Interview with Brendon Lemon

Ahead of bringing "An American Comedy Show That Quite Possibly Might Be Funny To The British" to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I caught up with comedian Brendon Lemon to discuss cultural identity, political exhaustion, British humour, and turning America's ongoing chaos into stand-up material blending sharp social commentary with improvisation, crowdwork, and storytelling.

Alongside that, he is also presenting "ADHD: A Crowdwork Comedy Show", a completely different Fringe hour built almost entirely from improvisation, audience interaction, and whatever his ADHD brain decides to do in the moment. It's a format that leans fully into unpredictability, where structure is minimal, and the performance is shaped live in real time, often in directions nobody, including the performer, can reasonably anticipate.

Together, the two shows sit at opposite ends of the same spectrum: one shaped by political and cultural observation, the other by pure spontaneity. The first 10 questions are about "An American Comedy Show That Quite Possibly Might Be Funny To The British". The last 10 are about "ADHD: A Crowdwork Comedy Show".

How did this show originally come about, and what made you want to frame America specifically for a British audience?

Jack, I need help. I am here on bended knee, looking for help, begging the British Isles and every international who will listen. Does it look like we've got everything handled over there? My mother's family is English and Scottish, I grew up on British comedy, and I've spent my whole life looking at America from a slight distance despite growing up inside the dumpster fire. I’m coming to Edinburgh specifically because if I’m going to connect with anyone about America’s nonsense, it's an audience that has been watching from across the Atlantic for years.

Growing up in a British-influenced family in Detroit, did you feel caught between two comedic sensibilities?

Absolutely. I grew up in a house where we didn't just watch Monty Python, we listened to Monty Python on old LPs. So from very early on I had this idea of what comedy could be: irreverent, wordplay-driven, concerned with landing the joke rather than just delivering the take. My whole career has basically been me trying to think of things that would make my Scottish grandmother laugh… and as you can see I’m still trying to make both work.

Did you always intend for the show to balance affection and frustration toward America, or did that emerge naturally?

It emerged, because, to be honest, on first draft it sounded more like a rant of all my frustrations with my home country. Basically I sat down and started trying to make sense of what it feels like to be American right now; the frustration came first… but, surprisingly, affection started coming too. It’s strange, it’s a bit like loving your parents despite their flaws.

British audiences often laugh at American chaos from a distance. What do you think they fundamentally misunderstand about reality?

How genuinely frightening it is from the inside. From a distance it looks like a farce, and honestly it is a farce, but it's a farce that real people are living inside of every day. Every American I know has lost contact with a family member over the political divide. The country has genuinely lost its sense of humor, which is particularly rich given how many comedians complained about the lack of humor from progressives for so long. British audiences see the absurdity, and they're right to, but I think the sheer exhaustion of it doesn't always translate. It's funny and it's also genuinely tiring in a way that's hard to convey from the outside. Honestly, I’ve been visiting family over here more often in the last year just to get away from it.

Has the current political and cultural climate in the US made stand-up easier or harder to write?

Both, at the same time, in ways that are hard to separate. The material is everywhere, it’s an embarrassment of riches. It’s stranger than fiction, we are through the looking glass, you genuinely cannot make it up. Even the characters are wild and nonsensical; Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem (and her husband, yikes), Kash Patel, Trump. If a movie came out twenty years ago with this rogues gallery of personalities, the reviews would have said "unbelievable, nobody is this much of a plonker." So in that sense, easy. However, the country has split into two separate audiences that are hypersensitive to anything that might puncture their precious worldview. What works in a city will not work in the countryside, and every comedian working the road knows this… which is why I’m overseas.

You describe America as "lighting itself on fire". How do you turn that kind of chaos into structured comedy?

