Comedian Ed Byrne's courageous new show is spurred by heartbreak of losing his younger brother

Ed is touring to Chesterfield’s Winding Wheel on February 1, to Buxton Opera House on February 29 and to Bakewell Town Hall on March 1 and December 6, 2024, with the first of his Bakewell performances already sold out.

His latest stand-up presentation, Tragedy Plus Time, takes him into the emotional new territory of grief and loss. Ed made the courageous choice to take this course after the death of his 44-year-old brother Paul in February 2022.

Paul was a comedy director and Ed could have done with his sibling’s input when he was deciding what to retain and leave out of the show. He said: “It’s like when you get dumped by someone and you’re heartbroken. The one person you’d usually want to talk to about it is the very person who dumped you.”

The genius of his show is that it takes the most difficult of subject matter and encourages the audience to laugh in its face in a way they would otherwise simply never do. In an interview with Jason Barlow, 51-year-old Ed said: “Obviously I don’t want the whole thing to be an onslaught. That’s partly because of the digressions, and that’s why they’re there. But they also illustrate how grief works in that you can still have a good time, you can still be happy, you can still have a laugh about other things and be frivolous. But grief is always there waiting for you when you’re done with being silly.

“The show does elicit a very pure emotional response in the audience. There’s something about the fact that when somebody dies, everyone else carries on like nothing’s happened. Because nothing has happened to them. So there’s an anger in grief, too… how can everyone else carry on as though nothing has happened?

“Death is universal. We will all lose someone. So the best thing to do is laugh at it,” he said. “Although I was aware, when I was first writing and performing this new show, that there was a danger I might, you know, lose it onstage. I did a work-in-progress at the Museum of Comedy and there was an audible crack in my voice. On the third performance I did actually cry on stage, and I’m sure for anyone who was there (assumes a very theatrical voice) ‘it was a very powerful experience’. But I don’t want it to be the sort of thing where I rip my heart out and stamp on it for the audience’s delectation. I’ve been able to throttle back my emotions and keep them in check.”

Tickets for his performance in Chesterfield cost £30.70, go to www.chesterfieldtheatres.co.uk; tickets for Buxton cost £31, go to www.buxtonoperahouse.org.uk and tickets for Bakewell cost £36 from www.ticketmaster.co.uk