Second acts tend to be darker than their predecessors. Nevertheless, it’s surprising to learn that It’s Funny To Me, Urooj Ashfaq's follow-up to her Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer-winning debut Oh No!, showcases her ‘violent streak’.

Last year she explored how her parents’ divorce affected her and the years she’s spent in therapy. But to potential audiences this time around, she laughingly warns ‘I’m giving them a heads up, I’m letting them know that I’m not afraid to spar. I was in a few fist fights when I was younger and I’m telling those stories now.’

Ashfaq is delivering ten shows of It’s Funny To Me and a five-night reprise of Oh No! at the Fringe. The success of that debut last year (her first time performing a full show in English) means that the instinctively self-deprecating comic is ‘doing expectation management’ when it comes to the follow-up. ‘Because it says work-in-progress and the tickets are cheaper, I’m feeling much more relaxed about it,’ the diminutive 29-year-old maintains. ‘Secretly though, I still want to do really well.’

Having toured Europe and recorded Oh No! as a special for release post-Edinburgh, she began working on It’s Funny To Me this summer and worries that after eight years as a comic and a debut that was ‘the best of everything I’ve done’, her sophomore show ‘may need another seven years’. Of course, she’s still in therapy. But after that award success, her relationship with her therapist has changed. She’s publicly acknowledging that she has two of them for starters. ‘They were so lovely! Both of them sent me a message saying “we’re so proud of you and good job!” And then when I went back, they were like “so how are you feeling now?” and “what does that do to your sense of self?” And I was like “OK, I guess we’re doing therapy again then!”’ At the time of writing, these once-unwitting collaborators (or ‘muses’) don’t feature in the new show. ‘I’m giving them a beautiful break,’ she suggests, ‘but I think they will make an appearance again. Just not as happily as they did in the first one.’

It’s Funny To Me is directed by established Indian comedy star Kanan Gill, who makes his own Fringe debut this year. And Ashfaq is grateful to once again have a coterie of acts from the subcontinent around her in Scotland, as she likens the Festival to a ‘gruelling’ daily gym which improves and inspires her as a performer.

‘Yeah, I think we’re inseparable at the Festival,’ she laughs. ‘Last year I was with Sapan [Verma] and Biswa [Kaylan Rath] and we were just like a family. We’d meet in the Meadows, talk about all the amazing shows we’d seen, go to shows together, discuss our anxieties, moving as a group and making friends as a group. Coming from similar backgrounds and navigating similar things, I hung out with them at home too, so of course we were going to stick together. We’re maybe a little too co-dependent at festivals; I will say that.’

Ashfaq is mindful that ‘just being Indian can’t be my shtick forever’ when other comics from her homeland are now performing in the UK. But finding herself at the vanguard of her nation’s nascent stand-up scene as it explodes internationally has been tremendously exciting. ‘Any of us who started from 2010 onwards are pioneers,’ she enthuses. ‘Even now, in India, when I ask audiences who’s watching stand-up for the first time, half the room will raise their hands; everyone’s still learning and appreciating the different ways to do it. It really feels like we’re in the right places at the right time, being the first ones.’

Selling out her first UK tour earlier this year was a considerable achievement. But it’s not the benchmark of artistic integrity as far as she’s concerned. Winning Best Newcomer, however, ‘opened doors and opened my mind to a world of possibilities, how many different spaces there are to exist in as a stand-up comedian, while also giving me a sense of self and calm. That’s the biggest blessing because I was really struggling before, quite insecure and without direction. My insecurity hasn’t gone now but it’s milder, more manageable. You do need a little bit of that void to fill to make art.’

She appreciates the ‘louder laughers’ in her homeland for trying to fill that hole but reckons it’s easier to be more experimental and political in the UK. Beyond some occasional, light-hearted observations on the differences between Muslims and Hindus though, she’s sticking to personal anecdotes. ‘I’m not brave enough to do political stuff beyond a certain point yet; there are consequences,’ she suggests darkly. ‘I would love to move into that but I would have to be smart about it.’

That said, the self-declared introvert observes that ‘it’s fun to call white people out for cultural transgressions or colonisation in general. But it’s mostly just nice to have a voice. It’s definitely fun to be in a room and have the power. On stage, I’m in control, I know it’ll go relatively OK. I just feel less threatened when I’m there.’

Right now, the already expressive comic hopes to pursue a newfound ‘obsession’ with clowning, having been blown away by the likes of Julia Masli, Viggo Venn, Bill O’Neill and Piotr Sikora (aka Furiozo) at last year’s Festival. ‘I’m a huge admirer of it and it’s a direction I hope I can grow in, maybe take a few workshops so I can get the fundamentals,’ she enthuses. ‘India has a rich tradition of the performing arts and we have physical comedy but not out-and-out clowning just giving it everything; that hasn’t filtered through yet. These are only thoughts. But it would be really interesting if I could learn from a clown in the West and then learn from a traditional clown in India and try to figure out how to put the two together.’

Urooj Ashfaq: It’s Funny To Me (work-in-progress), Assembly Roxy, 16–25 August, 12.30pm; Oh No!, Assembly Roxy, 20–25 August, 9.35pm.