Andrew Maxwell

Stephen K Amos

Andrew Lawrence

Paul Sinha

Tripod

God’s Pottery

Tom Basden

Ivan Brackenbury

Pappy’s Fun Club

Watson & Oliver

Two Left Hands

Sarah kendall

Edinburgh comedy is usually divided into stand-ups, character turns, sketch shows and the skin-crawling horror of musical comedy. Comedy obsessives’ favourite moan is that stand-ups get short shrift, especially in the if.comedy (née Perrier) awards. This year, however, stand-ups have, um, stood up for themselves, and are providing the strongest shows.

Andrew Maxwell (Pleasance, 8.20pm, tonight only) has called his show Waxin’ – an appropriate description for half his career. He has offered so much, but sometimes delivered too little, with shows veering between well-crafted insights and essentially extended club sets. This year, he melds the two effortlessly. Fanaticism is his subtly woven theme, taking on religion (“Muhammad married a young wife. Very young. I’m not going into her age. At least Jesus had the decency to fake his own death and run off to the mountains with his boyfriend”), politics and Northern Ireland with such charm and erudition, it seems like a casual night at the Comedy Store. He ends with his fanatical love for clowning. “I’m aware I’m going to be trying to make you laugh two years longer than you’ll want to see me.” At this rate, that’s unlikely.

Equally skilled is Stephen K Amos (Pleasance, 9.40pm) who came out on stage last year and follows it with a thoughtful account of growing up black when Love Thy Neighbour was an acceptable part of the TV schedules. He pokes fun at white and black in equal measure, faintly exasperated at the peculiarities of British racism: “Nig-nog? Is that what black people drink at Christmas?” Masterful stuff from a comic who can toy with an audience at will. In contrast, there’s Andrew Lawrence (Pleasance, 8.40pm, tonight only), who describes himself as a “special-needs character from a Dickens novel”, which goes some way to explaining his peculiar voice. It’s the cartoonish nature of his appearance and delivery that saves his show from its slightly uncomfortable scorn – mocking chavs, the obese, gypsies and his “greedy bitch” girlfriend. He gets away with it. Just.

Paul Sinha (Pleasance, 9.35pm) also touches on race. The gay Bengali GP – “From the old school, not the ramming-airports school” – has settled in after delivering last year’s show seemingly motionless. Drawing on his nerdish love of quiz shows and more visceral love of gambling, he revels in those moments when you feel king of the world. It’s almost like a musical.

Which brings us to musical comedy. As a rule, comedians and songs on the same stage prompt this reviewer to gnaw his own entrails simply to make it through the hour. When you hear a line about a duck, you can see the humorous rhyme coming with a grim inevitability. This year, though, there are three – three! – musical-comedy acts that are genuinely funny: Tripod (Spiegeltent, 9pm, tonight only), God’s Pottery (Pleasance, 6.40pm) and Tom Basden (Underbelly, 7.35pm, tonight only). Tripod are three Aussies with classic trio interplay and songs, whose whole conceit is the punch line; God’s Pottery are a spoof Christian folk duo who set out to solve the world’s problems, from poverty to Africa, with the comic chops to play it straight throughout; and Basden delivers his entire set without saying a word. Genre-saving stuff.

Ivan Brackenbury (Pleasance, 4.45pm) could, in theory, count as musical comedy. This spoof hospital-radio DJ – the Cheerful Earful – builds most of his set around desperately unsuitable music choices: A Good Heart These Days Is Hard to Find, for the transplant ward, or Jump, for the depressed. It’s a nice bit of shtick, but it feels a little like a great 20 minutes stretched to fill the hour.

Sketch shows, meanwhile, are creeping back after a few years when only Klang bore the torch. Pappy’s Fun Club (Just the Tonic, 4.30pm, today only) come pretty close to their Klang forebears in energy and invention, with skits such as the horror-movie trailer for Things That Are Only Scary for a Short Amount of Time, and the topless taxman chasing unpaid revenue. Sketch shows can falter if the audience isn’t on side, since it’s hard to step out of character and win them round. Fun Club work the audience into the show, so their mayhem becomes infectious.

Elsewhere, Watson & Oliver (Pleasance, 4pm) are amiable enough, with some decent Jane Austen-style romps and plenty of charisma, but need a couple more writers and a good script editor to raise the show. Two Left Hands (Pleasance, 4.45pm) have some strong ideas – the working-class medium who struggles when reading for a posh girl who doesn’t recognise names such as Steve or John – and should develop nicely.

Finally, there’s Sarah Kendall (Assembly, 8.55pm). After becoming the first woman nominated for the Perrier in nine years, the Australian has returned with a sketch show-cum-play about a hitchhiking adventure in the outback during her college years. The story is dark and terrifying – all the elements of a child-scaring urban legend are there – but with slapstick hamming from her supporting cast and a wry, personable delivery, she creates a hip, sassy romp from unpromising material.

And so to the if.comedy shortlist. The final choices were Brendon Burns, Andrews Maxwell and Lawrence, Pappy’s Fun Club and Ivan Brackenbury. By now, you will know the result. It hasn’t been a stellar year, but things didn’t go backwards, either. At one point during his blistering hour, Burns asks the audience: “Do you think I could get away with my material in any other country in the world?” Over the years, it’s the damp, hilly streets of Edinburgh that have created that environment. You don’t have to be a comedy obsessive to be grateful that it keeps raising the bar.