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Sikisa really is the life of the party. Coming off the back of a hectic week of previews and a day job as an immigration lawyer, she’s still brimming with energy and smiles as we chat about her Edinburgh Fringe debut – which she’s busy getting all the feels for.

“Excited, anxious… all the emotions in the world? Looking forward to it, not looking forward to it. There’s so much emotion around it.”

Her debut, Life of the Party, tackles difficult subjects but makes sure it’s not a heavy hour. She says: “The Edinburgh show’s a vibe... But I talk about issues within it, like racism, discrimination, stereotypes, immigration, conversations that you have as a woman.

“I don’t want it to be a sad, ‘boo-hoo’ kind of show – it’s a very uplifting, positive show. And it is a party. Even though I’m talking about subjects that are tricky to talk about, and people may not want to talk about, I’m still trying to show you that we’re having fun.”

Sikisa’s route into comedy started out seven years ago, behind the scenes. “I worked in a pub that does stand up comedy, it’s called The Cavendish Arms in Stockwell, which runs Comedy Virgins. And I was working behind a bar, and my boss said to me, ‘You’re slightly funny, why don’t you give stand up a go?’” The rest is history, though she’s kept close ties with the pub; she still MCs the Comedy Virgins gigs.

Being on the scene for a while, Sikisa’s name has blown up over the last few years. But comedy isn’t necessarily something she saw herself falling into. She tells us that she “wasn’t particularly good at public speaking” to start with. But stand up taught her that it’s fine for people to laugh at her – or better yet, with her, at her own jokes.

“It’s something that I obviously enjoy doing because otherwise I wouldn’t still be doing it. And so everything that I’ve done in my career, like being in the BBC [New Comedy Award] final, and then to work with producers, and then to be on TV shows and end up on podcasts, that never really was something I envisioned was going to happen.”

So much has her life as a comic spiralled beyond her imagination that she’s starting to get recognised. At a recent rock gig, she had someone say to her, “I know you! You were just on Off Menu!” Unsurprisingly, she’s still getting used to being spotted: “I was just like, ‘This is weird’”.

To be able to fall into a successful comedy career could be a point of envy for many, but it’s not been an easy ride getting to where she is today. And recent times are no different – balancing previews for her first hour at the Fringe alongside a full-time job is no joke.

“Currently we are balancing,” she laughs. “It is tiring. Especially now we’re reaching up to the Fringe. But I’ve always had multiple jobs, so my mentality has just always been like ‘work, work, work, work, work’.”

That mentality comes from a place of having to work hard from the get-go. “When you grow up on a council estate in south London, and you grow up with basically nothing – everything I have, I’ve worked for. And people hear about me being a lawyer, and make an assumption about me that what I have is a high-paying job, and I’m earning a certain amount of money.” But being a lawyer is a point of pride for her, because she knows how hard she’s had to “work” her “arse off” to get there – and it’s a similar story with her career in comedy.

“I’m gonna be tired. Dead, by the end of the Fringe,” she laughs, but you get the sense she’ll still be ready to party when the debut she’s waited so long to perform arrives in Edinburgh.

Sikisa: Life of the Party, Pleasance Courtyard (Below), 3-28 Aug (not 17), 8.25pm, £8-11

@sikisacomedy on Twitter / @twix_choc87 on Instagram