![\"Standup](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/01C-ww-saaniya-abbas.jpg\")
Standup comedian Saaniya Abbas. Artwork by Hyphen. Photograph courtesy of Saaniya Abbas<\/p>\nStandup comedian Saaniya Abbas. Artwork by Hyphen. Photograph courtesy of Saaniya Abbas<\/p>\n
The standup talks dogs, divorce, tattoos and her upcoming Edinburgh fringe show Hellarious<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/samir-jeraj-hyphen.png\")
<\/p>\n
Special correspondent<\/p>\n
31 July 2025<\/p>\n
Saaniya Abbas, 36, is a standup comedian from India<\/a>. Abbas works as an art director and copywriter in Dubai and is a rising star in the comedy scene in the UAE<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her standup show Hellarious<\/a>, covering topics ranging from divorce and internet fame to the concept of hell, will be on at the Edinburgh fringe<\/a> from 30 July to 25 August.\u00a0<\/p>\n This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n How does your weekend start?<\/strong><\/p>\n Usually, I\u2019m woken up by my dog because she needs to poop. I take her out in really terrible hot, humid weather. It\u2019s like hell on earth \u2014 Dubai in the summer is really bad. So we go on a walk, and once she has decided to grace the earth with her poop, we finally manage to come back up [to my flat] and that\u2019s how my weekend starts.<\/p>\n How long have you had your dog?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n She just turned five \u2014 I got her from a rescue place when she was about two and a half months old. Her name is Eleanor Rigby, because I really like the Beatles, and my previous dog was Penny Lane, so I kind of have a theme now. She actually likes to sing as well. She\u2019s not a great singer, but she tries, which is what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n Do you join in?<\/strong><\/p>\n Usually, she sings when I\u2019m playing the ukulele. Even if she\u2019s fast asleep, she will get up, come and just start screaming, howling, into my ukelele. When I\u2019m playing the piano, she\u2019ll come and start playing it too. It\u2019s really weird, but it\u2019s kind of cool.<\/p>\n Is this your first time at the fringe?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been to Edinburgh a bunch of times, but I only got to see the fringe last year for four days, and it was just the craziest thing I\u2019ve ever seen. I saw a lot of alternative comedy, which I had never been exposed to before. For what I\u2019m doing at Edinburgh [this year], I\u2019m more focused on my mental state, really, because I still have a full-time job. I couldn\u2019t get a whole month off, so I\u2019ve had to say I\u2019m going to work remotely. I have to really be prepared to have a very disciplined one month.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Your dog would really love the weather in Edinburgh.<\/strong><\/p>\n I wish I could take my dog with me. She would really love all of the UK, because there\u2019s so much grass and greenery and trees. I saw this video on Instagram in which this one hippy lady is like: \u201cI call on Mother Earth Gaia,\u201d and as she\u2019s talking to this plant, the plant moves with the wind and then touches her face. I was like, well, I need to try this, because that\u2019s hilarious. And I looked outside, and there\u2019s not a single tree in sight. There\u2019s a fake tree. It\u2019s actually a radio phone tower, but it\u2019s made to look like a tree.<\/p>\n How did you go from art director to standup?<\/strong><\/p>\n My whole comedy career began because I got divorced. I never wanted to be a comedian. It never crossed my mind, even as a joke, and then it just randomly happened. When I was getting divorced, I was trying to distract myself, and someone told me about this standup comedy workshop, and I was like: \u201cWell, that would be a good distraction.\u201d So I went for it, and I enjoyed it, and then I started joking about my divorce, and that really helped me, because, you know, you can take any story and turn it into a funny story, and that\u2019s what I did with my divorce. And so, for a while, all my jokes were just about my divorce. And I remember once I was coming back home, and one guy from my building was in the elevator with me, and he looked at me, and goes: \u201cOh, my God, you are the divorced comedian!\u201d I was like, God, I need to start joking about other things.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the standup scene like in Dubai?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In all of UAE, there\u2019s maybe, like, 25 regular comedians. That\u2019s all. We don\u2019t have more than that, which is great because I get a lot of stage time, but it\u2019s not great because you don\u2019t get exposed to really top-level comedy.<\/p>\n W\u200bhat is the best live act you\u2019ve seen recently?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s not much in Dubai unless it\u2019s like huge comics who are being flown over for arena gigs. I saw Trevor Noah. He did his latest special, which is awesome. I was in New York just over a year ago and I saw Dave Chappelle perform in a really small room, with Kevin Hart and Jimmy Carr opening for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u2019s the story with your tattoos?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve got an evil Cupid, like devil horns. This is the Cupid that\u2019s always getting me into trouble. And he\u2019s got these demon wings, and he\u2019s like pointing at my heart. And over my heart I\u2019ve got in Latin \u201cHere Be Dragons\u201d, which was used to warn sailors not to go there in old maps. It\u2019s really funny, because I was like: \u201cDon\u2019t nobody come near my heart again.\u201d I\u2019m a Gemini, so I got a second Cupid \u2014\u00a0one Cupid who gets me into trouble, and then a second Cupid who was about self-love.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always wanted tattoos because I come from a very artsy family. My mom is an artist. My sister is really into art. People always say: \u201cOh, what if you get a tattoo and then you get old, and it\u2019s going to look distorted. It\u2019s going to look really ugly when you\u2019re old.\u201d Well, you know what? The rest of me is going to look pretty ugly, too. So I don\u2019t really care.<\/p>\n Last words?<\/strong><\/p>\n For the light to shine so brightly, there needs to be darkness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standup comedian Saaniya Abbas. Artwork by Hyphen. Photograph courtesy of Saaniya Abbas The standup talks dogs, divorce, tattoos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,31356,10841,4884,730,712,2722,16,15,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-307286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-edinburgh-festival-fringe","11":"tag-festivals","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-india","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uae","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114949376233717603","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Clockwise](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/02-ww-saaniya-abbas.jpg\")
Clockwise from left: the Edinburgh fringe, Dave Chappelle and the Beatles. Artwork by Hyphen. Photographs courtesy of Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Getty Images<\/p>\n