Did you hear the one about the comedian doing Edinburgh while 8½ months pregnant?

Performing six nights a week is tough enough without being a couple of weeks from giving birth. As she approaches full-term, New York stand-up Janine Harouni tells Sarah Crompton about why she took on the challenge – and the sadness behind her humour

Janine Harouni posing ahead of her Edinburgh Fringe shows (Matt Stronge)

Comedian Janine Harouni is eight-and-a-half months pregnant – and performing six times a week at the Edinburgh Fringe. A look of bafflement passes across her face as she states these bald facts. “That’s too pregnant. Too pregnant for the Fringe,” she tells me, with a deadpan sigh. “If I’d had a kid before and knew what the later stage of pregnancy was like, I wouldn’t have done this. But I was ignorant. People are saying things like, ‘Good for you. More power to you.’ And I’m like, it’s just foolishness really. I’m doing this because I am insane.”

She grins. We’re talking on Zoom; Harouni, in a white room in a rented house near Murrayfield, semi-reclines on the sofa. She is looking not exactly radiant, but pretty impressive for someone who is doing an hour of stand-up every night in high heels. In a stripey top and with her hair pulled back, she looks pale but lively. Seeing her on stage a few nights later, she is transformed, wearing a polkadot dress and slingbacks, her lips red and long brown hair perfectly groomed. She owns the space, one hand holding the microphone, the other resting protectively on what is a fairly large bump. “I’ve been mostly feeling good,” she says. “I mean, I have to have a reality check. My job is one hour an evening, and I’ve met women who worked eight-hour days up until the day they gave birth. I consider myself pretty lucky.”

This is the 35-year-old New Yorker’s second Fringe, and her show is selling out. Her problem as a stand-up is not in fact the standing – “Though by the end of the day my ankles are so swollen I can barely get my shoes off” – but the walking. Edinburgh is a hilly city for someone who has a large bump to disturb their gravity. “I’ve learnt that if I wear a backpack that’s almost as heavy as my belly, that sort of balances me out. When my sister-in-law came to stay, it was great because I’d be struggling up a hill and would just feel a hand on my lower back, and she was pushing me up.”