The Laughter Track

Quote of the day

2010-12-09T23:41:00.000Z

"In the slipstream of the mass popularity of stand-up, even the person who is supposed to be the alternative to stand-up can do reasonably well. All of us comics must offer thanks to one man, and one man alone, for this state of affairs. Michael McIntyre.

For it was 'Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow' that convinced the public that they might like stand-up, en masse, and he has begun to make household names of some hugely worthwhile acts, who somehow managed to shine in the show's brutal showcase format. Though McIntyre's massively popular and super-evolved brand of observational schtick is regarded with baffled ambivalence by many comedians, he may, on balance, be a good thing for the future of stand-up as an art form. The skipping humorist's utilitarian ubiquity means that everyone knows what a stand-up comedian is now. And the idea of going to see stand-up comedy is now no longer something only those with very specialised interests do."

Stewart Lee singling Michael McIntyre out for credit (if not outright praise), rather than damning him as the embodiment of all he hates about stand-up? Not something I'd have expected to read...

Lee's got a point - comedy is a booming business now, and it's not just the big hitters who are benefitting from McIntyre's success and patronage. But this suggests that the erosion of the traditional divide between mainstream and alternative comedy doesn't really matter - a viewpoint which seems hard to square with his usual pronouncements on stand-up.

What he does recognise, though, is that we're at a turning point and that this great breakthrough and surge of interest could well result in stultifying, derivative, tediously safe comedy. I suspect (fear) that that will be the outcome of entrusting stand-up's future to the general public, though the normally cynical Lee appears to have more faith in his fellow man. Perhaps, if a safe consensus comedy does come to rule the roost, then that will encourage a new oppositional or alternative strand to develop and the cycle will begin all over again?

"Do you ever have dark thoughts?"

2010-11-07T10:56:00.001Z

Jurassic Park! Alan Partridge is back, currently starring in a series of short online snippets sponsored by a certain manufacturer of cooking lager. The first episode bears all of the usual hallmarks and the addition of Tim Key as Sidekick Simon ("Man the barricades!") for some spurious banter works well. It's a little forced in places, but for the most part a very welcome return.

I do wonder, though, what Stewart Lee will have made of friend and collaborator Armando Iannucci's involvement, given his bilious Edinburgh Festival rant in the summer...

Coogan has also returned to the mainstream media with new sitcom The Trip, which features he and Rob Brydon playing caricatures of themselves on a national tour reviewing restaurants. It's directed by Michael Winterbottom, who has already worked with Coogan on 24 Hour Party People and with both of them on A Cock & Bull Story.

The premise, essentially, is to milk the generally amicable but subtly competitive relationship between the two that the latter film first showcased, as Stephanie Merritt acknowledged in her recent profile piece on Coogan for the Guardian. The first episode took a while to get going, but once they were duelling with impersonations over dinner the concept's strength really shone through.

A Friday evening in also gave me the opportunity to catch up with the first two episodes of the second series of Getting On. Somehow the award-winning first series completely passed me by, but I'm pleased to report that it's quality viewing. Given the frequently harrowing subject matter, "dark" hardly does it justice - but the hospital staff's gallows humour (which I imagine strikes a chord with NHS employees everywhere) ensures there are enough laughs to prevent it from becoming too bleak.

Nice to see that Jo Brand, a former psychiatric nurse, isn't the only person involved to be drawing usefully on personal experience - Peter Capaldi has also clearly picked up some directorial tips from his time as Malcolm Tucker in The Thick Of It, while Joanna Scanlan, who also featured in Iannucci's political sitcom, co-stars and co-writes here.

The Goodies 40th Anniversary

2010-11-01T18:38:00.002Z

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the awesome TV comedy show The Goodies, there's going to be a birthday party!

Tickets are now on sale for the Goodies 40th Birthday Party on 6th November 2010, at the Lass O’Gowrie in Manchester.

The tickets cost £30 each and include entry for the whole day, including all events and activities, autographs and even a very special party Goody Bag.

To find out more about the event (and the competitions) please visit the event's page: http://goodiesparty.wordpress.com/

Quote of the day

2010-10-19T01:23:00.001+01:00

"Before doing a TV series next year, Stewart Lee is setting out on an 18-date tour to venues where he believes he has a 'trusting' fan base — and the Regal in Cowley Road is one of them (typically he’s now not too sure about two other places, but it’s too late!)."

From this Oxford Mail article about Lee, previewing next week's show for which I've now got tickets. I must confess to being a bit surprised - and disappointed - that he seems to have been keen to play it safe. That's not something you'd expect of him, though one thing you could perhaps accuse him of is preaching to the converted - perhaps touring new show Vegetable Stew around Jongleurs nationwide would have been a more challenging but ultimately more rewarding venture?

Know Your Enemy

2010-08-08T01:50:00.001+01:00

"Corporate Whores. Morons. Illiterates.

There is so much good stuff you could use your corporate funding for, and instead, year in, year out, you make these crass decisions.

The whole thing will blow up in your face. Then, perhaps, we will see an end to your nonsense.

Your cynicism is breathtaking. Your Edinburgh Comedy God idea is banal. There are no comedy gods. Enjoy your Edinburgh Comedy Festival™."

Stewart Lee takes entertainingly violent exception to the Foster's Comedy God poll, calling upon comedy aficionados to sabotage the sorry process out of respect for "that wonderful, indefinable, mischievous, playful thing we call The Spirit Of The Fringe" by voting for Japanese performance art duo Frank Chickens.

