Nina Conti's Edinburgh Festival 2017

Nina has been coming to the festival since she was a child, and as a performer made her name here in 2001, voicing her now infamous puppet, Monkey. But when the festival was founded, seventy years ago, stand up comedy didn't exist in the way it does today.

Nina meets fellow comics who are using narrative to push the boundaries of comedy. She talks to Edinburgh's own enfant terrible, Irvine Welsh, as he brings a brand new show inspired by the real-life gangsters of the 1960s film, Performance, to his home town. She meets Mercury Prize-winning troubadour Benjamin Clementine for an exclusive interview and performance taken from his eagerly awaited second album.

Nina also visits two art installations examining the legacy of poet Robert Burns and his response to slavery; Turner Prize winner Douglas Gordon's Black Burns, and Graham Fagen's, The Slave's Lament, culminating in a special performance at the National Portrait Gallery, featuring poet and Makar Jackie Kay, singer-songwriter Ghetto Priest, and members of the Scottish Ensemble.

The programme also features Selina Thompson's fringe hit Salt.