Amelia Hamilton Gets the Last Laugh
“I Just Needed Someone to Tell Me I Was Funny”
By Darren Croft
At the Edinburgh Fringe, where flyering can bruise your ego before you’ve even touched a mic, she’s learned to embrace the contradiction: confidence built not in spite of doubt, but through it.
Hamilton’s comedy lives in that same tension. Blending sharp stand-up with high-energy rap, she’s carved out a space that feels both self-aware and unapologetically bold. It’s a style that might sound unlikely on paper, by her own admission, but one that’s earned her serious attention, including a Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Fringe and a growing reputation as a performer willing to take risks, even when they don’t always land cleanly.
In this exclusive chat with Loaded, she reflects on the winding path into comedy, the strange reality of breakthrough moments, and why discomfort both on and off stage is often where the most interesting work begins.
What was the point in your life where you thought you’d give stand-up a go?
I think it was a gradual process, because I’ve always loved comedy. I got really into rap early on and loved doing rap battles. The way in which I used to do well in those was to be funny, so I thought I’d try stand-up. I did a stand-up comedy course, which was my way of trying to get validation. I just needed someone to tell me I was funny. After that, I got the big and never looked back.
You call yourself a ‘Stand-up Rap Comedian.’ Did I get that the right way around?
Yeah, initially, I was resistant to being called a musical comedian. 60% of my show is stand-up comedy. For now, I much prefer that as a description.
What was the point where things clicked for you, and you started to really feel at home on the stage?
I think it was the point where I introduced a stand-up format to my raps. It felt like I was wearing a comfy pair of shoes.
Winning the Best Newcomer Award at The Fringe last year must have been a big turning point. That’s a huge deal.
Yeah, it started off really well after I’d got onto the list of ‘Best Jokes at The Fringe.’ I’d put so much work into the show, and you always hope, but don’t really expect anything. I got so drunk that night, it was such a mad evening.
I wasn’t expecting it, and I’d always thought in my head that a moment like that would be wonderful and magical, but it was actually kind of stressful. I had to go on stage in front of all of these people you find impressive, and it wasn’t how I expected it to be. It was what I call Type 2 fun. It’s the kind of moment that you enjoy long after the event, rather than at the time.
I guess it’s nice to have that kind of recognition. Comedy is so subjective that there’s really no such thing as “best”, but it means you can put it on posters and people who haven’t seen you will at least know you’re probably going to be okay.
I mean, I’m a white girl calling myself a stand-up rap comedian. People heard that and go, “Oh no! Please go away, that sounds horrific.” So it’s nice to have something like that, which can change people’s opinion before they see me. They might think it’s worth checking me out before they decide whether they like me or not, which is useful.
Were there times when you thought you’d made the wrong decision to go into comedy?
The way you feel about comedy can go up and down all the time. I think self-doubt is part of the process. I think people who think they’re consistently good all the time aren’t great folk to be around.
Sometimes you think to yourself that what you’re doing is awful at times, but you have to work your way through the valley of despair and get your confidence back. That’s part of anyone’s creative process.
If you’re asking about a specific moment, there was a gig in Rochester which was just awful. The mic didn’t work properly and wouldn’t come out of the stand, either. There was a group of 16-year-olds who announced in the middle of the set that one of them was pregnant, which meant that no one cared what I was doing at all after that. I just went home and wondered what I was doing.
Have you ever been heckled in the middle of a rap?
No, I am quite aggressive, so I think it’s too intimidating for the audience. Also, the music is quite loud.
Let’s talk about what is surely the worst part of the Edinburgh Fringe: flyering. It’s essential, but it’s also a little bit soul-destroying, isn’t it?
It’s a terrible, terrible thing to put yourself through as a performer, especially before you’re about to go on stage. What’s going to make you confident enough to do the show? How about being constantly rejected by people and made to feel like shit? Probably not, but let’s do it anyway.
I try not to do it too much myself nowadays. God bless the flyerers.
I hear you’re into running now?
Rapping is quite intense, so I do it to train myself not to get out of breath doing the show. I also have asthma, which doesn’t help. It’s the most anti-rock ' n ' roll thing to have to whip out your inhaler during a rap.
Are there any topics you refuse to cover in your comedy or raps?
That’s such a good question. In my normal writing process, I tend to just think of what’s coming through naturally. It tends to be anything I have a strong emotional attachment to. I think anything I don’t have experience with. Men are fair game, of course.
My latest show probably contains the edgiest material I’ve ever written. Stuff like restigmatising mental health. When you hear that, you might think, “That’s so wrong,” but if you’re trusting your audience to go along with you and you’re coming at it from the right angle, you hope that your audience will get it.
I suppose things are becoming less out of bounds for me as a comic as I become more confident, but any topics that are historically terrible, I tend to leave alone. But I wouldn’t rule anything out if I felt I could come at it from the right perspective.
The worry is that a parody you’ve written might be used by someone who takes it seriously in order to forward their agenda. This is something that Bo Burnham has spoken about a lot. He’s seen kids in school use his lyrics to bully other kids, and that’s not what he intended.
You don’t want everything sanitised, though. You can’t just go out there and do something just to make everyone happy. You have to make them think. I have an Andrew Tate joke that makes people laugh half the time and gasp the other half, so I’m thinking about whether or not to leave it in. Comedy is an interesting thing to try to navigate.
This will lead nicely into your Edinburgh Fringe show this year, which is called…
“Moral Support”. It’s about what morality looks like in the modern day. The tag line is “What if the good guys were actually the bad girls all along?” It’s taking things that we traditionally think of as “good” and questioning them.
Get your tickets here.