For the last month, Chris Cantrill has been performing his fringe show Rewilding daily in a lunchtime slot. And yet, when we plan to speak about his victory in the Edinburgh comedy awards, the interview is arranged – on the festival’s penultimate day – for lunchtime. Can he really have won the fringe’s major prize, and – hell of a mic drop, this – immediately sacked off his last two shows? “I couldn’t be happier not to be at the festival today,” he says, on video call from his Northumberland home. But the cancellation, it transpires, is long-standing, because work starts immediately post-fringe on the new series of SNL UK, for which he writes.
“But I’m absolutely over the moon not to be doing my show right now,” he admits. “I’ve got a lot of adrenaline in my body slowly seeping out, and I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.” The Edinburgh comedy award (it used to be the Perrier, and was won in the past by Steve Coogan, The League of Gentlemen and Frank Skinner) has been a long time coming for Bradford-born Cantrill. This year’s was his fourth nomination, twice as a solo act, and twice as part of his duo The Delightful Sausage, alongside 2024 winner Amy Gledhill. He is, as I tease him when we speak, a comparatively senior winner, the oldest since Bridget Christie, also 42, 13 years ago. “Finally, a victory for the middle-aged white man!,” he retorts, then bursts into laughter. “Common sense at last!”
