Life
From a row with Sir Anthony Hopkins to disappointing his mother, comedian Bennett Arron shares his regrets
The Welsh comedian on his return to the Edinburgh Festival with his most personal show to date
August 1, 2025 15:46
The Welsh comedian on his return to the Edinburgh Festival with his most personal show to date
August 1, 2025 15:46Dementia, depression and death: perhaps not the usual subjects for comedy, but these are some of the things I will be talking about in my new stand-up show, I Regret This Already.
There are a lot of Jewish comedians at the Fringe this year and, as we know, sadly two of them have had their shows cancelled from the venues in which they were originally due to perform. But there are certainly more Jewish comedians than when I first started performing at the festival years ago, and I think I’ve figured out the reason for that: when things are tough, we turn to comedy. Jewish humour has always helped us through awful times and, as this is probably one of the most awful in our lifetime, we need to do a lot of laughing.
The subject matter of my comedy show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, inspired by the passing of my father, who had dementia, and an onslaught of antisemitism from people I thought were friends, is the sort of hard stuff only humour can penetrate.
As the show’s title indicates, it’s also about regrets – of which I have a few.
Among them: growing up in the only Jewish family in Port Talbot, South Wales. Of course, there was not much I could do about it, given the hundreds of Jewish families that once lived in the town had left or passed away before I was born, but it did mean I missed out on a lot of things growing up.
As my family were Orthodox, I couldn’t go out with my friends on the weekends, I missed school lessons because of Jewish festivals, and I looked different to my school friends in the showers after rugby.
While I never, ever came up against antisemitism from said school friends, I’ve recently had to block some of them on social media because of the views they now post regularly. It’s a phenomena a lot of Jews have regrettably faced over the past few years.
Another of my regrets? Upsetting Sir Anthony Hopkins.
See, back when Port Talbot still had a lively Jewish community, many of whom, like my grandmother, had been smuggled onto ships as children to escape the pogroms, the majority of families were very Orthodox. This meant that, on Shabbat mornings during the winter, they would have someone light the fire for them.
The person who lit my grandparents’ fire was the young Sir Anthony Hopkins.
He and I were in touch for a while until recently, when I accidentally upset him, which I really feel sorry about. So unfortunately, as with the lambs, from him there is now total silence. If you want to know exactly what happened, you will have to come and see the show.
Other things I talk about include: living with a rabbi and his wife for six months when I first moved to London, being one of the few people in the world who actually enjoyed lockdown, and how I was a disappointment to my mother. Yes, a Jewish man talking about his mother. That’s why the show is six hours long.
Loser, the show I performed at the Fringe two years ago, did pretty well – I won the Poster of the Year Award and I was named in both the Top Ten Jokes of the Fringe and The Top Ten Jokes of the Telegraph – but this show strikes a more personal tone.
I speak about things I’ve never said before on stage, or even off stage. Will it go well? Will people enjoy it, or is the title going to prove to be a prophecy?
I’m about to find out.
‘Bennett Arron: I Regret This Already’ will be at the Liquid Rooms Studio at 4:15pm from 2-24 August.
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