Through sheer determination to find something to laugh about in it. The America I was taught about as a child is actively burning around me. I think that everyone across the whole world knew that despite how much the United States was portrayed as righteous and moral, it was also at some level a load of bullocks, even us Americans knew it. The tragic thing is that now there is no morality left, no righteousness, nothing is really inspiring or impressive; the illusion is gone. A philosopher I really respect named John Marmysz once said the answer to that kind of nihilism is absurdity… so, I’m try to laugh my way through the dumpster fire until everything is okay. Or at least enjoy it best I can.

Do you think comedy is one of the few ways people can process collective anxiety?

The tension has to go somewhere. Somewhere deep down comedy is about forming a tribe. It’s about finding connection with others. Right now we’re all collectively terrified; I hope I can use that tension to dispel some of the weird aura of invulnerability that Trump seems to have.

Your work blends storytelling, observation, and social commentary. Do you resist being boxed into a single comedy style?

I don't resist it exactly, I just don't fit any one box neatly and I've stopped trying to. I came up through improv, spent twenty-four years doing standup, trained in clown, and ran a venue in Manhattan producing everything from traditional standup to pretty avant-garde clown stuff. All of that comes through me somehow, I think. The storytelling and the observation and the commentary are just different tools for the same thing, which is trying to find something true and make it funny. I'm not a political comedian who tells jokes. I'm not a storyteller who happens to be political. Truthfully, I’m not even very political, I’m just trying to connect.

You've performed at the Fringe multiple times. What keeps pulling you back to Edinburgh?

My grandmother is from Edinburgh. I have a deep and genuine love for this city that has nothing to do with the Fringe and everything to do with feeling, in some hard-to-explain way; I feel at home here. The Fringe is comedy summer camp; every comedian I know from all over the world is here, and there's nothing like it. But beyond the professional reasons, Edinburgh just feels right. It’s gorgeous, Scots are straightforward people, the attitude and culture reminds me of my family and growing up in the American Midwest around Detroit, Michigan (without the highlands, of course).

If someone walks into this show expecting straightforward political stand-up, what are they not prepared for?

The love, the personal story about my British family. People expect the critique, they expect the dumpster fire material, they expect me to come in swinging at America and give them permission to nod along, and I do some of that, but the show is also genuinely fond of the place. I really do love America, and I love my family. I’ve said about the show that some comedians have material about immigrating to a new country, I feel like my country changed around me. 

At what point did you realise your ADHD wasn't just material, but the actual structure of the show?

I’ve been working directly with crowds, getting suggestions for improv, doing crowdwork as a standup, since I was 14… but I never did a full show devoted to it. I just decided to let my disorder be the order: The show isn't about ADHD, the show has ADHD. The how moves the way my attention moves, follows the thing that's actually interesting rather than the thing that was planned, and finds its way back to something coherent through instinct rather than structure. It should be a wild time.

What makes ADHD such fertile ground for improvisation and comedy?

ADHD brains make connections between things that have no business being connected, and those leaps are where a lot of the funny lives. Or, ADHD brains will hyperfocus on one thing, and go all-in while ignoring everything else. A perfectly normal conversation with a stranger in the audience suddenly becomes something else entirely because my brain went sideways and found something nobody else was looking at. Another night, maybe that same conversation with a stranger will yield 30 minutes of “material” ripe with stories, laughs, and act-outs. That's not a technique, that's just how I think. The trick is learning to trust it and stay with the audience.

Your show relies heavily on crowdwork. How much does the audience effectively become the co-writer?

Oh, they should get a writing credit! There is no show without them, and not in the philosophical sense. Honestly, if they don’t interact, the whole thing becomes my mental breakdown in real-time. I'm not using the audience to hear material I already have, they are the material, my brain is just bouncing it off the walls. Whatever they bring into the room that night, the weird jobs, the unexpected answers, the thing someone says that opens a door I didn't know was there, that's what we're building from. My job is to follow it and make something out of it. They're the co-writer, the director, and occasionally the villain of the piece.

Do you see improvisation as the "real show," with structure only there as a safety net?

