Ashley Storrie

She will wander out onto the stage while the house lights are still up, chatting with people as they take their coats off and pointing out the way to the bar. There is no build or dramatic entrance. She begins in an easy Glasgow cadence, leaning on the microphone stand and dropping straight into whatever sensory irritation or minor medical indignity happened to her that morning. A routine rarely follows a rigid setup-punch rhythm. It unspools like a story told across a kitchen table, punctuated by abrupt vocal drops, muttered side comments, and cheerful descriptions of bodily embarrassment.

Long a mainstay on Scottish radio and the Edinburgh Fringe circuit, she expanded her profile as the creator and star of the television series Dinosaur. That success carried her into larger rooms, but her live work remains built for close quarters, where an audience can catch every small wince and side-eye.

Her material centers on adult autism, disastrous romantic encounters, and the quiet misery of daily logistics. She handles panic without pleading for sympathy; whenever a story threatens to drift into sadness, she punctures it with blunt, self-effacing mockery. Her hours can meander, and she sometimes lets a digression pull focus away from a story’s spine, but the detours are usually where her best observational sketches live.

That ease under stage lights comes from an unusual apprenticeship. Her mother was the comic Janey Godley, and Storrie spent childhood summers handing out flyers on the Royal Mile. Performing was never a daring reinvention. It was simply the family business, approached with the unromantic practicality of running a local shop.