The Optimists vs The Pessimists

OPTIMISTS

Jimeoin

What’s he got to smile about?

Born in England, raised in Northern Ireland but a big noise back home in Australia, Jimeoin hasn’t acquired quite the same luminescence over here, despite Fringing every August. But then he’s a likeable gagsmith rather than an in-your-face Brendon Burns or Jim Jefferies type, and meltdowns are always more memorable.

Tell us about his show

The busy comic was presumably in deadline day call-it-anything mode when he came up with Lovely! but then titles are tricky when you’ve no theme to play with. This show is “pure ‘n’ simple straight craic”, so expect relatively low-risk jokes. In fact, what turned out to be his nastiest gag to date was purely accidental – a flippant but spookily accurate prediction of Steve Irwin's death, aired three years before the stingray run-in.

Describe his disposition in one word

Sunshine

Isy Suttie

What’s she got to smile about?

As a moderately well-known sitcom actress Suttie would love to lose the "nice" tag and get her teeth into something meatier, but for now she’s stuck playing dorky types. She used to write scripts for that bastion of salaciousness, Skins, but her live show is generally fairly low on Frankie Boyle-style outrage.

Tell us about her show

Suttie strums her way through pleasantly poignant long-form musical plays, usually related to the subject of love. Pearl and Dave is a “multi-character tale of internet romance”, so don’t expect too many angry diatribes. Then again, the once-ebullient Victoria Wood seems to get annoyed about stuff every five minutes these days, so Suttie may yet go postal at some point.

Describe her disposition in one word

Winsome

Tiernan Douieb

What’s he got to smile about?

The man with comedy’s most frequently mispronounced name (it’s "Dou-yeb") has taken the occasional stab at being edgy, but you can’t just pluck a lifetime of debilitating psychological problems out of thin air. So he’s sticking with being fantastically likeable for the moment.

Tell us about his show

Tiernan Douieb vs the World is a bit more issue-based than usual for the Londoner, as he takes a good hard look at the state we’re in. He’s expecting to get a bit angry about it all along the way, but it’ll probably just be like a little kid having a tantrum, i.e. quite funny. Which is no bad thing at a comedy festival, when you think about it.

Describe his disposition in one word

Huggable

John Robins

What’s he got to smile about?

A nice middle-class young chap getting into occasional scrapes. One of his more famous bits recounts trying to break up a neighbour’s noisy house party by throwing a bottle of white zinfandel into entirely the wrong garden (“I don’t usually flip, I’m more of a flopper”) then getting so angry that his voice went all Michael McIntyre. Scary stuff.

Tell us about his show

The spiritual-sounding Lift your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven is “a show about stars, suitable for both dreamers and doubters alike.” So if you’re into astrology and base your whole life decisions on the position of celestial bodies, don’t worry. He’ll probably just poke gentle fun rather than tear down your whole belief system (although the latter would probably be more beneficial in the long term).

Describe his disposition in one word

Garrulous

David O'Doherty

What’s he got to smile about?

The genial Irishman writes wonderfully quirky ditties about awkward relationship issues and his general ‘beefs’, which, come to think of it, can actually get a wee bit aggressive in places. On the whole, though, the Bizarro World version of David would be the horrific drum and bass/heavy metal crossover band Pendulum. 

Tell us about his show

It’s double DO’D this year, as he’ll be doing his traditional Yamaha prodding (keyboard, not motorbike) in David O’Doherty is Looking Up, then venturing further afield—comedically and geographically—in Rory Sheridan’s Tales of the Antarctica. If he manages to shoehorn any of his trademark R’n’B covers into that one we’ll be mightily impressed.

Describe his disposition in one word

Whimsical

PESSIMISTS

Rich Hall

What’s his problem?

Like Gordon Brown, Rich Hall has the sort of face on which a smile looks deeply unnatural. Thankfully he favours the perma-frown, which fits his belligerent standup style – think Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch, if he spent every day raging at the newspaper. When not in Edinburgh, Hall also growls his way through the occasional documentary and quietly seethes on panel shows.

Tell us about his show 

A double-dose of Hall for 2011. As well as the regular standup show he’s also dabbling in country and western once again—he won the Perrier Award as Otis Lee Crenshaw back in 2000—as his crack team of comedy-musicians stage a late-night hoedown where “the floor will reek of liquor and spent dreams.”

Describe his disposition in one word

Testy

Norman Lovett

What’s his problem?

Although his face was built for hangdog comedy, oddly enough Lovett’s less-than-zany voice was once deemed perfect for a lengthy Sugar Puffs ad campaign. Lord only knows what they were smoking at that meeting. Still best known as Holly the computer from the early days of Red Dwarf, he offers the standup equivalent of going round to your slightly doddery old uncle’s house.

Tell us about his show

The good news is that Lovett is appearing at the free festival this year. Less good is his mood about the Fringe generally: “It reminds me of when I first came up to do a show here in 1983 and was putting up A4 posters,” he recalls in his preview blurb. “Now the posters are life-size and it's all about the money.” Blimey, cheer up Norm!

Describe his disposition in one word

Droopy

Meryl O’Rourke

What’s her problem?

She’s come out of the “slut closet”, likes to throw the C-bomb into her sets early on and makes both childbirth and breastfeeding sound like something from Saw IV. But apart from that O’Rourke really is fun for the whole family.  A self-confessed “lonely and insecure person", she says "any emotional response I can force out of a roomful ofstrangers just makes me feel a bit more important”. That’s actually a line she tells those roomfuls of strangers.

Tell us about her show

Meryl is a new mum and loving it! OK, no she isn’t, though she is generally thankful that it didn’t turn out to be a boy. So gleefully shocking is O’Rourke’s maternal material that you hope the baby in question doesn’t ever get to see this show. Otherwise she may well turn up on this page in 20 years’ time, lonely, insecure and swearing at strangers too.

Describe her disposition in one word

Acrid

Edward Aczel

What’s his problem?

A portly, balding man indulging his mid-life crisis by subjecting audience members to his painfully uninformed opinions on world events… or one of the finest character comedians in the country, subverting the whole industry. Either way, an evening with Aczel can be exquisitely torturous.

Tell us about his show

In the perhaps tellingly titled Edward Aczel Doesn’t Exist, he will be pushing the envelope and pulling out all the stops “in order to gain some telly exposure”. Which will probably just involve him doing the usual ill-prepared rambling, a shambolic quiz and lots of flustered muttering about how badly it’s all going.

Describe his disposition in one word

Deflated

Andy Parsons

What’s his problem?

Budget cuts are swingeing, businesses are going bust and the strikes have begun in earnest: bad times for the nation, but good news for Andy Parsons, who feeds on such turmoil like Popeye feeds on spinach. In fact, swap the goatee for a pipe and the likeness is uncanny.

Tell us about his show

Gruntled sums up Parsons’ outlook rather well, as he takes a grim delight in taking potshots at the workings of the modern world, like an aged next-door neighbour ranting about binge-drinking and hoodies. This touring show hits Edinburgh towards the end of the Fringe, and the usual suspects get a pasting – bankers, politicians and whoever messes up on that particular day. The live show is also a lot swearier than Mock than Week, so be warned, kids.

Describe his disposition in one word

He's already done it for us: gruntled.