Also on a comedy tip, I was intrigued by the prospect of The Trip, a new sitcom directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon - not least because they were very good together in Winterbottom's A Cock & Bull Story and there's a certain irony in Coogan, a man with a notoriously fractious relationship with critics, himself playing a critic (albeit of restaurants)...

Nice and spicy

2009-12-23T01:51:00.001Z

STEWART LEE / TONY LAW, 26TH NOVEMBER 2009, OXFORD REGAL

Would the cavernous Regal have been booked for Lee's new stand-up show - If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One - on the strength of his BBC2 series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, perchance? I rather think it would.

It being a late November evening, the auditorium isn't exactly warm, and it's an equally cool response that greets support act Tony Law. You sense he's already lost people when he begins by pondering why it only seems to be wolves who raise abandoned children ("Why is it that no other animals step up to the plate?"), and the acoustics and frequent accent switching don't help his cause.

For a comic widely renowned for having a dazzlingly offbeat mind, his material strays surprisingly (and disappointingly, for my liking) close to the sort you might be subjected to on a work night out at Jongleurs - the cheap mockery of South Africans and didjeridoo-playing trustafarian students, an expression of bafflement at the experience of eating in Nandos.

But there are flashes of something more interesting - the whirling surrealism of the segment about his penchant for tapping goats and griffins, for starters - and when he says he loves playing with Lee because he attracts all the town's liberals and that "We had all 580 of them in Portsmouth" I know what he means (as well as knowing at least two of said south coast liberals).

Ignore Stewart Lee's sardonic comments about the success of his Comedy Vehicle. That's just part of the self-deprecating comic persona which has this new show advertised on his website with a critic's comment "His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension" and which sees him arrive onstage to flashing lights and loud intro music ("the entrance for a younger man") before starting off by talking about a visit to Caffe Nero. Despite professions to the contrary, there's no doubt that his long-awaited return to what he's referred to as the "idiot lantern" gave him exposure to a wider audience (while also probably helping some put a face to the much reviled name of the man behind Jerry Springer: The Opera).

If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One - no doubt many people's introduction to the live Lee experience - is classically constructed. From humble beginnings (the mundanity of that trip to Caffe Nero, fodder for the unimaginative observational comic), the show spirals smartly through a sequence of routines - reflections on what the phrase "quality of life" really means and the desirability of "visible otters" when buying a house; ruminations on Frankie Boyle's claim that comedians lose their anger and edge once they hit 40 (a claim to which Lee naturally gives the lie) - before climaxing not once but twice.

Much has been made of the most notorious segment of the show, an extended anti-Top Gear rant which finds Lee imagining in absurdly graphic detail Richard Hammond's death in that car crash and which has had the Daily Mail predictably fleck-mouthed in response. As ever, though, he's not being gratuitously offensive for its own sake (unlike, say, Boyle or Jimmy Carr), but rather making a forceful point about the show's hypocritical justification of its crassness as a supposedly noble assault on "political correctness gone mad". And his suggestion that Hammond's survivor's story On The Edge should have been published by BBC World rather than Weidenfeld & Nicolson because the license-payer funded the crash and so should reap the financial rewards is one of the show's most brilliantly acid observations.

As I've said on this site many times before, Lee's particular comic modus operandi is to lay bare the art of construction, offering not so much a running commentary on what he's doing as a guided tour of the backstage - pulleys, levers, trapdoors and all. In a recent Guardian piece previewing the show's six-week run at the Leicester Square theatre, Sean O'Hagan astutely described one routine from 2007's 41st Best Stand-Up Comedian Ever! as a "tightrope walk" - but that could apply equally to either of this show's climaxes.

First he takes a simple ad slogan and - through characteristic single-mindedness and relentlessness and a compulsion to break all the "rules" of stand-up (staying silent, dropping the microphone to the floor, leaving the stage, relying on nothing but his own projected voice in an aircraft hangar of a venue) - crafts a devastating (and devastatingly funny, it should be noted) assault on the misappropriation of art, culture and language.

And then, to illustrate his point that the "last taboo" in stand-up isn't jokes about this or that subject but "doing something sincerely and well", he sets out to reclaim Steve Earle's 'Galway Girl' from the ad men by delivering his own performance of the song. With Lee there's always the feeling of being dragged out of the cosy comfort zone, but now the sense of awkwardness is palpable, the tightrope frayed thinner and the weight of expectation of disaster possibly heavier than ever before. But he makes it to the other side - and in some style - and we rise in unison to applaud.

A milder comedian? No thanks - Stewart Lee'll do just nicely.

Regents Park Open Air Theatre: Daniel Kitson - Stories for the Starlit sky 30/08/09

2009-09-01T09:08:00.001+01:00

Leaving this show had a feeling of bonfire night about it: lots of people wrapped up warm all walking together in the dark and quiet night away from a single area.

There is something very different about open air theatre, and more so when the show doesn't start until midnight. There's immediately a feeling of this being something special, something out of the ordinary. And that was definitely the case with this show by Daniel Kitson and Gavin Osborn in the middle of Regent's Park at the Open Air Theatre... the third and final in a series of late night story and song. As a venue the open air space provided a perfect backdrop for stories set at midnight, perfectly complimenting the mood that Gavin and Daniel set.

Daniel Kitson may not be widely known among the general public, but as a winner of numerous awards over the years, he is well known among comedy fans and comedians alike. He is a comic craftsman, with a fantastic way with words and the relationship between him and Gavin works perfectly.

