Vittorio Angelone

Percussion, then punchlines

Vittorio Angelone was born in Belfast on 26 May 1996, into a third-generation Italian-Irish family, and left at eighteen to study classical percussion at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. That training still shows in the shape of the act: the material is written in short units, delivered at a fixed clip, and the laughs are placed rather than hoped for.

He started doing stand-up in 2018. The pandemic turned out to be the accelerant rather than the obstacle. In 2020 he ran a thirty-capacity comedy club in a Belfast back yard while the indoor circuit was shut, and at the same time began posting clips that built an Instagram following in the region of 200,000 and, by the reckoning of his own promoters, more than fifty million online views.

He has spoken publicly about being diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and the diagnosis is not kept offstage — it has fed directly into the writing, particularly in his second hour.

Translations, and a newcomer nomination

His first full hour, Translations, arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022 and took its title and loose architecture from Brian Friel's play, using it as a frame for sketching the people around him and for picking apart what an Italian name attached to a Belfast accent does to a person in London.

Chortle's review on 20 August 2022 called the debut "a cracker", crediting him with "the power of stripping the craft right back to writing condensed gags and speaking them with dash and spark", and comparing his bearing to Dave Allen while noting he was plainly his own man. The hour was nominated for Best Newcomer at that year's Edinburgh Comedy Awards.

Translations ran at the Soho Theatre in early 2023, and in September 2023 he put the recording out free on YouTube rather than holding it back for a broadcaster — a route that matched where his audience had come from in the first place.

The second hour, and the improvised sideline

Who Do You Think You Are? I Am! went up at the Fringe in 2023 and toured in 2024. The title came from a viral clip of the American bowler Pete Weber, and Angelone spent the opening ten minutes explaining that provenance before moving into material on identity, emotional suppression in Irish families and his own then-unconfirmed autism.

Reviewing it at Monkey Barrel on 16 August 2023, The Skinny gave it four stars and described him as "charming, a bit silly, and able to pinpoint then hammer out a very niche situation until it becomes hysterical", with setups that steer an audience towards an obvious offensive punchline and then land somewhere else entirely. The reviewer also noted he performed in Crocs and dealt with hecklers without losing the thread.

Alongside the scripted hours he has run Off the Cuff at the Fringe every year since 2023, latterly with Liam Withnail: a wholly improvised show built from asking the room where people are from, different every night, with guests dropping in. Its 2025 Fringe run sat beside a one-off, Vittorio Angelone's Big Fun Ceilidh, with a live band.

Since 2023 he has also co-hosted the podcast Mike and Vittorio's Guide to Parenting with Mike Rice, a show that has nothing to do with parenting. In 2025 he made his acting debut in the short film Rewarding opposite Seána Kerslake, and won all five of his episodes of Richard Osman's House of Games.

You Can't Say Nothing Any More

The third hour is the one that changed his scale. You Can't Say Nothing Any More works outward from growing up in a Belfast that had stopped fighting, against parents and grandparents who lived through the Troubles and would not discuss them, and from there into whether a comedian is obliged to be an activist and where the argument about offence has actually got to. The pressure to narrate an Irish-history documentary is one of its running targets.

It toured the UK across 24 dates between 16 January and 29 March 2026, finishing with his first night at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith on 20 March. Two nights at Vicar Street in Dublin followed on 26 and 27 April, then North America in May — the Netflix Is A Joke Festival in Los Angeles on 6 May, the Gramercy Theatre in New York on 9 May, and dates including Philadelphia and Toronto. A seven-date UK and Ireland extension ran from 18 September to 8 October 2026, and three nights at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin took 22 to 24 October.

It returned to Edinburgh in August 2026 after the original Monkey Barrel run sold out, with extra performances added at Underbelly's McEwan Hall on 8 and 22 August and a transfer to the Assembly Hall. TheatreScotland gave the Assembly Hall show five stars on 26 August 2026, praising his handling of the Middle East and the Troubles without, in the reviewer's judgement, crossing a line. FringeReview, writing on 8 September 2026, called it "a magnetic hour of comedy" and "a skilful performance with a real sense of artistry", singling out the lighting gags and the show's custom music.

He was a Just For Laughs New Face in 2025 and appeared on Deadline's 2026 "Future of Funny" list. Television followed: The Last Leg and Unacceptable both in 2026.

The sitcom, and the roast

Rewarding, his first sitcom, began on BBC One Northern Ireland and iPlayer at 10.40pm on Friday 13 November 2026 — six episodes from Conker Pictures, written by Matthew McDevitt, Paddy Campbell and Faebian Averies, with Angelone and the Blue Lights actress Hannah McClean as care workers in Belfast. The production cast disabled, neurodivergent and learning-disabled performers in key roles, and shares its title with the 2025 short.

It went out under a cloud of his own making. Footage emerged of Angelone making a rape joke about the comedian Rebecca Goodwin at a Have A Word podcast roast. The BBC said the remarks were "unacceptable and wrong" and did "not reflect BBC values", while confirming on 2 November 2026 that the series would still air. Angelone apologised to Goodwin directly, saying he had let his "need for validation supersede my own standards and morals"; Goodwin said she acknowledged the apology but did not accept it. He suspended the parenting podcast.

The timing is awkward in a particular way, because the touring hour is itself an argument about what comedians are permitted to say and what they owe the people they say it about. The episode has become a live test of that argument rather than a footnote to it.

Where the tour stands now

The current leg is Australian, and it is the part of the schedule still on sale. Sydney takes five performances across the Just For Laughs programme in November 2026: City Recital Hall on Thursday 19 November at 7pm, two shows at the Factory Theatre on Friday 20 November at 7pm and 9.30pm, and two in the Studio at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday 22 November at 7pm and 9.30pm, the later one added after demand. Melbourne follows at The Capitol on Swanston Street on Thursday 26 November, billed 7pm to 8.30pm at A$71.15, with Brisbane and Perth also on the Australian run.

No 2027 dates have been announced. On past form — a Fringe hour in August, a UK tour the following winter, an extension in the autumn — the next announcement is the pattern to watch rather than a promise.