Avalon Edinburgh Preview: Bilal Zafar and Sara Barron

About

Two top comedians preview their latest work ahead of the Edinburgh Festival.
Bilal Zafar
Bilal Zafar was nominated for the lastminute.com Best Newcomer Award for his debut show, CAKES, at the Edinburgh Fringe. Bilal also won the New Act of the Year award joining the company of previous winners such as Stewart Lee, Ardal O'Hanlon, Joe Wilkinson and Linda Smith.

He was the runner up at the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition. He has appeared on BBC3, BBC iPlayer, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Asian Network, and has written for The Independent.

An accomplished actor, he has appeared in Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe, Sky sitcom Sick of It and the Paul Feig directed feature film Last Christmas.

He also runs a successful Twitch page which has racked up over 12.3K followers. He streams an interactive, improvised comedy show three times a week where he plays a football manager embroiled in scandal, featuring various special guests. The show is growing every day and has been picked up by multiple radio shows and newspapers.

Sara Barron
Sara Barron is one of the fastest-rising comedians of her generation. Since her 2018 debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, she's starred on shows including Live at the Apollo (BBC), Would I Lie to You? (BBC) and Frankie Boyle's New World Order (BBC).

A powerhouse live act, Sara has taken four critically-acclaimed stand-up hours, For Worse (2018), Enemies Closer (2019), Hard Feelings (2022) and Anything For You (2024) to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and had multiple runs in London's Soho Theatre. Her shows have received rave reviews from publications including The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Evening Standard and The Scotsman, and she was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.

Sara co-created the smash-hit Succession recap podcast Firecrotch and Normcore, which has featured guests including Jesse Armstrong, Self-Esteem and several members of the Succession cast and they hosted the world-premiere of the Succession series finale at the BFI, London where they interviewed the entire Succession writing team. The podcasts success continued under a new mantle, They Like to Watch, a weekly TV discussion show in which she interviews some of the most prolific television creators from the UK and beyond including Russell T Davies, Charlie Brooker, Meredith Scardino, Chris Addison and Daisy May Cooper. In 2024 the show will be rewatching S1 and S2 of Succession joined exclusively by creator and head writer Jesse Armstrong to unpack the series in never-before-heard detail.

Sara's further television credits include 8 Out of 10 Cats (C4), Hypothetical (Dave), Richard Osman's House of Games (BBC), Alan Davies' As Yet Untitled (DAVE), Roast Battle (Comedy Central) and Hello, America (Quibi). On radio, her credits include appearances on The News Quiz, The Now Show, and Woman's Hour on Radio 4. As a writer, Sara has published two essay collections, People are Unappealing and The Harm in Asking and her writing has also featured in Vanity Fair and on This American Life.

Studio
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