Whilst she needed guile and cunning to storm to victory in the inaugural series of TV smash The Traitors, there is nothing subtle about care worker turned stand-up comic Hannah Byczkowski as she hits the Edinburgh Fringe. Bursting onto the tightly-packed Turret stage in the Gilded Balloon, there is little need for her to be wielding a microphone as she hits decibel levels not experienced since Motorhead frontman Lemmy shuffled off this mortal coil.
It’s just a bit loud – and as her excitement grows – so does the volume.
It’s an unnecessary distraction because Byczkowski is a captivating comic, delivering joke upon observational joke at breakneck speed.
She engages the audience from the off, aided by a disproportionate number of men in the crowd named Dave providing instant comedy gold, she thrusts those sitting in the front rows under the spotlight during her juggernaut 50 minute performance.
Well-honed topics around growing older and the impact on adult bodies are delightfully crude and observationally astute – but audience members shuffle nervously as they fear being asked “has that happened to you?”
Hailing from Stoke-on-Trent, Byczkowski has a warm northern bluntness to her act using her family and friends as frequent sign-posts into her next joke. Her previous incarnation of working in care homes as a palliative care nurse leads to her tackling morbid subjects with a series of genuinely funny anecdotes.
Before securing her reality TV crown and the £33,000 prize, Byczkowski had already begun established herself on the comedy circuit and is now forging her comedy career alongside the highly succesful Ghost Huns podcast.
And whilst some jokes, particularly around ‘being murdered’ and the prospect of being abducted “bad, but you’d get a nice lay down in a van” miss the mark, on the firmer ground of her core subjects she delivers buckets full of belly laughs.
