Ayoade Bamgboye wins Edinburgh best newcomer with Swings and Roundabouts

Ayoade Bamgboye, a 31-year-old Londoner via Lagos, won the Edinburgh fringe’s best newcomer award for her debut show Swings and Roundabouts, becoming the first Black woman to receive the prize. She arrived at the festival as a first-timer with a slender comedy CV and left clutching the award, previously won by performers including Harry Hill, Sarah Millican and Tim Minchin.

Before the fringe run last summer Bamgboye asked fellow comedians how to debut and says their advice — introduce yourself, have a point of view, a narrative arc — “filled me with dread.” She has described the award as life changing: “It changed my life,” she says. Swings and Roundabouts plays with language and cross-cultural identity, including an anthropological section on British phrases that connote misery and frequent shifts between well-spoken English and a Nigerian-accented outsider voice.

Bamgboye, raised moving between Lagos and a Lake District boarding school, says the show also reflects grieving for her father and a desire for “controlled chaos” in performance; she had “never really told the same joke twice” before Edinburgh and found each night varied. Since the festival she has been developing new material about small talk and learning from mentors including Jamali Maddix and Lara Ricote; she has also worked as an assistant to director Yorgos Lanthimos on the film Poor Things.

Key Topics

Culture, Ayoade Bamgboye, Edinburgh Fringe, Best Newcomer Award, London, Lagos