one4review | On 07, Aug 2026

The Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award 2026 winner’s new show comes with a warning sign about the themes discussed. “So, you all read the sign before you came in?” she asks. No one in the audience has. “Well, that was money well spent!” Belly laughs. This audience aren’t interested in directives, they are here for one reason, to listen and learn from one of Scotland’s most vibrant and original voices around.

Dwyer’s show is deeply personal. Like many others, she is fed up with idiots who have tried to run her life. This show reflects on her real comedy of terrors, a catalogue of exploitation by men in her life the main theme. Some behaviour is petty, some aggressive, but mostly horrific with revenge porn, aggressive co-workers, stalkers, cheating partners and more. On paper, it doesn’t sound like it should be funny, but that’s where Dwyer succeeds. Her working-class Glasgow background raises a middle finger skywards to the bourgeois Fringe fare. And the crowd are there to support, with encouragement valiantly shouted back with experiences. This show doesn’t so much punch up as punches outward in defiance.

In Dwyer’s hands, she takes a red hot potato of a subject and makes you take notice, get angry and, surprisingly, laugh. Structure is key, and she nails it in presentation and gut punches that take your breath away. By the end, she offers that surviving can be a victory and success the sweetest payback, albeit a hard-earned one.

Scotland has a fine tradition of storytelling for the heart, battered and bruised, wrapped in gallows humour, with the likes of Janey Godley and Fern Brady. Dwyer deserves to be mentioned in the same conversation.

On this performance, it’s proof she is one of the top ten comedians in the UK at the moment with something worth a damn to say.

5 *****
Reviewed by Steve H
Stand 2 at the Stand Comedy Club
Until 30th August (excl. 17th)
18.00 – 19.00