Following Ivo Graham’s tenth run at the Edinburgh Fringe, he’s hitting the road in October with his very highly acclaimed show Grand Design.

Ivo’s feeling the pressure. Last year, riding the wave of his shambolic performance in Taskmaster, he played to the biggest audiences of his career, but in keeping with said shambolic performance, he gave himself too much to do and crumbled under the pressure. Proud of his ambition, embarrassed by his execution: we’ve been here before, old friend.

He’s called his show Grand Design, invoking the spirit of Kevin McCloud surveying a great folly and waiting to find out if the relationship survived (it didn’t). He knows what a risk this all is, but he also knows that he’s spent the last decade proving himself as one of the most engaging stand-ups of his generation, a wordsmith with a unique turn of phrase and a life that hasn’t exactly dried up when it comes to source material. This is his moment to seize. 

After only partially successful attempts at irreverent evasion in 2023’s Organised Fun, Grand Design is a fast and a furious return to what Ivo does best: exquisitely articulated updates on a relentlessly chaotic life. Navigating the increasingly three-dimensional challenges of modern parenthood, swimming against the constant riptide of his own nostalgia, running late for trains and planes and actual marathons, and laying out as many deckchairs as he can on the sinking ship of the Fringe. Ivo’s poured his most painful introspection into a tear-jerking theatre show Carousel and his greediest gamesmanship into his DJ Battles, but this remains the main event: a manic, fate-tempting dissection of the desperate gulf between his expectations and his reality, in a show where you can expect to laugh with him, and laugh at him, and laugh a lot.

Ivo has spent his entire adult life on the stand-up circuit, winning So You Think You’re Funny? aged 18 in 2009 and since establishing himself as, if not the UK’s poshest, then certainly its most apologetically posh comedian. With a bumbling charm to snare audiences of all ages, he’s detailed the various developments in his relationships/neuroses over seven sell-out solo shows, including 2019’s The Game Of Life, which received nominations for Best Show and Best Joke at that year’s Edinburgh Fringe. 

He’s appeared on TV comedies including Have I Got News for You, QI, The Last Leg, Mock the Week, and Live at the Apollo, quizzed with varying degrees of success on Pointless, House of Games and University Challenge, and toured the country with Fern Brady and Darren Harriott for Dave’s six-part travelogue British As Folk. He’s earned his parents’ respect with appearances on BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show, The News Quiz, Just A Minute, and the drama Unite. And he’s shoehorned Swindon Town references into many an episode of BBC 5 Live’s Fighting Talk and BT Sport’s The Football’s On.  

More than anything, though, Ivo’s perhaps best known for his visits to the tripe factory in the Quickly Kevin podcast’s Steve Barnes episodes, and his love of bananas and yoghurt leading to him being the victim of a prank on Off Menu’s Redemption Dinner Party during lockdown 3. With these cult contributions under his belt, in 2023 he finally started hosting (alongside best friend Alex Kealy) his own podcast, Gig Pigs, a heroically cost- and time-inefficient celebration of their love of live music. 2023 also saw Ivo appear as a contestant on the fifteenth series of Channel 4’s Taskmaster.

Next year Ivo will be publishing his first book Yardsticks For Failure, which is a deep dive into the various facepalms of Ivo’s recent past and a live diary of his unravelling present, where his solution to the general bedlam of his life has been to pile his plate higher than ever before. Longer-term resolutions of rest and relaxation can wait; in the meantime, he’s trying to host the greatest club night of all time, run a Sub-3 marathon while pushing a wheelchair, and put his heart on the line in a show unlike anything he’s ever done before. 

This is a gleeful glimpse behind the grubby curtain of stand-up comedy, via friendship and films, fatherhood and Funkytown. A feast for anyone who’s ever been enthralled or appalled by Ivo’s cursed politeness, squandered promise, or serial prank-victimhood; for anyone battling to get their own life inbox to zero; for anyone who’s ever set fire to a diary, lost their mind over a quiz, or pegged it through a station for the last train home. Yardsticks For Failure is a unique self-examination from one of the most eloquent writers and worriers of his generation. Ivo almost certainly won’t achieve everything he sets out to, but it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

TOUR SCHEDULE:

Wednesday 2 October Bury St Edmunds, The Apex

Sunday 6 October Cardiff, Glee Club

Wednesday 9 October Folkestone, Quarterhouse

Tuesday 15 October Dunstable, Grove Theatre

Friday 18 October Winchester, Theatre Royal

Friday 1 November London, Blackheath Halls

Sunday 3 November Bristol, Old Vic

Friday 8 November Portsmouth, New Theatre

Friday 15 November Salisbury, Playhouse

Saturday 16 November Bridgwater, McMillan Theatre

Wednesday 20 November York, Theatre Royal

Thursday 21 November Burton On Trent, The Brewhouse

Sunday 24 November Leicester, Y Theatre

Wednesday 27 November Milton Keynes, The Stables

Friday 29 November Swansea, Taliesin Arts Centre 

Tickets: ivograham.com