Cult comedy pick of the month: Sam Nicoresti - XS Malarkey, Manchester.
This year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival is now done and dusted, and the winner of the coveted Best Show award has been announced as stand-up comedian Chris Cantrill (congratulations, Chris!) – also known as one half of the beloved, bizarre double act The Delightful Sausage. The act's other half, Amy Gledhill, won the exact same accolade in 2024. And though they're both originally from Yorkshire, during the formative years of The Delightful Sausage, they were based in Manchester.
This month, there's no shortage of comedy gold on offer in Manchester, from the 20th anniversary screening of the John Shuttleworth film It's Nice Up North to a (long since sold out) bumper night's fun with the very marvellous Frankie Monroe at Fairfield Social Club, itself the brainchild of promoter John Stansfield and the aforementioned Chris Cantrill. In terms of a recommendation for September, though, it's always a good idea to head to XS Malarkey. This venerable, welcoming Manchester comedy night, hosted by Toby Hadoke, is fast approaching its 30th anniversary and can now be caught every Tuesday night at 53Two, tucked away on Watson Street in the city centre, a stone's throw from Castlefield/Deansgate station. Basically, if the Manchester comedy scene is currently riding very high indeed, XS Malarkey has been a key player in that for a long time.
On 8 September, XS Malarkey is presenting a double-bill of Australian stand-up Scout Boxall and the much-acclaimed Sam Nicoresti. Last year, Sam won the Best Show award at the Edinburgh Fringe (becoming the first transgender winner in its history) - sandwiched right between Amy Gledhill and Chris Cantrill, as it were.
Here, Sam tells Cult Manchester's Andy Murray about what she's planning next, why the Manchester comedy scene matters, and the joy of playing air guitar.
Cult Manchester: Hi, Sam! For the uninitiated, how would you describe your act and what it is that you do?
Sam Nicoresti: I used to do surreal-anti-alt stuff with puppets and soundscapes whilst dressed as an astronaut or stuck inside a nightmare, but at some point I got tired of carrying huge bags of props onto the Megabus, so now I just tell jokes into a microphone. The jokes are good. They’re usually about transition, or being queer, or sometimes something more accessible, like lunch. I used to worry more about being accessible, but then I realised accessibility is defined in relation to straightness, and they’ve already got enough comedy that speaks to them. I want to talk about things that I know about. My comedy is actually very observational.
CM: Your mind-popping 2025 show Baby Doomer won some major awards. Is your next show starting to come together yet?
Sam: I like ‘mind-popping’! That’s fun. Scanners-style. Yeah, I did a small run of a work-in-progress at this year’s Fringe. It went very well, I was happy with the new jokes. But I’m not sure if I’ll do it. I have other ideas. I’m currently caught between wanting to do an hour of broad stand-up - the sensible career move - or something more interesting. Probably it’ll end up an uneasy compromise between the two. I want to tour again, so my eye is mostly on making something that can travel. I want something that can work in festivals and also in Reading. That’s the dream. That’s a comedian’s highest goal. Reading.
CM: Not content with making waves as a comedian, you've recently been in Finland demonstrating a very different art-form...or, perhaps it's not as different as it appears from the outside?
Sam: Yes! I recently became the World’s fourth Best Air Guitarist! Technically I placed fifth, but actually third and fourth tied and I literally just now received the email telling me I’m allowed to say I’m the fourth, and I’m over the moon.
Air Guitar is similar and dissimilar to comedy. It’s very like the Fringe in that, once a year, a community of oddballs gather in a city to reconnect and gossip whilst sharing in a vibrant creative milieu, sustaining themselves on late night beer and pizza, before ruthlessly competing to declare a winner, and disbanding for another year.
I think the main difference is that everyone is happy for whoever wins. Air Guitar is a beautiful, creative art-sport, and people take it very seriously, but at the end of the day… it’s just air guitar, dude. I think comedians would benefit from this perspective… it’s just being silly, dude.
CM: How familiar are you with the Manchester comedy scene? It seems to be thriving just now...
Sam: I started performing in Sheffield, so the Northern scene was crucial to my development and remains a core part of my landscape. It’s where all the best alt stuff comes from. There’s a London-centric bias within the professional industry in terms of agents and producers and critics, who are then broadly the gatekeepers of telly progression, which obviously sucks. But the up-side is that people make work for the sake of the work, and they worry less about ‘why’ they’re doing something.
When I started out, we were given this room above a pub for an evening every month and we’d throw everything at it. We didn’t care about whether something was a transferable TV concept, we just wanted to make something weird and dumb with mates that could reliably fill three hours. You have to build your own thing up here, and you have to collaborate. The passion that results from that is very precious.
CM: At XS Malarkey, you're co-headlining with Scout Boxall. Do you know – and if so, do you rate - Scout's work?
Sam: I am familiar with Scout’s work. We collaborated on their poster design for God’s Favourite, which is the show they performed at this year’s Fringe. I saw that show five times because I loved it so much. I was blown away by it, jealous of it even. I was watching it thinking, ‘this is everything I wish I could make’ and I began to seethe with envy. I hated them for it. Hate them still. They took from me the chance of ever making anything so perfectly structured and beautifully told. I will never forgive them. If I see them at this gig I will kick off. I will literally fight them. I am so bloody angry with hate at the very idea of Scout Boxall!
Sam Nicoresti and Scout Boxall will be co-headlining at XS Malarkey on Tuesday 8 September 2026. Tickets here.
