Lou Sanders on the joy of evolving in comedy ahead of Edinburgh Fringe show

Starring in Taskmaster, House of Games, QI and more, Lou Sanders is becoming a familiar name on our screens.

But rather than getting carried away with showbiz, the comedian is heading back to the Edinburgh Fringe with a brand new show.

“Finally I’m where I belong and someone else is doing my make-up and hair!” she jokes as she chats to The Sunday Post ahead of the festival.

“The TV stuff is a really fun element of the job for sure but don’t think I’ll ever take it for granted. It’s amazing that we get to do the stuff we get to do.

“I’ve just done Richard Ayoade’s Travel Man and that was really fun – I got paid to go on holiday!”

Lou’s TV appearances have increased following her last show Shame Pig, a big hit at the festival, garnering plenty of four and five star reviews and scooping the Comedians’ Choice Award.

“I was pleased, you always want more though don’t you!” she laughs. “If you sell out then you’ve got to be happy because that’s the maximum amount of people that can see it and then you can take it on tour. You put a lot of work in but get a lot out.”

The challenge is now to follow it up. This year’s show, Say Hello To Your New Step-Mummy, started out with Lou wanting to talk about anxiety.

“I thought a lot of people were saying they had it because it became a popular label to attach to yourself rather than just life being hard and us being supposed to be uncomfortable to push our boundaries,” she says.

“I was going to talk about that but I thought it wasn’t really my place because I haven’t really had anxiety, I just used to feel like a little worm and I think that’s a little different.

“It’s not for me to really to discuss or hypothesise what everyone else is doing.”

That realisation led to the show morphing into another area, and as with last year’s show it’ll be a very personal affair, not by design, just naturally.

“The whole show is really about relationships,” Lou says. “That’s something I’m trying to unpick this year, patterns and stuff. It’ll be mostly about romantic relationships with a tiny bit of parental just to see why I’m such a screw-up, really.

“It is quite personal. I’d like to do a show that isn’t but I have to just admit that that is my comedy at the moment, it’s quite personal.

“I don’t feel a need to, it’s just what comes out. Anytime I want to talk about generalisations or say ‘the world is like this because of this’ it just feels like someone’s trying to do a TED Talk.

“I go by what the audience want. If I try to talk about society or the world, it feels detached and people don’t want to hear that from me. If I talk about personal stuff it gets a better reaction.”

Lou insists the show “isn’t naval gazing”, but simply sharing funny stories.

“I think that it’s sharing the stories you almost don’t want to in a way,” she says. “I don’t do it for catharsis and I don’t do it to shock people but it’s just what ends up what people responding the best to.”

Lou says comedy is the only career she’d ever been passionate about (“The only thing I could be bothered to put some time into – I was a terrible PA.”)

“It’s nice because you’re always evolving, you can’t really get bored,” she says.

“I did a lot of prop stuff, now it’s more confessional I suppose, but I think you’re changing all the time which is the joy of it.

“There’s the community as well, and you keep growing and growing. I like the fact you can mess about all day.”

Lou Sanders: Say Hello to Your New Step-Mummy, Monkey Barrel Comedy, August 1-25 (not 14), https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lou-sanders-say-hello-to-your-new-step-mummy