Edinburgh Fringe: Sarah Kendall/Christian O'Connell

Comics rarely start a show by referencing the ending of a previous one, but Sarah Kendall has first to do a bit of housekeeping to explain the genesis of Touchdown. The payoff for her last show was her dropping the c-bomb on her high-school gym teacher, Coach Harris, but when her mother attended a gig she said to her daughter: “It didn’t quite happen like that, though, did it?”

Indeed it didn’t; the punchline was a fabrication for the sake of a good gag, and here Kendall, a London-based Australian, gives the back story in an intricately woven tale about her teenage years. She was a gawky, awkward teenager with few friends – "I looked like a cast member of Twilight who had wandered on to the set of Home and Away" – and even fewer when the family moved and she attended a new school.

But there to her consternation, Abi – Coach Harris’s daughter, a beautiful lithe athlete who was the star of the football team – took her under her wing. They had bonded over a mutual penchant for defacing a nature book about sharks with a cock and balls graffito. At the same time, Kendall met a charming young exchange student, Derek.

But teenage years never run smoothly and Kendall managed to make a cock and balls of both relationships, and we learn the maelstrom of Kendall’s emotional life back then – of not being sophisticated enough to know what a BJ was or not recognising why she and Derek were never going to be together, of being obsessed with the Police Academy and Jaws franchises, and slowly learning what can go on behind closed doors in seemingly happy people’s lives.

At times Kendall is a little too detailed in getting to why the c-word was really used, but her skill is in keeping the joke quotient high and never once getting preachy or pseudo-philosophical in telling an absorbing and touching tale about growing up.

• Sarah Kendall is at Pleasance Courtyard until 25 August

Christian O’Connell: Breaking Dad ***

Christian O’Connell is very successful at his day job – he's an award-winning DJ on Absolute Radio – but doesn’t have much confidence in his role as a modern dad. He’s determined to be a good one, though, and spend more time with his daughters than his father – as was normal for the 1970s – did with him.

That’s the premise of this pleasant if unchallenging meander through the trials of modern parenting, as O’Connell, a warm onstage presence, describes being married to a lawyer and being the father of two young girls who all run rings around him. They even suggest that he takes up residence in the shed so as to be out from under their feet. He says early on that he feels like a eunuch, living in a house full of “fundamentalist females”, but this interesting idea is never fully developed

His interplay with the audience is a real strength, though, and his descriptions of his 1970s childhood, when his father’s proudest possession was a music centre with graphic equalisers, which only he was allowed to adjust, is a delight.

• Christian O'Connell is at Underbelly Bristo Square until 16 August