The story that he told during Saturday's show was a story within a story, a tale of the relationship between a father and son intermingled with a story about a town where retired assassins live out their days drinking tea and playing the clarinet. And in between you have Gavin's songs, each one painting a beautiful snapshot of people and relationships and times and places.

If I were giving shows ratings, this one would definitely get 5 stars.

The Hob - Chambers & Nettleton, Glazz Campbell and Andrew Bird 22/08/09

2009-08-24T10:42:00.000+01:00

I've been to The Hob quite a few times now, and it makes for a very good night out. Opposite Forest Hill station, the downstairs pub is nice and friendly, and the upstairs comedy venue (with its own bar, an important fact) is great for any type of comedy that you fancy seeing.

Saturday was the first time to the hob since starting to work through my list. The evening kicked off with a realy good set by Chambers & Nettleton. I'm not entirely sure how the describe this duo of feisty northern women, but I thoroughly enjoyed their slightly mental banter and I do love it when you can see that the acts are enjoying themselves too... I think that really helps with the feel of the gig.

Next act up was a newcomer going by the name of Taff. He only did a short set, perhaps about 5 minutes, but it showed good promise. And you can definitely see what he means when he describes himself as Marty Feldman's Afghani cousin. Taff was followed by Glazz Campbell who had a bit of a hesitant start before getting into his stride and enjoying some good (read bad) puns.

Headlining the evening was Andrew Bird. And for some reason, I'm having a bit of a blank mind as to what he was actually like...but I did laugh a lot.

MCing the whole shebang was Mark Felgate, who did the job very well... working with a small audience he was forced to pick on a few audience members repeatedly, but did this in a way that didn't feel intimidating at all. He also through in a few clever little ventriloquism moments that worked well and I would be really interested in seeing him do a proper set.

Downstairs at the King's Head - Barry Cryer & Ronnie Golden

2009-08-19T11:20:00.003+01:00

I've recently developed a plan to visit all London comedy venues and this kicked off yesterday, taking us out to the deepest darkest reaches of North London - Hornsey in fact to Downstairs at the King's Head. We knew we had definitely reached the right venue when we walked in and saw Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden sat at a table together, discussing set lists.

The King's Head is quite a nice pub (and makes a good fish finger sandwich) and the comedy venue itself, as you would guess from the title, is downstairs. Quite an intimate venue, and I would recommend getting there when the doors open to ensure good seats (we were sat right at the front, and it was marvellous).

For those who don't know, Barry and Ronnie often get together to do a comedy show based on a combination of funny songs, Barry's marvellous collection of jokes and Ronnie's infinitely malleable voice. The end result is something absolutely hillarious and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone ... they're heading up to the Fringe shortly, if you are there make them a must (they're on at the Gilded Balloon).

Yesterday's set, a preview for the Fringe, was a good combination of old favourite songs (such as Stannah Stairlift and Peace and Quiet) and newer material as well. It was actually a rescheduled gig, Barry having been ill for the previous planned date but that didn't slow him down at all ("But then," he tells us, "I'm a hypochondriac...my gynecologist told me so"). The songs are hillarious, and their interaction between Barry & Ronnie is marvellous. And watch out for Ronnie's yodelling.

If you can't make it to see them, spend a tenner and get the album (Rock and Droll), it's worth every penny.

A comedy lesson

2009-05-26T01:28:00.000+01:00

RICHARD HERRING'S THE HEADMASTER'S SON, 26TH MARCH 2009, OXFORD OLD FIRE STATION

It being March, Richard Herring is living the curious double life of the professional stand-up. By day hard at work on his show for this year's Edinburgh Festival, Hitler Moustache, by night he's still touring last year's show The Headmaster's Son for those who didn't get to see it at the Underbelly in August.

The show was conceived when he suddenly realised the considerable comic mileage he could get from the fact that in his formative years his dad was also his headmaster. Herring has always been a stand-up who scours his own life, both past and present, for self-deprecating material, so - as he admits - it's surprising the idea hadn't occurred to him before.

The focus on nature vs nurture - would he have become the person (the comedian?) he is today if his father and headmaster hadn't been one and the same person? - means that, as he notes in the programme, the show isn't simply "an excuse to do a lot of nostalgic 'Who remembers Spangles?' style material": "Though it is an admirable skill to be able to remind people about things from childhood that they thought they'd forgotten, but that they haven't actually forgotten, it's not something I want to do ... Peter Kay's position in the comic firmament is secure"...

After an initial flight of fancy inspired by mention of Ascension Day, during which we're encouraged to imagine Jesus flying off to heaven with smoke billowing out of his holy anus writing messages in the sky, Herring gets stuck into his subject matter: the boy who, with his briefcase, trumpet and family connections, couldn't have been much more of a magnet for bullies.

Characteristically, bad taste humour is never far from the surface: at one point he compares himself enviously to Elizabeth Fritzl, who at least has a fucked-up childhood as an excuse for any socially inappropriate behaviour, and later refers in passing to Jade Goody as "a candle in the wind - a racist, blowjob-under-the-duvet-giving candle in the wind". When, recalling his teenage embarrassment at having small hands, he elaborates a scheme by which they could be put to public use wanking off paedophiles, we respond with a round of applause that he notes we'll struggle to explain to anyone who isn't at the show (believe me, it was brilliant).

