Hayley Ellis: Stop Showing Off

Hayley Ellis brings her show Stop Showing Off to Monkey Barrel Comedy on Saturday 27 February. It's a full hour of stand-up, and the title gives you a fair idea of where she's heading: a good look back at a life that's been a bit more public than most.

Ellis is a Northern comedian, and she's not hiding the popstar part of her CV. The hour is built around retrospection, and the things she's looking back on are exactly the kind of stories that work on a comedy stage. There's body image, the memory of Smash Hits from back when it was the bible of teen pop, and an indoor skydiving debacle that sounds like it's going to be one of the set's highlights. It's the sort of material that works because it's specific to her, but touches on things most of us recognise—the gap between how we're presented and how we actually feel.

If you've followed her work, you'll know she's comfortable leaning into that pop background, and Stop Showing Off seems to be the one where she really lets it drive the comedy. It's a solo show, so it's just her up there for the full hour, working through those different threads—the pop years, the body image stuff, and the skydiving disaster—until they all sit together. It's a good way to get a sense of where she's come from and where she's at now.

It's a Saturday night show, so it fits easily into a weekend. The set runs for 110 minutes in total, with the comedy itself taking up the hour. Tickets are £17.60, which includes the booking fee, and the show starts at 19:30 at Monkey Barrel Comedy in Edinburgh.