Channel 4 Sean Lock Comedy Award Winner, Best New Show Nominee 2023 (Leicester Comedy Festival) and Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year. Daughters, lock up your mothers - Eric Rushton has a new show. Less about death than his first show and more about dolphins.

FestMag Edinburgh Fringe Top Comedy Picks 2023

★★★★ “Daring originality… Understatedly delightful” FestMag

British Comedy Guide Recommended Shows 2023

'Manages to keep a stag party almost rapt even while talking about the toxic pressures of masculinity' Chortle

'He’s a master craftsmen, with an arsenal of great one-liners’ Scotsman

September 1, 2023    The List

Eric Rushton is a comedian that sneaks up on you. Not literally, which is a blessing considering he’s performing in one of the more dungeon-like rooms around town. Instead, his unassuming demeanour hides a wealth of cleverly-crafted gags and well-written witticisms. Rushton is a meek individual, a fact that he doesn’t shy away from here. At one point it’s difficult to hear what he’s saying due to another show in the venue blasting out ‘Gangnam Style’. But Rushton handles this, as well as a near constant stream of latecomers, with ease.

Not That Deep centres around Rushton’s claim that he has ‘no opinions’ aside from being ‘the only openly dolphin-hating comedian’ on the circuit. But this chronic apathy is merely a launchpad for a series of hilariously offbeat observations from the Birmingham-based comedian. A little more variation would not go amiss across an hour and there are a few clunky bits of material, but the audience certainly doesn’t lose interest at any point.

Rushton is definitely one to watch, and comedy industry insiders clearly agree; he recently won the inaugural Sean Lock Comedy Award from Channel 4 and is a past Leicester Mercury Comedian Of The Year. Click Here For Review

August 16, 2023    Chortle

Birmingham-based Rushton is an inspired, offbeat writer and a comic who knows his craft. His work is often rooted in the mundane or the deconstruction of everyday tropes such the ‘preaching to the choir’ cliché, insisting that phrase should not evoke an easy crowd at all.... Click Here For Review

August 9, 2023    Fest

There's far more invention and daring originality in Eric Rushton's best routines than many of his more celebrated and high-profile peers approach in an hour. The Midlander recently won Channel 4's inaugural Sean Lock Comedy Award for embodying the alternative comedic spirit of the late stand-up. And the lineage that implies isn't too wide of the mark.

Rushton perhaps isn't as capable of the cheeky chappie crowd-pleasing that latter Lock was so effortlessly accomplished at. Yet framed by his bespectacled, everyman appearance, working-class horizons and near-deadpan delivery, cracked with an endearing grin whenever a bit truly lands, he's a veritable poet, reconstituting the mundane and commonplace with some truly audacious flights of fantasy.

As part of that lyricism, he's also – despite his show title and more playful, superficial observations – seemingly in direct correspondence with his soul, the abiding routine of this hour relating to his joke-writing, with the bleak conceit that the success or otherwise of his creativity is inextricably linked to his will to live. Whether reinvestigating platitudes like “preaching to the choir” or cliches like swimming with dolphins from oblique perspectives, Rushton's wit tends to be inflected with just a dash of dark insight into his mental health.

Meanwhile, you get the sense of a frustrated romantic, so that even when he inhabits the mindscape of Nicki Minaj or makes a self-consciously awkward analogy between comedians and porn stars, it's reconcilable with him opining on love and the human condition. Understatedly delightful stuff. Click Here For Review

August 1, 2023   Fest

Top Picks – Comedy

For his sophomore show, expect thoughtful stand-up with exquisite one-liners (and, apparently, quite a bit about dolphins). Click Here For Article