Sex is a recurring theme, Herring openly admitting to an obsession that has persisted into his 40s. He confesses that his sexual awakening came at an early age with the groping scene in Un Chien Andalou, which explains a lot, and that as a hormone-fuelled teenager, he tried spying on his older sister's friend. His diary of the period reveals much the same story: masturbatory habits meticulously recorded for posterity and a pretentiously straight-faced review of the not one but two porn films with which he and his friends welcomed in one new year: "Poorly edited, with any excuse for sex taken up".

The diary is a rich source of laughs, Herring delighting in mocking the over-earnest know-it-all author of such pronouncements as "I am anti-war" and "I think the Royal Family are a waste of time" who claims "I'd love to have met Gandhi - I think I'd have had a lot to share". It's that lack of self-awareness that leads him to compare himself to Anne Frank, noting that the only differences are that she's a girl and dead and complaining that it was only circumstances that contrived to make her diary famous. Through it all runs the conviction that his scrawlings would be published - and they are, in a way, through their incorporation into the show.

The highlight of the second half is a long dialogue with his teenage self who, handed the chance to fight back against the cynicism and derision of the forty-something know-it-all he's become, strikes some telling blows and emerges as far more likeable than simply the brattish author of spiteful and intemperately angry diary entries. It's superbly constructed and performed, something of which most other stand-ups wouldn't even conceive let alone be able to carry off with such style.

The explicit message of a show that is ultimately a heartwarming exploration of youthfulness is that a sense of perspective and a measure of sympathetic understanding are key. The fact that The Headmaster's Son never strays towards the trite or away from the hilarious makes it Herring's best show since The Twelve Tasks Of Hercules Terrace, a stand-up masterclass from a comedian at the top of his game.

Driven to laughter

2009-03-18T01:21:00.002Z

So, only a few days after suggesting Stewart Lee is "bitterly angry at TV executives", and especially those involved with BBC2, there he was appearing in the first of his new six-part series 'Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle' on - you guessed it - BBC2.

As has been said elsewhere, credit to the Beeb for giving him the freedom to make what is to all intents and purposes a straight stand-up show (last night's sketches were a relatively unsubstantial garnish to the main feast) - and for appreciating the value of his characteristic pauses and stretched gags, rather than imposing obvious abbreviations or cuts.

I witnessed Lee roadtesting the vast majority of last night's material - about books, and specifically the new genre of "celebrity hardbacks" - in October, when he was unfairly upstaged by a surprise guest headlining appearance by Eddie Izzard. On that occasion, I complained that I'd heard most of Izzard's routine trotted out on a repeat of 'The Graham Norton Show' the previous night, so in a way it's ironic that Lee was repeating himself last night - but, personally speaking, the difference is simple: Izzard's material wasn't particularly great, whereas Lee's was. Hence the discovery that he also seems to have mined '41st Best Stand-Up Ever!' for a forthcoming episode is reason for rejoicing rather than disappointment.

As Lee himself would concede (and indeed has), though, he's not to everyone's taste, and here's one amusing dissenting voice. I particularly like the way the key points are handily emboldened, just in case you haven't the time to read the whole review - presumably because you're halfway through 'Harry Potter And The Tree Of Nothing' and want to get it finished before the film comes out...

And what are those key points, exactly? That Lee's comedy is "satire for snobs". That "My [reviewer Sally McIlhone's] dad is a better comedian than Stewart Lee" (given his choice of "surly, arrogant, laboured" as an endorsement in the past, that one could well appear on a future poster). And that Chris Moyles and Jeremy Clarkson, the primary targets of the show, are "sardonic talents" who "incidentally, are immeasurably funnier than Lee".

Needless to say, it's reviews like that that illustrate just how much we need him back on the idiot box.

Get thee to a Munnery show

2009-03-13T01:00:00.002Z

SIMON MUNNERY / JOHN LEAN, 26TH JANUARY 2009, OXFORD CELLAR

"I ain't saying she's a gold-digger ... but she's got a beard, carries a pickaxe, lives in the 1930s and is always going on about 'them there hills'." As deadpan opening gags go, it's a beauty and gets John Lean (at least I think that's his name, the internets having been of precious little use in verifying it) off to a flying start. Unfortunately, the rest of his material just isn't up to the same standard, and the gaps between laughs are too long. There is some comedy gold in them there hills, but it needs panning out.

Though Lean tries to incorporate his nervousness and nerdiness into his onstage persona, they're both evidently genuine. The former academic is now a teacher and spends some time sharing his ideas for inappropriately cruel and humiliating punishments for unruly pupils before returning to song lyrics for inspiration, noting that the most remarkable thing about Sir Mix-A-Lot's 'I Like Big Butts' isn't his predilection for plump rumps but his declaration "I cannot lie". OK, so lyrics aren't exactly an unmined seam as far as stand-up goes (think Ed Byrne's famous dissection of Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic' for starters), but if he took his cue from Richard Herring and had the confidence to dwell on his observations longer and push them a bit further, Lean really might be something to write home about.

In between the acts the international students beside me animatedly debate whose country has contributed the best philosophers. Not your usual beered-up crowd baying for knob gags, then, but I suppose this IS Oxford, after all. Still, it's a testament to regular compere Rob Broderick's powers of persuasion that only a few minutes later he's got a woman with a pearl necklace commanding another audience member to join him in a pint-downing race.

Within comedy circles, Simon Munnery is a well-established figure, and has been for years; outside them, mention his name and you're more than likely to receive a blank "Who?" in response. Well, here's who...

