Bróccán Tyzack-Carlin is an award winning comedian, performance poet and writer from Hartlepool. His critically acclaimed solo shows combine spoken word, stand-up and storytelling, and have toured the UK’s literary and comedy festival circuits. His debut show ‘Don’t Bother’ received the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. He has performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Kendal Calling, the Union Chapel and many back rooms of pubs. He is the founder and host of cult political comedy night ‘Everything Is Fucked Comedy’, and ‘Poetry and Comedy for Palestine’ which has raised thousands of pounds of crucial aid for MAP with fundraiser nights across the UK. Bróccán brings his debut stand-up show, ‘Good News! It’s Been Destroyed’ to the Fringe this August. We spoke to him about the show, the flimsy nature of a previous Fringe venue, and locking in a politically-themed show given the frantic pace of politics.

Can you tell us about ‘Good News! It’s Been Destroyed’?

‘Good News! It’s Been Destroyed’ is my new hour that I’m bringing up to Edinburgh. It’s a mix of stand-up comedy, and it’s got a bit of spoken word poetry, and storytelling in there. It’s based around a series of hardships endured either by me personally, or the world, or the country as a collective, and trying to navigate and make sense of those things; and through the routines or poems or stories, sort of trying to challenge things that have been hard for me or the world.

Someone recently said it was like… not to tie into Christopher Nolan’s release today, but they said it’s like an Odyssey. It’s me battling a lot of different horrible beasts, but instead of it being a Cyclops, it’s Rylan Clark or Matt Lucas, or banal people from from life, or maybe a bit more insidious like politicians and things like that. The title comes from an email I received from a garage regarding my car, and I didn’t know it was being destroyed, but they destroyed it. But that was nice.

This show is more geared towards stand-up than previous ones. What was the reason for that? Was it a case of the subject matter being a better fit for that format?

I think I’ve been I’ve been transitioning more towards stand-up for for years. So when I first got into performing comedy I was writing poetry as a means of sort of writing comedy, but I was drawn to that form more. I went to spoken word nights before I went to stand -up nights. But since I moved to London in 2024 I’ve started hosting two nights. I run a night called ‘Everything Is Fucked’ and a night called ‘Poetry and Comedy for Palestine’, and I MC those. So I would write material for those nights and I was writing more stand-up than I typically would. When it came to compiling a new show, I just had most of my material in stand-up form, with maybe a few poems sprinkled here and there.

But yeah, I feel like the poetry is a good vehicle to sort of condense complicated topics or feelings into one thing. You had to sort of boil it down to one idea, but with just how complex everything is, it felt nice to be able to talk and put in gags and punchlines, and just have a bit more respite in that stand-up form. So yes, it sort of brought out the fact that I was MCing more and and writing for that form, but also I think [with] the subject matter that I was approaching it made more sense to to explore it a bit more expansively than trying to condense everything down into a two minute or three minute poem or something.

For those who might be unfamiliar with you, how would you describe your comedy and your approach to performance?

I think it’s pretty high energy. I like to mix politics and surrealism; I think increasingly so. I like to approach difficult topics and sort of… not make light of it, but try and find the absurdities within those things. And sometimes that reaches towards an absurdism or a surrealism in the writing. I think when I started out, I think a lot of people do this. They try and be a bit weird or they’re a bit distant [in their] performance style. They think that it feels more natural, a bit more guarded. If you’re a bit awkward on the mic, and it goes badly, you could sort of say, ‘Oh, well, they didn’t like because I was being so awkward’. So I’ve progressed to being a bit more in-your-face style, and then when you bring those quieter moments in, I think it makes more sense. But yeah, quite high energy and surrealist is what I’d say.

How do you meld the personal and the political? Are the are they both inextricable to you? Do you present your personal stories as part of a microcosm of the wider world?

I think even when I’m writing something personal, if you like look into it, it’s still informed by what’s going on, right? So you can try and write something that’s introspective, or it’s microcosmic, and as idiosyncratic to you as possible. But it’s always going to be informed by the world around you. So I think when I was looking at the show, there were routines that were specifically and intentionally political that I had written for those political comedy nights, and they weren’t really anything to do with me.

But then I was looking at my personal routines. For example, there’s a routine about me getting blocked by Matt Lucas on Twitter. That is a personal thing that happened to me. But then it sort of speaks to a wider social climate as well. You can’t really escape the the relationship between the two. But if you can try and identify that… if you’re looking at something hard that you’ve been through, has that been exacerbated, or made easier, or influenced by what’s going on in the wider world? I think being able to examine that relationship is a good thing to try and try and do, because it might be something that you thought you were just going through, but maybe it’s relatable to more people as well. And tapping into that is a positive thing.

And it’s only a few weeks until the Fringe begins. Do you have the show locked in, or are you constantly revising?