There is no safety net; I’m betting right now that some nights might real difficult (I’m sure a whole audience full of German tourists may come in, good luck to the Brendon performing that night!). I want to be clear about this because I think people assume there's a plan underneath the chaos: There isn't. Emphatically, I walk out with nothing. There is no set list, no prepared material, no bits I'm planning to work in. Just forty minutes, whoever showed up that night, and 26 years of stage experience. The improv isn't a technique I'm applying to a structure, it is the structure. So it is either the most exciting or the most terrifying way to do a show (it’s both), and I genuinely cannot tell you which from the inside (it’s both).

How much of the performance genuinely changes night to night?

Oh man, everything. No two are the same. The only constant is me and the room. Every audience is different, every conversation goes somewhere different, every show builds something that has never existed before and will never exist again. That's the part I find genuinely thrilling about it: I can't phone it in because there's nothing to phone. I have to be completely present with whoever is in front of me, every single night. It’s high energy, it’s fun, it’s crazy.

Have there been moments where things have spiralled completely beyond your control?

Truly, yes, and those are usually the best moments. The moments when things are way off the rails and everyone is laughing and me and the audience aren’t even sure where we are anymore but are still laughing, that’s the sweet spot for this show. 

Does ADHD make live performance easier because of spontaneity, or harder because of distraction?

Both, at the same time. The spontaneity is the whole show, so in that sense it's an asset. At the same time, there are nights where my brain wants to go seventeen different directions at once and the skill is picking one and following it without the audience seeing the other sixteen options I just abandoned. It's less about managing the distraction and more about learning which distraction is actually the interesting one. That's a skill that took a long time to develop and I'm still working on it.

Is there a skill to making something fully improvised still feel intentional and controlled?

Yes, and Gaulier is where I found it. The thing you learn in clown is that the audience can feel the difference between chaos that has an instinct underneath it and chaos that is just chaos. The instinct comes from experience: knowing what a room feels like when it's with you versus when it's waiting to see what you do next; knowing when to push and when to follow and when to just stop and let the silence do something. You can't fake that. You can only get it from years of being in front of people and paying attention. Twenty-four years in, I trust the instinct more than I trust any plan I could have made.

What do audiences most misunderstand about ADHD?

That it means you can't focus. That's completely wrong. People with ADHD can focus extraordinarily well, sometimes better than anyone else in the room. The problem is you cannot choose what you focus on. Your brain decides, not you. So you can hyperfocus on something completely useless for six hours and then be totally unable to read a single paragraph of something that actually matters, and both of those things are the same condition expressing itself in opposite directions. It's not a volume problem, it's a steering problem. The engine is fine, sometimes the engine is incredible. You just have very limited input on where it points. Which, again, is a fairly accurate description of the show.

If someone sits in the front row, how nervous should they realistically be?

On a scale of one to ten, about a six. You're not going to be humiliated; I'm not that kind of comedian and I have no interest in making anyone feel bad. But you will be talked to, you will probably become part of something, and there is a non-trivial chance you end up as a recurring character for the rest of the show. If you're the kind of person who likes a little adventure, sit up front. If you're the kind of person who has never thought of yourself as particularly funny and would prefer not to find out tonight, maybe row three… and even then I might still get you.

A huge thank you to Brendon Lemon for taking the time to speak about both shows ahead of their Edinburgh Festival Fringe runs. Together, they offer two very different lenses on his work: one a sharp cultural dissection of modern America filtered through British eyes, the other a chaotic, fully improvised crowdwork experiment where no two performances will ever be the same. Both promise unpredictability, honesty, and a strong sense that things might not go quite to plan, which is very much the point.

"An American Comedy Show That Quite Possibly Might Be Funny To The British" is playing at Just the Tonic at The Caves (Venue 88), August 5-30 at 9:30pm.

"ADHD: A Crowdwork Comedy Show" is playing at Laughing Horse, The City Cafe (Venue 85), August 5-30 at 6:10pm.

All information can be found via the Edinburgh Fringe website.