The creator of the eccentric stand-up characters Alan Parker: Urban Warrior and The League Against Tedium in the 90s, Munnery drew upon the latter for his BBC2 series 'Attention Scum!', which featured Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas and even Catherine Tate and which, in the farcical operatic scenes written by Richard Thomas, foreshadowed 'Jerry Springer: The Opera'. Despite being nominated for a Golden Rose of Montreux, the series was consigned to a graveyard slot close to midnight on Sundays and cancelled before it had even gone to air - much to the disgust of its producer, Stewart Lee, who still seems as bitterly angry at TV executives today as he did in his Guardian article of the time.

'Attention Scum!' was a frequently baffling blast of surrealism, so it's something of a surprise that, after a very short song, Munnery kicks off with a dose of observational comedy, reflecting on how tricky it is to know the correct distance from which it's acceptable to say hello to an approaching person, and the social awkwardness of getting it wrong.

It's quite a while since I last saw him live, at a Just The Tonic night in Nottingham, and the years seem to have changed him slightly - there's still the odd flash of absurdism, but it comes, for instance, in a song he's made up to get his kids eating cabbage. It's almost as though his children give him a continued excuse for silliness.

That said, Munnery was never one for simple clowning around, always fired with a sharp intelligence, and at times tonight he touches on some relatively sensitive and even dark subject matter: he walks a potential tightrope in demanding audience participation for a gleefully jaunty run through a satirical ditty about the credit crunch; a song about his cantankerous not-all-there gran has a tone somewhere between the mischievous and the slightly malicious; and he mentions his crippled hand, an unfortunate side-effect of his otherwise successful chemotherapy treatment, going on to claim that the things he was prescribed are marvellous and they can't be marketing them right - "or maybe they are - 'take drugs or you die'".

He's at his best when doing a Lee and examining his own art under the microscope. Holding up a piece of card with a Venn diagram used to explain Venn diagrams on it, he then tells of an Edinburgh Festival reviewer who described his show as "the closest comedy comes to modern art" - a very back-handed compliment, he feels, suggesting it was neither truly art or truly comedy, a point he illustrates with another Venn diagram: "Here's my show, towards the edge of the comedy circle, in the shit comedy, striving to cross the line into the art circle and become shit art"...

Leaving the venue at the end, I overhear a couple of punters grumbling mildly about the grubby fingerprints all over that piece of card, suggesting we've been entertained with well-worn material - it was all new to me personally, though, so I have no complaints and am just glad Munnery's still with us. He once said: "I could have been a boxer, like my father. He could have been a boxer too". He may not be a boxer, but he certainly seems to know how to roll with the punches.

Coarse fishing

2009-02-27T01:15:00.001Z

RICHARD HERRING / BEN VAN DER VELDE, 1ST DECEMBER 2008, OXFORD CELLAR

(Ahem - er, yes, a little overdue, this one...)

For someone who's the regular compere elsewhere (the Shaggy Dog Comedy Store in west London), Ben Van der Velde seems rather nervy and a bit hesitant. It doesn't help, of course, that just when he's starting to settle into a groove a phone rings to jolt him out of it. How hard is it to take heed of the pre-gig announcement and afford the performers you - and, more importantly, others - have paid to see the decency of turning off your mobile?

The behatted Geordie evidently feels there's mileage to be had from his Jewishness (or at least feels expected to make some mileage out of it), saying that he doesn't tell jokes about the Holocaust "because there are funnier genocides" and that his Palestinian girlfriend has had her pubic hair waxed into a Gaza strip, but he's at his best when ruminating on the suggestive power of language - the one-word film review "Baffling" from a newspaper, Rick James being charged with "aggravated mayhem"...

Tonight's headline act Richard Herring isn't here to perform his 2008 Edinburgh show 'The Headmaster's Son' (that comes to Oxford in the spring) but to deliver a stand-up set that, it transpires, is so deliberately rude and provocative that it'd merit a firm clip around the lughole were the old man to be present.

He starts off innocuously enough, claiming that "The motto I choose to live my life by is 'My enemy's enemy is my friend'. But I'm my own worst enemy..." and going on to deliver a sequence of increasingly convoluted ripostes to his PE teacher's motto "There's no 'I' in 'team'" and the perverse logic apparently underlying it.

But after that - aside from a segment in which he rails about the stupid reasons people call 999 and the occasional references to being old and having a lifestyle that is pitiable rather than enviable (increasingly familiar these days in the wake of 'Oh Fuck, I'm 40') - it's pretty much what the Daily Mail would no doubt be inclined to label "a non-stop torrent of filth".

Particularly memorable is the section on the playground hand gestures of childhood which betray a fundamental misunderstanding of homosexual acts, Herring of course seizing the opportunity to suggest more realistic alternatives. He jokes of Baby P that his parents "could have at very least given him a name", basking in the nervous laughter of an audience wondering if it's too soon to be making comic capital out of tragedy before adding with a mischevious smirk "I've got worse" and alluding briefly to the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Even the concluding segment, in which he dissects a simple phrase or comment with trademark persistence and pedantry from every conceivable angle (and some you simply won't have conceived of) - think 'Someone Likes Yoghurt' - focuses on a lewd T-shirt slogan, "Give me head until I'm dead", with predictably unsavoury consequences.

