Ed Byrne, a regular on the panel show Mock the Week, is set to head to the Edinburgh Fringe with his 14th stand-up comedy show, Tragedy Plus Time.

This tour comes after Byrne’s 30-year career, which has earned him multiple awards and five-star reviews. Fans should expect something completely new, as his latest show delves into highly emotional territory.

Byrne is preparing to address the difficult topics of grief and loss, inspired by the tragic death of his younger brother Paul Byrne at 44 in February 2022.

Speaking about the show, Byrne said: "It’s something of a departure, and I’m slightly worried about that.

"I’ve never really had the desire to write a show that had an overly serious element to it. I got a lot of five-star reviews on the last show [2019’s If I’m Honest], but some four-star ones that opined, ‘well it’s funny, but that’s all it is…’ As if that’s not enough these days.

"Frankly, just being funny is a furrow I’ve been happy to occupy. But this new show features some heart-wrenching, soul-bearing stuff."

In Tragedy Plus Time, Byrne tries to find a middle ground between humour and distress, looking for instances that sit between sadness and loss. Described as a new take on grief that intertwines comedy with tragedy in a surprising but captivating approach.

He continued: "I was in two minds about whether to do a show of this nature, then I decided this was the subject I was going to tackle but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. But once I started down that road, that was it…

"Then my main worry was, how funny is it going to be and is it going to work?

"The first time I performed it,” he continues, “it lasted more than an hour. That surprised me, but it was too long, so I had to decide whether to cut funny jokes or material that’s meaningful.

"The show does elicit a very pure emotional response in the audience. There’s something about the fact that when somebody dies, everyone else carries on like nothing’s happened. Because nothing has happened to them. So there’s an anger in grief, too… how can everyone else carry on as though nothing has happened?

"I’ve spoken to people who worked with Paul, who was a comedy director, and they’ve said that his thing was, ‘you can be as emotional as you like and as serious as you like, but there has to be a joke’. So the idea of saying something purely for the emotional gut punch was off the table."

The nationwide tour, where Ed Byrne will be performing in Basingstoke on Thursday, May 16, is set to follow the Edinburgh Fringe performance.