Alex Kealy’s The Fear Strikes Edinburgh in April

Come 26 April 2025, Alex Kealy will take the stage at Monkey Barrel in Edinburgh, a city he knows well from countless Fringe runs, to deliver The Fear—a stand-up show that’s as much about personal reckoning as it is about sharp laughs. Fresh from a successful stint at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024 and a tour supporting Jack Dee, Kealy’s latest hour, running from February to July across the UK, lands in Edinburgh at a quieter time of year.

I caught him during that Edinburgh run, declaring, “Likeable, assured, and not afraid to try something new, Alex Kealy and his show ‘The Fear’ is one to watch this Edinburgh Fringe.” So this show comes with a personal recommendation.

Known for his cerebral yet self-deprecating style—think political jabs mixed with relatable overthinking—Kealy has carved a niche as a comedian who can make you laugh while unpacking the human condition. We spoke with him about this more intimate show, his evolving relationship with anxiety, and what it’s like to perform in a comedy landscape shifting beneath his feet.

From Fringe to Tour: Finding the Personal in the Political

Kealy’s career has been a steady climb since he reached the final of the So You Think You’re Funny competition in his first year of performing. With six Edinburgh Fringe shows under his belt—including 2022’s Winner Takes All, which landed in The Times’s Top Jokes of the Fringe—his latest, The Fear, marks a departure from the overtly political material of past hours. “What I like about the show is it’s much more personal, and a bit less political, than previous comedy hours I’ve done,” he explains, reflecting on its genesis during a successful Fringe run last year. “I think audiences responded to that really well in Edinburgh.”

“…it’s much more personal, and a bit less political, than previous comedy hours I’ve done…”

Alex Kealy

That resonance, it seems, gave him the confidence to take the show on the road, with stops from Leicester to Leeds between February and July 2025. The premise of The Fear is deceptively simple: after the best year of his life in 2024—marked by marriage and a rare sense of happiness—Kealy, a confessed anxious overthinker, began to dread the inevitable downturn. The show promises “loads of great jokes” about everything from coffee machines to the book of Ephesians, duty-free shopping to death, all while probing whether he can broker a truce with the relentless voices in his head. It’s a shift towards vulnerability that doesn’t abandon his knack for cleverness—past reviews have called him “almost sexily cerebral” (Daily Telegraph) and praised his ability to create comedy “so technically clever that it’s almost beautiful” (Broadway Baby).

Wrestling with Anxiety’s Double Edge

Since crafting The Fear, Kealy’s understanding of his titular subject has shifted—not just through performing it, but through the act of writing itself. “I now think that—here we go—anxiety is not a wholly negative thing and that it is an Aristotelian phronetic concept where it is possible to have both an excess but also a deficiency of it,” he says with a wry nod to philosophy, before quickly adding, “Ideally the pull quote from this interview won’t be ‘Aristotelian Phronetic Concept’, as it doesn’t scream ‘Big Saturday Night Out’ but I swear to God it is.” His point, though, lands with clarity: “I do believe you can be under-anxious, as well as over-anxious.”

“I now think that… anxiety is not a wholly negative thing…”

Alex Kealy

It’s a nuanced take that suggests the show isn’t just about battling fear but understanding its place in a balanced mind. That evolving perspective keeps the material fresh as Kealy tours. “It’s still evolving and I am enjoying tweaking a few jokes over this tour now that I’ve had 6 months brain space since my Edinburgh run,” he notes. Those tweaks, one imagines, allow him to refine the balance between his existential musings and the punchlines about Toblerone or how love mirrors totalitarianism.

Edinburgh’s Changing Role—and Its Enduring Pull

For a comedian like Kealy, who’s built much of his career through the Edinburgh Fringe, the festival remains a touchstone, even as its role in the comedy world shifts. “It’s increasingly unlikely to be a place where your career takes a sudden leap upwards—that’s more likely to happen online now,” he observes, pointing to the rise of social media as a launchpad for new talent. “If you are starting your career, you’re more likely to do well by filming your material in a way that’s going to go down well with a social media algorithm.” Yet he’s quick to affirm the Fringe’s enduring value: “Saying that, I still think the Fringe is brilliant and love going there for a whole month with a show.”

“You’ll also learn so much from performing comedy 100 times in a month, if you want that, and you can’t do it anywhere else in the world.” Performing in Edinburgh outside the August frenzy offers a different flavour, one Kealy clearly relishes. “I always enjoy gigging in Edinburgh—it’s a beautiful city and the audiences are great and generally very comedy savvy,” he says. “And it’s nice being there outside of the August hubbub. Equally, January is just very very cold. Spring in Edinburgh, that’s the time to go.” His affection for the city shines through, and Monkey Barrell’s audiences do react better to comedians who want to be there as a rule.

Navigating Comedy’s Shifting Sands

As Kealy’s profile grows—evidenced by his radio spots on BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show and Catherine Bohart: TL;DR, his co-hosting of the popular Gig Pigs podcast with Ivo Graham, and his writing for shows like Mock The Week—he finds the comedy world both exhilarating and disorienting. “Yes: it’s amazing to get to write shows and have lots of people come to watch them at the Fringe and enjoy it, and to be able to take those shows on tour. It’s all you can really ask from live comedy,” he reflects. But there’s a flip side: “No: the technological revolution we’re currently undergoing is both an incredible source of liberating power for comedians to connect directly with an audience but also a disorientating mess that forces us to engage with social media platforms in a way that is obviously damaging for our mental health.”

He muses on the broader shift in comedy’s form, likening it to cricket’s evolution: “It’s also probably contributing to the erosion of long-form comedy’s importance and the rise of the short-form, odd to be doing the comedy industry equivalent of having come up in Test Cricket but now all the money is suddenly in T20?” Yet Kealy’s own conflict emerges in his love for brevity: “But also I love short jokes and isn’t brevity the soul of wit, so I’m CONFLICTED on that.” It’s a tension that mirrors the push-and-pull at the heart of The Fear—a show that wrestles with big questions while keeping the punchlines tight.

A Night of Thoughtful Laughter

Kealy’s latest hour doesn’t shy away from the mess of overthinking, but it promises to wrap those anxieties in wit and warmth. As he takes The Fear to stages across the UK—from Bath to Brighton, Portsmouth to Leeds—his Edinburgh stop feels like a homecoming of sorts, albeit one in the gentler light, and chillier mornings, of spring. At Monkey Barrel, audiences can expect a comedian who’s unafraid to bare his neuroses while poking fun at the absurdities of modern life, all in 60 minutes. For Kealy, it’s another chance to negotiate with the voices in his head—this time with a room full of laughter as his witness.