So, what's the point? (With Herring there's nearly always a point, even if it's not immediately obvious.) Is it simply a matter of deliberately pushing the boundaries of taste for cheap laughs, or is there something more going on? The latter, inevitably. As much as he discomforts the lily-livered and offends liberal sensibilities, he still elicits plenty of laughs and, crucially, at one point suggests he's performing comedy "just like Bernard Manning, but in a postmodern way - I know what I'm saying is wrong". Cue chuckles - but then the question that, for me, cuts to the quick: "But does that make it better - or much, much worse?" That seems to reveal the whole show to be a clever critique of the sort of comedy that pleads irony as a defence for saying the unsayable - albeit while at the same time effectively performing the same trick - as well as a robust challenge to audience attitudes and complacency: think for a moment what you're laughing about - you shouldn't be finding it funny.

A set that subverts itself? You don't get that with Jason Manford.

Quote of the day

2008-12-12T01:05:00.001Z

"Put them in context. The Telegraph did a bad review. They came on the very first night even though we said we didn't want press there. They were like: 'Well, we're going to try and fuck him up'. Clearly their agenda wasn't: 'Oh, I'm really looking forward to seeing Steve Coogan'. What do I think of the guy who wrote the review? I think he's a bit of a cunt to be honest but I don't stay awake at night worrying about it. We've had great reviews since. The Liverpool Echo didn't give us a good review because we didn't have screens up, which was a technical error. And Scousers hate Mancunians and the feeling's mutual. All the northern cities that aren't maudlin have enjoyed it. We know it's a good show."

Steve Coogan on the critical reception afforded to his latest show.

Now, bearing in mind my own review of 'Alan Partridge And Other Less Successful Characters' was on balance positive, there's a lot of guff in here. Let's unpack it.

"They came on the very first night even though we said we didn't want press there."

That's ridiculous. If the show's deemed good enough for an audience paying in the region of £40 a ticket, then it should be good enough to be withstand the critics. If, as Coogan's suggesting, it wasn't quite ready, that's not something those punters should have had to fork out for.

"They were like: 'Well, we're going to try and fuck him up'. Clearly their agenda wasn't: 'Oh, I'm really looking forward to seeing Steve Coogan'."

I can imagine it must be frustrating to feel reviewers have a hidden (or not-so-hidden) agenda, but to the outsider it can look like paranoia, evidence of a persecution complex - particularly when there certainly are aspects of the show that merit criticism.

"What do I think of the guy who wrote the review? I think he's a bit of a cunt to be honest but I don't stay awake at night worrying about it."

This is especially bizarre. Either he's knowingly playing up to the caricatured Coogan of the behind-the-scenes footage of 'The Man Who Thinks He's It', or that fictionalised character wasn't actually so much of a caricature after all. What's next - will he try attacking said critic by swinging a large ball of plasticine with fish hooks set in it into his face?

"The Liverpool Echo didn't give us a good review because we didn't have screens up, which was a technical error. And Scousers hate Mancunians and the feeling's mutual. All the northern cities that aren't maudlin have enjoyed it."

Ah, the regional bias, and a Boris-esque contempt for Merseyside - sounds like a pretty lame excuse. And if he knew "Scousers hate Mancunians and the feeling's mutual", then why bother have the tour stop off in Liverpool in the first place?

"We know it's a good show."

The last, ultra-defensive refuge of the critically maligned, roughly translating as: "Anyone who's dissatisfied can go fuck themselves because we know best".

I suppose Coogan can't really be seen to admit flaws and weaknesses in the show given that it's still touring and he doesn't want to talk down the product for those who've yet to see it - but, all the same, this response is still disappointing.

2008-12-04T10:04:00.004Z

courtesy of stand-up Dominic Frisby. An accurate portrayal of the life of a circuit comic. In this case, Hitler.

Back of the net (eventually)

2008-11-27T02:04:00.002Z

STEVE COOGAN, 31ST OCTOBER 2008, CARDIFF MILLENNIUM CENTRE

* Warning: contains spoilers *

Hard to believe, but Steve Coogan's triumphant 'The Man Who Thinks He's It' show, my video copy of which has very nearly worn out, is ten years old. Since then, he's performed on the silver screen in '24 Hour Party People' and 'A Cock & Bull Story' amongst other films; he's created a whole new character with his own TV series, ageing roadie Tommy Saxondale; he's tried his hand at straight drama with 'Sunshine'; he's voiced a pair of characters in an animated series, Peter Baynham's 'I Am Not An Animal'; and his Baby Cow production company has been responsible for bringing some of the brightest, sharpest new comedy shows around into our living rooms - 'The Mighty Boosh', 'Gavin & Stacey' and 'Ideal', to name but three. Meanwhile Simon Pegg and Julia Davis, members of the 'The Man Who Thinks He's It' supporting cast, have gone on to become stars in their own right with 'Spaced' and 'Nighty Night' respectively.

And now here Coogan is, back on stage with a new show, the self-deprecatingly titled 'Alan Partridge And Other Less Successful Characters'. The question is: can he still cut it as a stand-up? And the answer, for the first half of the evening at least, has to be "No, not really".

The show begins, as did 'The Man Who Thinks He's It' (henceforth TMWTHI for brevity...), with Pauline Calf, singing a carefully choreographed song in praise of Marriott hotels. She has some sharp one-liners (Of a random bloke in the audience: "Cock like a bookie's pencil. You could time an egg by him"), but her 'set' disappointingly follows the same structure as in TMWTHI, concluding with her reading from her latest book, a spy thriller, and the gag about suffering concussion ("He said 'How many fingers have I got up?' and I thought 'Fuckin' 'ell, I must be paralysed too'"), while neatly delivered, is an old one.

