‘Are you ready for some filth?’ Julian Clary and more on comedy’s great smut explosion
Edinburgh Fringe 2026 is seeing a marked wave of explicitly sexual comedy and cabaret, from Julian Clary's comeback show Fully Dilated (his first Edinburgh run in 17 years) to Cameryn Moore's Smut Slam and street-side bespoke erotica stand, alongside Bryn Woz's Smut and Tom Read Wilson's An Alphabet of Me. The trend reflects both a lineage of British bawdy humour stretching back to music hall and pantomime, and a more personal turn for some performers, who use smut as a route into weightier material.
Moore, a former phone sex operator turned playwright, charges £20 to turn punters' fantasies into typewritten erotica as a promotional tie-in to her nightly Smut Slam, a dirty-storytelling show she launched in a Boston pub in 2011 and which returns to Edinburgh for the first time in seven years. Clary's show takes its title from the idea of "opening up to the public" and revisits the period around his notorious 1993 British Comedy Awards joke about Norman Lamont, using the show to also address the loss of friends to Aids during that era, a subject he says he could never have tackled at the time.
- Edinburgh Fringe 2026 features a notable surge of sexually explicit comedy shows.
- Julian Clary returns after 17 years with Fully Dilated, mixing smut and grief.
- Cameryn Moore's Smut Slam and Sidewalk Smut erotica stand also feature.
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Edinburgh Fringe 2026 has brought a wave of explicitly sexual comedy and cabaret shows, part of a broader trend at the annual arts festival in Scotland. Performers such as Julian Clary, Cameryn Moore, Bryn Woz and Tom Read Wilson are all presenting work built around "smut" — frank, often filthy material about sex — rather than treating it as an occasional aside.
Clary is a veteran British comedian known for camp, risqué humour, making his first Edinburgh appearance in 17 years with a show called Fully Dilated. Moore is a former phone sex operator turned playwright who runs Smut Slam, a dirty-storytelling night she started in a Boston pub in 2011, and also writes bespoke erotica for passers-by. Their work sits alongside a long British tradition of bawdy comedy found in music hall and pantomime.
The story matters because it highlights how some comedians are using explicit material not just for shock or laughs, but as a way into more serious personal territory, including grief and past controversy, while also reflecting wider shifts in what audiences will pay to see on stage.