Spotting the North London comedian Emmanuel Sonubi in the middle of Edinburgh’s Bistro Square, a central hub when the city’s Festival Fringe is on, is not difficult. With his tall frame, broad shoulders and bouncer’s stare – perfected long before his performing days, back when he worked the doors of nightclubs and did a stint as a Waitrose security guard – he stands out instantly. Dressed in his trademark black T-shirt, arms like trees trunks, he looks every inch the man you’d think twice about crossing. And yet all of this – the stature, the stare, the presence – has become gold dust for his comedy.
When he strolled up, aviators on and a neat bundle of his current show, Life After Near Death, flyers tucked casually under his arm, I wasn’t sure what Emmanuel I’d get: the sharp comic I’d seen onstage, or someone more guarded. Instead, I found a man who radiated calm self-assurance – both in himself and in his craft.
We’d arranged to meet in the Square a few hours before his show, while he handed out flyers – a typical task for any Edinburgh Fringe performer trying to fill seats, and one he proudly claims to be “a pro” at. Within minutes, he proved it. “Watch this,” he said, before approaching a nearby table of young guys. In one smooth motion, he slipped a flyer from under his arm and, with a grin, whispered: “Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve heard there’s a really good show happening tonight.” For a second, they froze – caught off guard by the figure looming over them, maybe even thinking they’d done something to attract a bouncer’s attention. Then, as their eyes darted from Emmanuel’s face to the flyer in their hands, the penny dropped. Confusion gave way to laughter. The joke had landed before they’d even set foot in his show.
During the couple of hours we spent with Emmanuel, he kept a casual eye on his ticket sales – each refresh bringing a satisfied grin. Proof that, just like onstage, he knows how to draw a crowd, something he’s loved to do since he was a kid. Long before comedy took centre stage, Emmanuel was already performing. He worked in West End musicals, taught dance and took on regular theatre roles. The thread running through it all? A deep love of being in front of an audience. “The stage is my happy place,” he says. “If I’m ever in a bad mood, I know I need to go onstage, then everything will be OK.” Since making the move to comedy full-time, he’s performed on Live at the Apollo, shared the stage with acts like Chris McCausland and joined Jason Manford on tour as a support act.
We moved from Bistro Square to Brookes Bar, a hub for many performers during the Fringe, where the air buzzed with laughter, flyering tactics and the shared urgency of standing out in a sea of shows.
Emmanuel, though, is no longer in the early hustle stage. This marks his third full annual Fringe run – three weeks of near-nightly performances, with only one rest day. It’s a punishing schedule, but one he approaches with the steady energy of a seasoned pro: “All I have to do is make sure I’ve gone to the gym in the morning and I know I’ll be fine, even when I really don’t want to.”
This year though marked a clear shift in Emmanuel’s comedy. Instead of relying on stories from the door of nightclubs or anecdotes about fatherhood, his new show, Life After Near Death, dives into the experience that redefined his life entirely in 2020. That year, he suffered heart failure; by the time he was rushed to hospital, his heart was functioning at just 8%. It’s the kind of subject most people would, for obvious reasons, find near-impossible to find humour in, but Emmanuel turns it into something both profoundly moving and, somehow, hilarious.
It’s a bold shift – and one that pays off. In Life After Near Death, comedy is found in the most unlikely places: the surreal, absurd and often darkly funny details of medical treatment, the awkward interactions that come with sudden vulnerability for men, and the reflections on how close he came to not being here at all. The result is a show that balances humour with raw honesty – one that invites the audience not just to laugh, but to think about resilience, fragility, the strange ways life reminds you of its value and that we all must go out there and, in his words, “live it”.
“For ages, I was putting off writing about it,” he admits, “but I knew I had to. It ended up being the best therapy I could have ever done.” And it shows. During his show, there’s a looseness, a freedom, as if he’s found a deeper purpose in his comedy. It’s not just about the laugh count (though those come thick and fast) but about inviting the audience into a moment that nearly ended him – and proving through sheer wit and warmth that even in life’s darkest corners, there’s light.
So, if you’re curious to hear more from Emmanuel and get a feel for Life After Near Death, have a watch of our chat with him below, filmed backstage at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. And with a UK tour on the horizon, it’s well worth seeing if he’ll be stopping by a city near you...
