Comedian Adele Cliff heading home for Cambridge Fringe Festival

Comedian Adele Cliff will return to the city where she went to school this weekend (24-25 May) to perform at the Cambridge Fringe Festival.

While some of the other comics appearing at the two-day event will be doing work-in-progress shows, Adele, who describes herself on her Instagram page as a “comedian and trampoline enthusiast”, will be presenting Adele, Adele, Adele... Cliff It Isn't the Consequences of My Own Actions – a show she recently took to Australia.

“I just got back a few days ago from being in Australia and I went to Vietnam on the way back,” says Adele, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from her home in London, where she moved about 10 years ago.

“I was doing the Adelaide Fringe and then the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It was the first time I’d done solo shows at those festivals and they went really well and the audiences were lovely.

“It’s very nice to go that far away and to realise people still find you funny – it’s not just a local thing!”

Talking of local, Adele’s parents still live in Cambridge.

“I go back every once in a while, check how it is,” she says.

Adele was educated at Parkside and Hills Road Road Sixth Form College before attending the University of Warwick to do “a science degree I was never going to use – but it was fun”.

The comic, who remembers “really enjoying”, among others, Bill Bailey, The Mighty Boosh, and French and Saunders as a teenager, was in the Comedy Society while at Warwick.

“I did a lot of student radio stuff,” she recalls, “and sketches and double act stuff – and I did my first gig when I was 19, so a while ago…

“And people laughed enough for me to think, ‘Yeah, this is nice. I want to keep doing this’.”

She adds: “At Warwick Uni, they’ve got the Arts Centre there, where a lot of touring comedians do their shows.

“So I used to go to quite a lot of shows that came through there, and that was always really fun to see people off the telly doing their stuff at my university!”

As well as Adele, the Cambridge Fringe Festival line-up of more than 100 comedians also includes the likes of Jordan Brookes, Nick Helm, Hal Cruttenden, Ania Magliano, Spencer Jones, Ria Lina, Glenn Moore, and Helen Bauer.

All the gigs will be taking place at four venues in Cambridge, all within a two-minute walk of each other at Mitcham’s Corner: The Portland Arms, Thirsty, The Boathouse, and The Waterman. Advance tickets for each show are just £5.50.

On the show she’ll be doing, Adele says: “I’ve been working on this show for most of two years now, so it will be at the Edinburgh Fringe this year…

“But it’s the show I did in Australia, in Adelaide and Melbourne, so it’s a show by now – it’s not work-in-progress anymore. It’s finished.”

Before leaving for Australia, Adele performed “a couple of previews” of Adele, Adele, Adele... Cliff It Isn't the Consequences of My Own Actions at the Leicester Comedy Festival.

“They were finished-ish versions,” she explains, “but I was still tweaking. But this’ll probably be the first version where I’m happy to not call it a preview.”

So the Cambridge Fringe is, in effect, about to witness the UK premiere of the show?

“Yeah, I suppose so… good place to come back and do the UK premiere, having done it as far away as I possibly can from home and now do it a mile or so from my dad’s house!”

Adele, who says she’d probably be a “frustrated diving or gymnastics coach” if she wasn’t a stand-up comedian, believes this year’s Cambridge Fringe boasts a “really good line-up” and says she’s excited to see a comedian she knows rather well.

“One of my housemates actually, Will Davies, he’s a newer comic; he’s doing his first hour-long show,” she notes.

“He’s very, very funny; he’s very deadpan but also really silly and surreal, so I’m looking forward to that…

“I think Spencer Jones will be great; he does loads of prop stuff and it’s always really daft and the characters are amazing and it’s just brilliant to see.

“And I love Esther Manito, she’s so fab… So there’s a bunch of good people. I’ve just scrolled through the website – it’s hard to pick a bad show!”

Adele will be presenting Adele, Adele, Adele... Cliff It Isn't the Consequences of My Own Actions on Sunday (25 May) at The Waterman at 6.50pm. To see the full line-up, go to cambridgefringe.co.uk. Follow Adele on Instagram at @adelecliffcomedy.