I think the very first [Work in Progress] I did in March went unexpectedly well. I was expecting to have to rip it up and start over, but it sort of stayed functionally the same. The thing is that the political sphere keeps changing irreparably.There’s a routine of the show that remains that I think it’s important to do, which is just about who I hate in cabinet the most. And at the time it was the current cabinet, Keir Starmer’s cabinet, and I just went through… I did a routine about five different members of [the] cabinet and why I hate them. It ‘s all pretty silly. But then there was a cabinet reshuffle. Then it didn’t make sense because that person wasn’t there anymore. And then one of them resigned, and I was like, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ It’s impossible.

I guess the tweaks are to refer to those people in the past tense is the way to do it. So there’s a lot of stuff about Keir Star being prime minister, which will now be sort of an obituary to his time as leader, as a place to anyalyse that time, yeah. So that’s the main tweak really, and then just finding little jokes and stuff like that to top things up has been nice. I’ve done it in a lot of different places and honestly having different audiences in different cities responded a treat as well. I did a Jeffrey Donaldson joke in Belfast, and then tried to do that in Manchester the next day, and it didn’t work.

What are your hopes for the show? What would constitute a successful Fringe for you?

I think people people coming would be nice. I’m very proud of the show; I think it’s got a relevance to the world at the moment, and I think having people come and enjoy it… I think that’s all you can hope for, really. And I’m going to be in a room with walls this time. Last time I did Fringe, I was in a room where the walls were plywood, and there’s a guy next to me doing a show about rave culture. And 20 minutes into my show, he would just play EDM music. It’s already a successful Fringe because the walls are made out of bricks! I think the place where we perform it.

Hopefully people can leave it feeling like people are on the same page as them. I think there’s a lot of angst at the moment, and a bit of a sort of national sense of worry and anxiety. And if people can come along and laugh at the idea that we’re all going through the shit together and get a kick out of tht, that constitutes a successful Fringe.

You might already have answered the second part of this in the last question, but what for you are the best and the worst things about the Fringe?

Yeah, plywood walls! I guess it depends. I’ve been as a punter. I went last year for work, but it was in a different capacity. I wasn’t performing. I think having most of the best comedians and artists on the planet in one place… you can almost take it for granted if you’ve been going for a while, but it’s it’s never not incredibly special to have that any time of day. You can just wander into a pub or into a little theatre and go and see a mad thing.

I remember there was a there was a show in 2019 called [something like] ‘Luna Spectacular’ and it was a guy who had like a four hour slot and did 15 minute long shows. I don’t know how he got this deal with this venue. He was just there all day, and I used to just go see it every day. And he was just this mad Australian guy, like doing this slideshow about space and just like throwing rubber snakes at the audience and stuff. And I was like, if someone had tried to sell me that shit, I would never have seen it!

I think there’s there’s a there’s a real joy in, and I think generations of comedians like us just get influenced by what they see. You can walk into a show and then leave having a completely different idea of what you think comedy is. I remember going watch Julio Torres in 2017 or something. Then became he was an SNL writer and stuff. Watched this show called ‘My Favorite Shapes‘, and there’s like eight of us in there. It was the most… it was such a ridiculous show, and I was like, ‘Oh, you can you can just do that!’ You can just pick up loads of random bullshit and tell weird, absurdist stories about that for an hour. And yeah, I think you can sort of reconfigure your attitude towards art. It’s a nice place to be, despite its many pullbacks and its crippling financial burden. Yeah, maybe the six grand hotels were the worst thing about the Fringe.

Beside the show, can we expect to see you performing elsewhere during August at guest spots or compilation shows, etc?

I’ve signed up for a few of my friends running one. I think I’ll nip onto that a few times. It’s called ‘Strangers Are Just Freaks You Haven’t Met Yet‘. That’s my favorite title for a show. My friend Tristan [Robinson] is running that. And yeah, I think I’ll be looking out for spots and popping up at a few places. I’ve not got a lot booked in yet, but I will!

Are there any other shows or performers at the Fringe you would recommend that you think don’t get as  much attention as they should?

Yeah, I think Christian Dart is a great character comedian. He’s got a show called ‘GUMSHOE!’. He’s fantastic. Tristan, my friend, whom I used to be in a sketch duo with; him and his friend Emre Kose, they’re doing that ‘Strangers Are Just Freaks You Haven’t Met Yet’. They’re fantastic.

Will & Noah, they’re a sketch duo. They’re amazing and they’ve got a show up this year. Alex Franklin‘s amazing. She’s fantastically successful, but more people should go and see her. And Sami Abu Wardeh‘s show, ‘Sami Abu Wardeh Hates You‘, will be amazing. We run ‘Everything is Fucked’ together, but he is just routinely the funniest man I’ve ever met and his new show’s brilliant. It’ll be a runaway success, I’m sure. But people should go and watch that.

‘Good News! It’s Been Destroyed‘ is at Pleasance Courtyard – Below from Wed 5 to Sat 29 Aug 2026