Angela Barnes won one of comedy’s top prizes last month. Now the Maidstone comedian is leading the charge of Kent acts performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Chris Price caught up with her.

After being crowned the winner of the BBC New Comedy Awards, things have moved rather quickly for Maidstone-born stand-up Angela Barnes.

Before November 2009 she had never even performed a gig but now she has been tipped as the UK’s next queen of comedy.

Next week she will step on to the stage at the world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival as headliner of a show packed with talent from Brighton, her current base.

“It has been crazy” said the beaming 34-year-old. “There are lots of exciting things happening. I’ve got an agent! I’ve got work coming in I wouldn’t have been offered a month ago. I’m working out what to do next.”

Her talent for pointing out simple facts like Maidstone being an anagram of “I am stoned” is why she has won so many fans so quickly. She is quick to jibe at her hometown in her show, but insists it is friendly banter.

“I love Maidstone” she said. “It is where I grew up. I take the mickey out of Maidstone the way I would take the mickey out of a brother.

“I would defend it to the hills if someone else took the mick out of it. You can be horrible to a brother but someone else can’t and that is how I am with Maidstone.

“The anagram thing is so obvious when you know it. How did I go through childhood without noticing that? Was that a good answer then? If it wasn’t I won’t be able to set foot in the place again.”

Despite her affection for her home town, Angela left Maidstone to go to the University of Sussex in Brighton in 1995 and never moved back. She used to run comedy nights in venues around the seaside town until she started gigging herself.

Angela said: “I knew the comedy world well but it was very nerve-racking when I started because I knew the comedians watching me. It very rarely happens that promoters and bookers turn comic. A lot of people were like 'hang on, she is a promoter’ but everyone has been very supportive.

“I have always been a comedy geek and I always wanted to have a go but didn’t have the bottle” she said, becoming more earnest.

“In the summer of 2008 I lost my dad, who was my comedy influence and he had always encouraged me to do it. A year after he died I decided to because life is too short. I did a 12-week workshop in Brighton and a few months later I was on stage.

“I started quite late and part of me thinks 'I wish I had done this when I was 20’ but when I was 20 I didn’t have anything to say. My comedy is about me. There is nothing particularly hard-hitting. It is just about my observations on my own life.”

The former Invicta Grammar School pupil is still working in her social care job at the moment, supporting a student with Asperger’s syndrome at the University of Sussex. She has no immediate plans to give up the day job but working only in term time means she has plenty of time off to head up to the Edinburgh Fringe.

“I’ve got to this stage so quickly, I haven’t got a 10-year plan” she said. “I am going through a process and there is a big difference between where I am now and doing a whole tour.”

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival runs from Friday, August 5, until Monday, August 29. Angela Barnes will perform in Brighton Rocks, a PBH Free Fringe show at the Dragonfly in Edinburgh from Saturday, August 6, to Friday, August 12. She is the headline act and is on at 11.20pm at the night hosted by Aidan Goatley. For details call 0131 228 4543.