August 13, 2026 at Monkey Barrel 2
Gareth Waugh is an amiable and funny comedian, a rising star of the Scottish comedy scene – although if you’ve seen him before there’s perhaps a good chance it was while he was tour support for a bigger (and richer) name like Katherine Ryan, Daniel Sloss or John Bishop.
This is Waugh’s sixth year at the Edinburgh Fringe, and part of climbing the ladder of the comedy is accepting the less-than-glamorous gigs that actually pay the bills. He takes us through a number of entertaining stories about what it’s like to do comedy both on a horny cruise ship and in a depressing Butlins, where he opened for a massive darts tournament, the whole time masterfully demonstrating to the audience that he’s a safe pair of comedic hands. The man knows his way around a punchline and can deliver a pithy anecdote. He tells us he thinks he needs to earn some good will to propel us through the tale he really wants to tell, billed in the brochure as a fizzy drinks-based live crime podcast.
The man has few regrets, he says, but one of them is that this is listed in the Stand Up Comedy section of the Fringe Guide, as it has fewer laughs than his previous shows. He needn’t worry though, as there are plenty of jokes, and he’s structured the tale in such a way that any gaps in laughter appear deliberately-placed to allow the audience to absorb the next dramatic reveal.
Is Pepsi Okay is a tale of fraud, that laces us through the unlikely narrative hoops of sexy necklaces, the Channel 4 documentary about Russell Brand and corporate fraud, and sends us home with a message of hope, far more relatable and uplifting than the one you think you’re getting earlier in the hour.
I love a story show, and Waugh has pulled together a really nice one with Is Pepsi Okay? It’s ultimately a tale of misguided trust hung upon well chosen moments from his life as a jobbing stand-up. Throughout the ups and downs of the tale, the audience were unfailingly sympathetic – a chilled silence descends when he reveals how an upsetting financial knock affects his family holiday, and a later personal win for him receives an ear piercing whistle from that back row that must have left a few people temporarily deaf.
Waugh explains near the finale that he’d rather be a person who’s occasionally conned, than someone who never trusts anyone. While the specifics of his story are just that – specific to this weird and entertaining rollercoaster ride – he eventually demonstrates that emotionally, what he’s actually describing is a universal experience, reminding us that he’s discussing feelings that have kept most of us awake at night at one point or another in our lives.
I highly recommend you see Is Pepsi Okay? and I can’t wait to check out what Waugh does next year.
GARETH WAUGH – IS PEPSI OKAY? Is at 4.20pm at Monkey Barrel 2
Sarah Stringer