Next is Tommy Saxondale, who turns out to be the least successful of the less successful characters, so to speak. Presumably Coogan gives him a slot to capitalise on the popularity of the series, but the decision to have him half-arsedly deliver a "Just Say No" style presentation on the dangers of drugs could have been rather better thought out, and laughs are at a premium. A large part of the problem is that Saxondale isn't really at home in the present company; he's not really played in the series as an out-and-out comedy character, but as a more true-to-life and frequently pathetic figure who's got an modicum of decency buried beneath his exterior bluster. In many ways he's a revealing reflection of his creator, anxiously drifting further away from the excesses of his youth. But, on the big stage in the glare of the spotlights, there's no room for the touching subtleties of the TV series, and he's a bit lost and hardly helped by the most lumpen of the evening's musical numbers.

Then, in his newsprint trousers looking like a member of Bros gone street, it's Duncan Thicket, who I gather is something of a Marmite character even for fellow Coogan aficionados. I loved the way Coogan used him to parody the twin cults of observational and self-deprecatory comedy in TMWTHI, as well as some of the one-liners his own character David Daft came out with, but tonight the pisstake of nostalgia comedy beloved of Peter Kaye and his mini-me Jason Manford - pregnant with possibility - is frustratingly underdeveloped. His segment is salvaged, though, when his ventriloquist's dummy starts turning the air blue before pinning him back in his chair by the throat.

The last act of the first half is Paul Calf, in many ways the best thing about TMWTHI but here treading old ground from the very outset - arriving on stage in a motorised wheelchair, when the music stops he tilts his head to one side and says in a robotic Stephen-Hawking-meets-Manc monotone "The universe is fucking massive..." His romantic dalliance with a gypsy is a lazy way of guaranteeing of cheap laughs too, though it does at least give rise to one great retort: "You're a Scouser AND a gypsy? Christ, I'm lucky I've still got my second name!"

Thankfully the second half belongs to Alan Partridge, quite literally.

It's hard to overstate how much of an Alan fan I am (though I haven't gone as far as the chest tattoo of his head just yet). I quote him on average at least once every day. Whenever I find myself in Currys I have to try out all the CD players, muttering "Nice tray action" for my own amusement. Going to Norwich feels like going on a pilgrimage. I once drank out of an aerialator (though it was red wine, not coffee - the red wine being what convinced me it would be a good idea). In my student days, my housemates and I even hosted a Partridge-themed party: Scotch eggs, ladyboys (the drink combination, that is), someone dressed in sports casual, someone else gyrating in a PVC thong, some very dodgy printed material shut in a drawer guests were given strict instructions not to open...

So coming face-to-face with Coogan's most rounded and celebrated character (and quite rightly so) is the fulfilment of a long-term ambition. A brilliant opening montage and voiceover has us bursting with anticipation, and we're not disappointed when Alan leaps onto the stage and breaks straight into a medley of songs including, most memorably, Queen's 'Radio Ga Ga'.

As with TMWTHI, Alan's here in his role as life coach, speaking from a position of authority and experience as someone who now enjoys fraternising with the likes of Monty Don at a private members' club but who only a few years earlier reached his nadir by "shitting myself in PC World". He imparts his wisdom in the form of his Forward Solutions presentation, using not a blind man's cane but an electronically modified gauntlet that he hasn't quite got to grips with, at one point inadvertently alighting upon a stash of gay S&M photos amidst the slideshow and later accidentally blowing the head off an animated JFK with a virtual shotgun.

The interviewees are almost redundant, the bulk of the interview segment taken up with a visual gag which finds Alan mistakenly signing up for penis enlargement online and, as his guests continue talking, hurriedly composing an email to cancel, his laptop screen projected above the stage for the audience's amusement. Apparently this is a device used in Patrick Marber's 'Closer' - not seen either the play or the film so I can't really comment myself, but as Marber is Alan's co-creator it seems likely this is a licenced borrow for the purposes of a knowing in-joke rather than an unlicenced steal.

The set concludes with Alan's self-penned, self-directed and self-performed play about the life of Sir Thomas More, the genius of which is largely the ease with which Coogan plays one character attempting to play another ("Your dinner, my lord - boar's head and lark's tongue." "What? I ordered the lasagne..."). Best of all, though, is the moment when Alan loses his thread and forgets his lines, floundering around in a 'Groundhog Day' style trap from which he is unable to escape until at last thrown a lifeline by one of his fellow actors.

But that's not quite the end. In the spoof behind-the-scenes footage of the TMWTHI show, Coogan hammed up the popular perception that beneath all the masks he's an unlikeable person. On this tour he goes on the mock-offensive, claiming in a spectacular finale that 'Everyone's A Bit Of A Cunt Sometimes' as the rest of cast dance around and twirl umbrellas in a superb very definitely post-watershed take on 'Mary Poppins'. I'm not alone in finding myself humming the tune long into the night.

So, a real pleasure in the end - though perhaps 'Alan Partridge And Other Much, Much Less Successful Characters' would have been an even more apt title?

Eddie Izzard, Stewart Lee, Ivor Dembina, compere Ronnie Golden - The King's Head, Crouch End, 03/10/08

2008-10-16T00:45:00.003+01:00

There's a passage in Harry Pearson's brilliant football-themed memoir / travelogue 'The Far Corner' which details the author's running battle with his lunch while sat on a bus and which concludes with the observation that "I don't know who it was that invented egg mayonnaise sandwiches, but I suspect it was someone with a heavy investment in the dry-cleaning industry".

