Ayo Adenekan’s ascent has been swift. Last year, the rookie comic cracked a joke on stage about Doctor Who’s Ncuti Gatwa. This year, he scripted jokes for Gatwa, as a writer on Sky’s Saturday Night Live UK. In this second fringe set, the Edinburgh man shows why TV producers spirited him away after last year’s debut: his perspective is fresh, he writes a deft joke, and he has the warmth to win over a room. But he’s not the finished article. He could vary the pace, which tends to the sonorous. Several of his ideas go underdeveloped. And the story Homeland Insecurity tells is unremarkable.
It’s a love story, Adenekan tells us at the start, about a summer romance splashed across the canvas of the Edinburgh fringe. A meaningful but fly-by-night fling, it provides the backbone for an hour in which the 24-year-old ranges across his relationship with his dad, his “straight white man friends”, and his outrage when a namesake comedian comes up from London to steal his thunder at last year’s festival. “I’m not concerned about the boats, man. Stop the trains!” There’s a running visual gag too about product placement, which could be something, but Adenekan never really commits to the bit.
