanda Hursy and Mick McNeill are just a few local names on the lineup.

If you’ve somehow missed the wonder that is Mr Chonkers (Monkey Barrel, 7 Feb, 8pm, £12), you’ve simply got to see it. From the brain of LA-based clown John Norris, the show is, at its base level, a deranged acting showreel, but there’s so much more to it than that. Let us do the meatball trick for you one more time!

For those with more rural concerns, be sure to book for Edinburgh Comedy Nominee Chris Cantrill (Monkey Barrel, 12 Feb, 8pm, £15) and pod-mate Sunil Patel (Monkey Barrel, 8 Feb, 6pm, £7). Cantrill’s show, a companion piece to the pair’s newly award-winning podcast about Chris’s move to a far away field, was nominated for the big award at Fringe and is a sweet, lightly surreal musing on male friendship and loneliness. The same week, Patel’s working up a brand new show of deadpan nonsense.

Monthly queer comedy night All Mouth, run by Glasgow comics Kate Hammer and Rae Brogan, has a busy month ahead. As well as their regular gig at The Rum Shack (27 February, 8pm, £9) with a lineup boasting Eleanor Morton, Chris Thorburn and Ayo Adenekan, the team hop on the Queen Street quick train for an Edinburgh especiale (13 February, Monkey Barrel, 7.30pm, £10). The ‘Gay-lentine's special’ is the gig’s first time in the Capital and is set to be a total hoot, headlined by Sam Lake.