Edinburgh Fringe sees a wave of shows built on frank sexual comedy

This year's Edinburgh Fringe has brought a notable surge of shows built around explicit, often bawdy sexual humour. Among the most eye-catching is American writer and former phone-sex operator Cameryn Moore, who sets up on the street offering to type bespoke erotic fiction for passersby for £20, based on the fantasies they share with her. The stunt promotes her nightly show Smut Slam, where audience members anonymously submit and read aloud their own sex stories — making its first Edinburgh appearance in seven years.

Other shows this year include Californian performer Bryn Woz's aptly titled Smut, and English TV personality Tom Read Wilson's alphabet-themed show packed with innuendo. But perhaps the most notable return is comedian Julian Clary's Fully Dilated, his first Edinburgh show in 17 years. Clary, best known for a notorious joke at the 1993 British Comedy Awards, uses the new show to reflect on a period when his rise to mainstream fame coincided with losing friends to Aids.

Different reasons for the laughs

Younger comedian Chelsea Birkby says she once disliked sexual comedy because of shame she felt growing up, but has since found that joking openly about sex is liberating, though she notes that female comedians discussing sex are often judged differently than their male counterparts. Bryn Woz, meanwhile, created an alter ego, Entendre Entendre, to help her talk more honestly about vulnerability behind her past stories, blending confessional comedy with burlesque striptease in her show.

Both Moore and Clary note that audiences in different countries respond very differently to this kind of comedy — from relatively unfazed German audiences to more reserved crowds in Finland and Estonia. Clary says smutty humour lets audiences feel like children again, offering a break from heavier subjects, while Read Wilson describes it as one of comedy's great tools for escapism in difficult times.