Comedian Ahir Shah, who won the Edinburgh comedy award in 2023 with his show Ends, is returning to the fringe with a follow-up called Golden, this time drawing on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Unlike his previous show, which he entered as an unfinished work in progress after the death of his director Adam Brace, Shah has approached the new production with more deliberate polish, reflecting on how the pressure of the fringe's high stakes can affect a comic's creative process.

Ends, a tribute to Shah's late grandfather and a meditation on multicultural Britain, went on to tour internationally, including a personally significant run in India, and was later broadcast on Netflix. In the interview, Shah discusses his deliberate move away from purely bleak "rainy fascism island" narratives about the UK, arguing audiences and society need more positive stories, and reflects on his reputation for intellectually dense, erudite comedy despite self-deprecating doubts about his own confidence and appeal.