FELICITY WARD: 50% MORE LIKELY TO DIE

In last year's show, one of the Edinburgh Fringe's fastest-growing favourite comedians, Felicity Ward, took a highly personal and profound premise again and turned it into her darkest and funniest show yet. Off the back of her highly successful Australian documentary Felicity's Mental Mission (ABC1/ABC2) about mental illness and irritable bowel syndrome, she delved into the depths of her depression, anxiety and IBS to make last year's show What If There Is No Toilet? It sold out to amazing critical acclaim (it was the third-best reviewed show at the Fringe last year!), just won the New Zealand Comedy Festival Best International Show and proved her to be… well, neurotic, eccentric and disturbed… but also one of the funniest and finest comics around.

Much to her surprise, more people saw this show than her immediate family and a guy called Gavin. Always one to flog a dead horse, she has written another one about mental illness, and whatever else she can get her filthy hands on. After reading studies that people with anxiety and depression are 50% more likely to die in any number of circumstances, Felicity wondered if she could go darker, and further, into mental illness and still make people laugh. From suicidal construction workers to the fury of public swimming pools, 50% More Likely To Die is the next installation in the exploration of mental health and the other worlds it crosses over into.

The last 12 months have kept her extremely busy; she headlined Live from the BBC on BBC2 and BBC3, starred in Josh (BBC3) in November, twice appeared on Make You Laugh Out Loud (Channel 5) and five times on Sam Delaney's News Thing (RTUK), featured on Museum of Curiosity and David Baddiels' Don't Make Me Laugh (Radio 4), Ronny Chieng's sitcom pilot Ronny Chieng: International Student (ABC) and in Sydney's Just For Laughs Gala (The Comedy Channel, Australia). She has performed at Rotterdam Comedy Festival, Udderbelly Festival in Hong Kong and toured What If There is No Toilet? in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington.