Ben Fogg: How I Won Best Newcomer 2017

As befits someone whose day job is directing commercials, Ben Fogg's debut hour is a superficially entertaining blast of self promotion with a deeper agenda operating beneath.

This is a show about the elusive quality of success, explains the eccentrically attired, self acknowledged “likeable arsehole”. And he starts by explaining how a high-achieving, driven schoolboy turned 19-year-old US television executive with more money than God, snorting coke at the Emmys with a Friends star, became a 37-year-old comic, trying to blag his way to the Best Newcomer Award.

Despite a weed habit that genuinely seems to have damaged his memory, necessitating setlist prompts held by an audience member, he's a charming storyteller, supplementing his unusual narrative with droll material on dinner party gossip, aspirational quotes and parenting bores. He's particularly funny on the ingredients of a successful relationship.

Family comes to play an increasingly large part in the show and there's a significant gear change when he shares an email sent by his intimidatingly successful father, urging him to abandon a reasonable media career for something more lucrative and secure. Getting better and better as the hour develops, and considerably more revealing, Fogg strips away his personal artifice as he ramps up the theatrical tricks.

The latter aren't entirely successful and smack of the award-bait tactics he mocked at the start, either a tad unoriginal or too postmodern and in-jokey if they're a deliberate nod. Regardless, the ambition is admirable in an Edinburgh introduction and there are some memorable routines throughout.