Edinburgh Preview Show: Ahir Shah and Marise Gaughan

Check out a sneak peek from award-winning comedians, as they make their way to the Edinburgh Fringe with brand new material. Explore our full season of Edinburgh Previews here.

Ahir Shah

2023 Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Ahir Shah is one of the fastest-rising comedians of his generation and is known for his sharp, intellectual brand of stand-up featuring a blend of philosophical inquiry, political vigour, and sweet gags.

Ahir is a regular on television and radio and has appeared on shows including Live At The Apollo, Have I Got News For You, QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, Mock the Week, The Mash Report/Late Night Mash, Guessable and Catastrophe.

Ahir’s latest stand up show Ends was Ahir’s most successful show to date, winning the prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show in 2023. The show completely sold out in Edinburgh, adding extra shows, and subsequently sold out five weeks at London’s Soho Theatre and two shows at the iconic Royal Court Theatre London, as well as performances in Los Angeles as part of the Netflix is a Joke Festival. The show was filmed as a special which was released in September 2024 on Netflix worldwide, returned for a further sold out run at Edinburgh 2024, and will tour the UK in spring 2025. Ahir’s previous show Dots also completely sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe, toured the UK and was released as a special on US streaming platform HBO Max filmed at the Vaudeville Theatre. The show followed Duffer and Control which also sold out and were both nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show and subsequently toured the UK and overseas. Internationally, Ahir has played to sell out audiences at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Adelaide Fringe and Just for Laughs Montreal, and has toured in continental Europe and India.

Marise Gaughan

Marise Gaughan is a critically-acclaimed comedian and author from Dublin.

In 2022 Marise’s debut memoir, Trouble, was published by Monoray. It was described by The Irish Times as ‘a graphic, explicit, often visceral memoir that engulfs the reader’ as it traces Marise’s unravelling through sex, self-destruction and a near-miss with Scientology. The book went on to be an Irish Bestseller and received fantastic reviews in the press. It was published in paperback in 2023 and Marise is currently working on her first novel.

As a stand-up comedian, Marise started her career in Los Angeles, appearing in on stages including The Comedy Store and The Hollywood Improv. Since returning to the UK, her debut stand-up show Drowning explored her father’s (successful) suicide attempt and her own (unsuccessful) one. It premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2019 where it was nominated for the Fringe’s Spirit of Wit Moira Brady Averill Award for artists whose work defies categorisation with bold and unconventional material and for the First Fortnight Award for shows that challenge stigma and prejudice about mental health. Marise was subsequently awarded the Women’s Irish Network Arts Bursary. She has also supported acts including Rob Delaney, Ari Shaffir and Jim Norton on tour.