Elliot Steel has been doing stand-up for so long I’d assumed he was in his early thirties. In fact, as he explains at the start of his latest show Soft Boi Core he is 27 and living at home with his dad. He is still young then, but as his impressive set shows, he has had to grow up pretty fast over the last twelve months.

If you think Covid was an eventful time for comedians spare a thought for Steel. Since his last show he has had to go through a big break-up, his cage fighting career hasn’t gone quite as planned and then, just to throw a sizeable spanner in the works, his father, comedian Mark Steel, was diagnosed with throat cancer.

If his father’s illness dominates the second half of this set, the first half is also compelling. Steel explains that his ex-girlfriend was posher than him, with all the complications that that brought with it, such as dinner parties where Steel was plonked among people who he had little in common with. He might be a nepo baby but he is a repo baby without a silver spoon.

And the cage fighting string to his bow gives us an interesting insight into his offstage life. Steel is torn between being a sensitive modern woke man and traditional masculinity. He might seem like a geezer but in cage fighting circles he feels like something of an outsider, a sensitive soul in a sport that doesn’t appear (to me anyway) to put much value on sensitivity. 

He can certainly fit into blokey circles, he still seems partial to the occasional bout of drug-enhanced hedonism, but Soft Boi Core suggests that he has become more honest with himself, whether in terms of his hopes, dreams and relationships or his sexuality, which is more fluid than one might have assumed. 

Each anecdote is told with passion, style and verve, whether it’s recalling class-based arguments about cheese or suggesting sarcastically that having a podcast can offer redemption to people who have done very bad things in the past. Despite his young age Steel is an experienced stand-up and some comedy DNA maybe helps too. He is a commanding presence onstage, outwardly relaxed and chilled but clearly in control. 

The show really starts to hit home, however, when he talks about his father. It’s a complicated relationship which, as he says, is more like two comedians than father and son. Until the diagnosis, when, as Steel Junior quips, he is no longer a big kid living at home, he has become a ‘carer’. The dynamic has changed. And maybe, despite the awful circumstances, it is a change for the better, bringing them closer together.

It is inevitable – particularly given the Edinburgh Fringe fashion for opening up emotionally – that the section on his father feels the most heartfelt. Steel is not scared to choke back tears when he talks about the thought of his father dying. 

Comedy fans will know, however, that this is not a dead dad show. But that doesn’t make it any less powerful. In the past we’ve seen the tough-nut steely side of Elliot Steel. The events of the last year underline that he also has a soft side too, which actually makes him a superior, more evolved comedian.

Until August 25. Buy tickets here.

Read more Edinburgh Fringe reviews and recommendations here.

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