Dom McGovern @ Pleasance Courtyard

With a literary turn of phrase and an utterly infectious openness, Dom McGovern's debut hour Prize Hog marks the undeniable arrival of a new star

Review by Samuel Cain | 20 Aug 2026
  • Dom McGovern

If Prize Hog has a Mount Rushmore of totemic figures, it’s Jesus Christ, Dom McGovern’s mum, Kate Moss, and Gillian McKeith (with the twin-headed spectre of Jedward floating nearby). Between them, these figures make up McGovern’s personal pantheon of cultural influences on body image, representing between them Catholic guilt and shame, 2000s mass media, and the cultural obsession with skinniness.

Yes, Prize Hog is a body image show; like McKeith combing through the contents of one of her defouled tupperwares, McGovern scrutinises his body dysmorphia with both a forensic interest and an exuberant, utterly infectious openness. His first full hour, this is the undeniable arrival of a star. Disordered eating, the men’s suicide epidemic, the pernicious influence of tabloid culture: these are big, tricky themes. But McGovern springs breezily between these topics that others would touch only with great care – Prize Hog has no sacred cows – resulting in a room that buzzes with energy and possibility.

Fans of John Tothill will recognize the feeling of a McGovern stand-up room: it’s one of immediate comfort, of a performer with a literary turn of phrase, feeding off the energy of a live audience, sometimes seeming to only return to his (excellent) written material begrudgingly. No laugh here feels hard-won, but easily picked up as a brief waypoint on the way to the next. It’s an energy that allows McGovern to get away with a lot – both in terms of risky material and smuggling in real candour between those rolling laughs.

Prize Hog is one of the funniest shows of this year’s Fringe, and it might well be your last chance to see Dom McGovern in a setting this intimate. Go now to get in on the ground floor.


Dom McGovern: Prize Hog, Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker One), until 30 Aug, 8.30pm, £12.50-£14.50