Edinburgh Preview Show: Bilal Zafar and Rob Auton

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.

Bilal Zafar

Bilal Zafar was nominated for the lastminute.com Best Newcomer Award for his debut show, CAKES, at the Edinburgh Fringe. Bilal also won the New Act of the Year award joining the company of previous winners such as Stewart Lee, Ardal O’Hanlon, Joe Wilkinson and Linda Smith.

He was the runner up at the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition. He has appeared on BBC3, BBC iPlayer, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Asian Network, and has written for The Independent.

An accomplished actor, he has appeared in Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe, Sky sitcom Sick of It and the Paul Feig directed feature film Last Christmas. 

He also runs a successful Twitch page which has racked up over 7.3K followers. He streams an interactive, improvised comedy show three times a week where he plays a football manager embroiled in scandal, featuring various special guests. The show is growing every day and has been picked up by multiple radio shows and newspapers.

Rob Auton

Rob Auton released his book I Strongly Believe in Incredible Things with Harper Collins in Autumn of 2021 to critical acclaim.

He has written seven five star rated Edinburgh fringe shows, The Yellow Show, The Sky Show, The Face Show, The Water Show, The Sleep Show, The Hair Show, The Talk Show (the second best reviewed show at the Edinburgh Festival 2018) and The Time Show, which was one of the best reviewed shows at the Edinburgh Festival 2019. He then took The Time Show on a UK tour, which continues this autumn

He has performed his unique brand of comedy on The Russell Howard Hour (Sky One) and on Rob Delaney’s Stand Up Central (Comedy Central). The latter set went viral on Facebook with 4.7m views and couniting. 

Rob has had three collections of writing and illustrations published by Burning Eye books and has had his poetry turned into short films and shown on Channel 4.

Rob made his television acting debut as a corduroy jacket wearing poet in ITV’s Cold Feet 2018. Since then, he performed in series 2 of The End of The F***ing World (Netflix/Channel 4), and Miracle Workers (TBS). Rob also starred in and co-wrote the short film The Peamaster which was nominated for best short film at the Milan Film Festival. Rob was a finalist for The Arts Foundation Spoken Word Award and a winner of a Three Weeks Editors Award. Rob is also the creator of The Rob Auton Daily Podcast which took home The Best Daily Podcast Award at the 2020 British Podcast Awards.