Edinburgh Fringe: Milo Edwards on how his parents’ deaths became tied in to his comedy

For many comedians, the Edinburgh Fringe is a place that envelopes countless memories, highs and lows.

It has particular significance for stand-up Milo Edwards who, on two separate occasions in the past five years, has taken a show to the festival in the immediate aftermath of losing a parent to cancer.

Talking on stage about grief, mortality, and memories of his parents, comedy has helped to begin processing and also commemorate their deaths through his work.

It was just days into the run of his debut solo hour in 2019 that Milo’s father, Keith, died from kidney cancer.

48 hours later, he was back on stage in Edinburgh surrounded by friends and fellow comedians who came along to support him.

With a new ending to reflect his dad’s passing, the show was a moment of connection and catharsis shared with the audience, many of whom had also experienced their own losses.

“I generally cope with difficulties better if I’m busy,” Milo, 31, said. “The work was helpful and I think it’s what my dad would’ve wanted and my mum was quite in favour of it.

“It was quite a special experience doing that first show back and having loads of comedians there. I don’t think I’ve ever done a show quite like that one.

“Because I’d had a couple of days to just prepare for it, it hit the right note.

“My sisters brought my mum up to the Fringe that year and I think actually that’s one of the only times she’s ever seen me do an hour of stand-up.”

In the first full Fringe back post-lockdown in 2022, Milo brought a new show, Voicemail, to the festival.

In it, he explored grief and mortality and spoke about his dad. But a week before he returned north of the border it took on an added dimension as his mum, Sue, was admitted to hospital where she would spend the final days of her life.

With the festival looming, Milo, from Essex, was back on stage even sooner this time around for a preview show.

“She died quite early in the morning,” he said. “I did a show that night.

“I was definitely much more in a raw state. There is probably a happy medium in terms of quite how immediately you go back.

“The Fringe was about a week after I lost my mum. It was strange because the same thing more or less as 2019 just happened again.

“I wasn’t trying to write a show about my mum, in the same way I wasn’t writing a show about my dad back then.

“We expected mum to live several months more, potentially longer than that, and then just suddenly she died.

“Once again, the show took on this new element that it never had before and I just had to deal with that, although in a way it did sort of finish the show.

“The show had, up until that point felt a bit unfinished, and then talking about my mum at the end kind of made the show work as a whole. I’d been working on that show for so long, since November 2019.

“Getting it to sit right was so difficult. I have a quite, I guess, flippant style at times.

“I have this whole bit about my dad’s funeral, which I just could not sell unless the audience had already gotten comfortable with the idea that my dad was dead.

“That meant the back half of the show didn’t have a twist or an emotional core to it in the same way.

“Talking about my mum kind of drew the whole show together in the end – I don’t know if she planned it that way!”

© Supplied

Over the years, both of Milo’s parents had been extremely supportive of his comedy career, which was part of the reason he was so keen to get back in the saddle of it so quickly.

It makes sense that his work – at the Fringe in particular – goes some way to commemorating them.

“I think it’s something that they would like,” he said. “Both my parents really liked comedy and and humour

“It is quite a nice way of, I guess, neatly packaging and commemorating something, and theoretically moving on from it, if that’s possible. I don’t know if it truly is.

“It’s nice to be able to memorialise someone in your work, in a way that’s kind of significant in some way.

“One of the few upsides or something like that happening to you, it does provide a lot of fodder for analysing your own thoughts in the world.

“Both the blessing and the curse of being a stand-up comedian is that whatever happens to you, well it is material…”

© Joshua Perot

There is, of course, an apprehensiveness in the room when jokes stray into the territory of dead parents.

But Milo often finds that those in the same position as him that laugh the most.

“It makes perfect sense to me, but it’s incredibly counterintuitive – people who have gone through the things that you’ve gone through find those things funny, or at least are capable of finding them funny.

“A lot of people who haven’t been through that stuff find it kind of revolting, or they’ll laugh but there’s tension in the room when you bring up something like that.

“I think sometimes you just have to reassure people that you’re OK in order for them to be able to laugh at it.

“Sometimes in my show I find myself making very deliberate artistic choices where I think it’s funny to talk about this in a really flippant way, but then people are like, oh my God, this man’s having a mental breakdown!

“Obviously I’m not actually flippant about it. That’s why it’s funny.

“I notice a big difference between audiences. Dead parent stuff, for example, is a much harder sell in Australia than it is in the UK. I think people over here are much more comfortable with the darkness of that.”

A former Cambridge Footlights member, in addition to stand-up Milo has written for Mock The Week and The News Quiz, and co-hosts the popular TrashFuture podcast.

His Fringe show this year, How Revolting! Sorry to Offend, has been well-received so far, exploring Britain, class and how it all really works – as told through his own personal experience and the broader political landscape.

“It’s like a political and personal show, but a lot of what I’m talking about is class and the British class system, which is quite a risky sort of conversation when you sound like I do,” Milo laughs.

“That’s also the sort of gist of the show. I talk about why I sound like this and address the perception that I’m a posh comedian. Hopefully it will resonate with some people.

“Either it’ll go well or I’ll be chased out of the Fringe with pitchforks. We’ll find out!”

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Fringe is tough for new recruits

Doing the same show each night in the same room for a full month is a tough task for those performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, particularly on darker subject matter.

There’s also the stress of rising costs each year of accommodation, and the pressure of making sure people actually come along to the shows.

Particularly for those at the start of their careers, it can be a tough boot camp.

“You move through the ranks,” Milo explains. “I feel like I’m one of those grizzled thousand yard stare veterans.

“I don’t want get too close to the new recruits, they might not be here next year!

“I actually I find I enjoy the Fringe much more when I’m there. Thinking about it in the abstract and getting ready for it is very stressful. Once I’m in it, the fog of war descends, to continue the military analogy.

“I hope that it gets easier. If you get to a stage where you’re doing ten dates at some huge venue and staying in a nice hotel, I can imagine it would be very sedate.

“I’m somewhere in the middle now where, on the one hand, my conditions of doing it are nicer. My accommodation is nice and my venue is nicer.

“But then on the other hand, there’s more riding on it. I’m more concerned. I’m sweating on stuff. I don’t know, maybe it never gets easier…”

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Milo Edwards: How Revolting! Sorry to Offend, Monkey Barrel 2, 5.45pm, until Aug 25