EdFringe Review: Ayoade Bamgboye: Swings And Roundabouts

A year makes a significant difference at the Edinburgh Fringe. Twelve months after winning Best Newcomer for Swings and Roundabouts, Ayoade Bamgboye returns to the Pleasance Courtyard as a writer-performer for Saturday Night Live UK and the benchmark talent referenced in Ayo Adenekan’s fab sophomore show. It turns out that Adenekan’s comedic nemesis is every bit as fantastic as he described.

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The show’s narrative is built around a trip to the Co-op—a place she wryly notes nobody ever enters on purpose. Tagging along with a friend in the middle of a life crisis, Ayo overhears brewing conflict between a shop worker and a customer struggling to spell “Chamomile.” Rather than playing peacemaker, her first instinct is to pour fuel on the fire. The rest of the show unfolds inside her mind in the split-second between the worker going to fetch a manager and Ayo opening her mouth to intervene.

What follows is a sharp, whip-smart, hilarious “Who is Ayo?” journey. She takes the audience back to Nigeria, where trying to give herself to Jesus to find a husband resulted in being promptly given back. Exhausted by the “pick me” lifestyle, she moved to the UK—a supposed bastion of feminism where she “learned she was black for the first time.” Throughout, she weaves themes of conflict-seeking with a quiet hope for an existence not defined by skin colour or gender. 

Ayo’s secret weapon for acceptance into other cultures: Idioms! As per a certain Ash Ketchum, she’s “gotta catch ‘em all”. She manifests her love of idioms by hunting for more from the audience, whilst freely deploying them with lethal timing. Some are dropped in so smartly, it takes the audience a second before the giggles start. Never has “Much of a muchness” meant quite so…much.

Nigerian Time and the World Cup of Problems

Operating on “Nigerian Time”—somewhat looser than British time—Bamgboye leans into the unexpected. Latecomers are greeted with a big smile. On opening night, one lucky straggler received a one-minute recap of the set that somehow made the material as funny the second time around. When one man stepped out to use the convenience, she kindly escorted him out, whilst requesting a Coca-Cola, which he duly delivered. I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a room and watched an audience fall in love with a comedian quite so thoroughly.

It’s not just super-powered likeability that makes her so compelling, however. The material is consistently original and utterly relatable. Her “World Cup of Problems” segment features cracking comedy writing, firing off vivid, wickedly intimate examples to differentiate a “pickle” from a “bind,” or an “ordeal” from a “struggle.” The way she deftly slips between Nigerian and London accents is just the cherry on this comedy cake. Safe to say, Ayo has the comedy set-piece down to a fine art. 

However, in general, her material is excellent from start to finish: her mix of anecdote and observation, punchline and stream of hilarious consciousness is a joy from start to end. She really seems to like her audience, and they like her right back. It’s just as well, because as alluded to earlier, Bamgboye emerges as this year’s most Ken Dodd-esque comedian. He locked the doors — she works on flexible time.

You think you’re getting a 60-minute show; instead, you get a 90-minute comedy special. Did the stalls empty? Nope, just folks needing to catch the last train off, sent away with a cheery wave. The rest lapped it up as long as she was willing to give it out. This is elite, irresistibly charming stand-up from a comic whose star deserves to rise even further.

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