‘My first thought,” says Thanyia Moore, “was there has to be a show in this.” The comedian is talking about what happened when her debut Edinburgh festival fringe show flipped from fun into misfortune. Standups often embrace personal tragedy, spinning it all into material – and that was certainly the case with Moore, three years ago. The former dancer from London had a 10-year buildup to her first fringe show – a deliberately light introduction to her world. She’d become known as a consummate MC, won the Funny Women award in 2018, and was breaking into TV as an actor and writer. Moore wasn’t even sure she wanted to do the fringe. “I’ve never been enticed or influenced,” she says, “by what people think you should do.” But then came an offer from Soho theatre’s production arm, and the chance to prove she could build an hour of standup from scratch persuaded her to head to Scotland.
