A few years ago, Shannon Brooke was diagnosed with OCD after a lifetime of performing what she describes as ridiculous compulsions. Yes, she’s a performer – although perhaps not quite in the way she originally intended.
Following her successful 2025 debut show A Horseless Rodeo, Shannon Brooke is back at the Edinburgh Fringe and, importantly, she is still NOT talking about horses.
From the beginning, the audience were warmly welcomed into 100 Million Fish In The Aquarium. Shannon explained who she was and what the show was about, immediately giving us clear expectations for the hour ahead.
There was no dramatic entrance or attempt to establish herself as some untouchable comedy superstar. Instead, Shannon has the presence of your best mate down the pub – a friendly face who feels as though she could be anyone’s friend.
That warmth became an important part of the show.
Shannon used a slide deck for much of her set, and it was deliriously funny. Slides in comedy can sometimes become little more than something for the performer to point at, but here they became part of Shannon’s storytelling and complemented her particular sense of humour.
And Shannon certainly has a unique way of telling a story.
There is a dryness to her delivery, but only to a certain point, and that’s part of the charm. She doesn’t always need to push a punchline particularly hard because the humour often comes from the way she describes something, allowing the absurdity of a situation to do much of the work for her.
The majority of her set focused on her father, providing plenty of humorous and relatable anecdotes. Family members can provide comedians with enough material to last a lifetime, and Shannon knows how to take those everyday interactions and turn them into something an entire room can recognise and laugh about.
Even when the stories are particularly specific to Shannon and her family, there’s usually something wonderfully familiar lurking underneath them.
The show also touches upon Shannon’s OCD, but it isn’t allowed to completely define either the performer or the production. It exists as part of a much broader collection of stories and experiences, which allows the hour to move naturally between the personal and the gloriously silly.
That’s one of the things I particularly enjoyed about 100 Million Fish In The Aquarium. It has its own personality.
At the Fringe, where you can potentially watch several comedians in a single day, individuality becomes important. Shannon doesn’t feel as though she’s trying to imitate somebody else’s comedy style. Her storytelling, slides, dry observations and easy-going relationship with the audience combine to create something that feels distinctly hers.
And her set was so amusing.
The show was well paced, Shannon remained engaging throughout, and there was a lovely sense that we were simply spending an hour in the company of someone who happens to be extremely good at finding the funny side of the people and situations around her.
If I were going to make one criticism, it would be the ending. I felt the show deserved a stronger finish. After such an enjoyable and distinctive set, the final moments didn’t quite provide the satisfying punctuation that everything before them had earned.
But that is a relatively small criticism of a show I otherwise found gloriously fun and unique.
Shannon Brooke is a definite star.
More than that, I think she is a star of the future. There is something very natural about her comedy and an individuality to her storytelling which makes me suspect that, before too long, Shannon Brooke could become a much more familiar name.
For now, Fringe audiences have the opportunity to discover her while she’s still appearing in rooms where she can welcome you in like an old friend and spend an hour telling you wonderfully funny stories about her life, her father and, apparently, absolutely anything other fish.
I highly vouch for 100 Million Fish In The Aquarium.
An outstanding five stars.
★★★★★ 5 Stars
“Gloriously funny and wonderfully unique – Shannon Brooke is a star of the future.”
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/100-million-fish-in-the-aquarium
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