I now know how he feels.

Hurriedly stuffing an egg mayo sarnie into my face pre-gig, some of the aforementioned filling drops out, I presume onto the pavement. No such luck, however - as I discover to my cost when I later reach into my pocket for my ringing phone, press it to my ear and inadvertently squidge egg mayonnaise into my lughole.

This kind of thing is only supposed to happen in bad sitcoms. Tonight's entertainment will have to go some way to be funnier.

Ronnie Golden, the King's Head's regular compere, appears to be the lovechild of Derek Acora and Roy Walker (if that's possible and not too grim to contemplate). He kicks off proceedings with a number of standards with his band The Rex, before taking requests to perform one song in the style of another. James Brown's take on Leonard Cohen is obvious enough (peppered with yelps of "Yeah!", "Get on up!" and "Get down!"), but the larynx-shredding Tom Waits cover of Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' is wondrous - not least because Ronnie's somehow still able to talk afterwards.

Ivor Dembina is probably better known in London as the host of comedy nights in Brixton and Hampstead (presumably to two very different types of crowd...) than as a stand-up in his own right, but, though his short set is a fairly disjointed series of gags, he's got a far sharper mind than his appearance - woolly hat, awkward-looking - might suggest.

Foregrounding his Jewishness from the outset, he sets out to say things others probably couldn't, claiming "I'm all for giving the Occupied Territories back, as long as we can keep New York" and later pushing the boundaries of taste by playing up the Jewish indignation at being lumped in with gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled in the holocaust memorials: "'It's not Yourschwitz, it's Auschwitz'!"

From a man who looks like he might wander around London collecting dog-ends to a man who wrote a novel featuring a character who wanders around London collecting dog-ends. Regular readers of my site will no doubt realise that Stewart Lee is the reason I'm here.

Lee begins by ridiculing the oft-repeated cliche that being a stand-up must be "the hardest job in the world" - his point only partly compromised when he's forced to deal with the drunken interruptions of a bloke at pains to let everyone know his mum's just arrived.

The bulk of the set involves Lee reading from "celebrity hardbacks" and deconstructing even the most seemingly innocent sentences. While taking pot-shots at Chris Moyles's 'The Difficult Second Book' is hardly a challenging course of action for a comic of Lee's talents, he does it so well. Every time he reads out a line, repeats it, closes the book and says slowly and deliberately "Well..." or "Now...", we know that it's destined for dissection by his ruthless logic. His observation about the way Davina McCall's celebrity endorsement suggests Moyles has failed even in his lowly ambition to write a book that can be enjoyed on the shitter is brilliant. As for Asher D's comparing himself to Jesus, I think we can all see the direction in which that material might be taken, given Lee's past...

When he leaves the stage, I'm suspicious that his time's been cut short for some reason - and that reason soon becomes clear, Ronnie Golden announcing to the stunned surprise and delight of the whole room that none other than Eddie Izzard has popped along for a quick set. Such are the bonuses of going to well-established and well-respected comedy nights in the capital, it seems.

Now, at the risk of seeming ungrateful at getting the unexpected opportunity to witness a seasoned and celebrated stand-up accustomed to playing theatres and stadia performing in front of barely 75 people (a full house), I remain largely unmoved while everyone else swoons and falls about with laughter. Just because it FEELS I should do likewise doesn't mean I ACTUALLY should, and while his latest material has its moments - particularly a section about Noah's Ark and his musings about what was cutting-edge in the Stone Age - it doesn't have the same impact as what's gone before.

Part of the problem is that Izzard's predecessor on stage has in the past been critical of his simulation of spontaneity, and I've got that thought on the brain - a rare occasion indeed when one comic not only heckles another but does so a few years previously...

To his credit, Izzard has at least confessed to this deceit, having done so most recently in a televised conversation with Graham Norton a couple of days prior to tonight's show - but on that occasion he also took the opportunity to brazenly shoehorn the not particularly funny Wikipedia routine into the flow of their couch chat, so some of the material is already familiar. Why do I feel as I do about this routine and yet lap up Stewart Lee's closing gag about poisonous berries, one I've heard him use several times before?

Ultimately, it probably comes down to the simple fact that I prefer Lee and, no doubt unlike nearly everyone else here (with the exception perhaps of The Actor Kevin Eldon, lurking by the door with a bevy of female companions), would actually have rather enjoyed an extra half-hour of ritual Moyles savaging. Ungrateful git that I am.

Mike Wozniak - Falling Down With Laughter @ Belushis, Southwark, 23/09/08

2008-09-24T12:08:00.007+01:00

While I tire of people’s incredulity at a non-alcoholic choosing to quit booze, as is the case with myself, it’s hard to be too defensive against anyone who peddles remarks such as Dean Martin’s “I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day” as one effect of quitting drinking is that the bipolarity of the ‘night-out’ experience is levelled out. This has certainly been the case with watching comedy. I am certainly much more aware of what’s causing my laughter, and am less given to rolling-on-the-floor reactions.

Not that this makes me any more perceptive a critic, but I know now that when something moves me, it’s genuine, rather than lubricated. In sobriety I recall only twice crying with uncontrollable laughter; first was courtesy of Justin Edwards’ ‘Jeremy Lion’ character at the 2004 Fringe and, now, this London reprise of Mike Wozniak’s if.comeddie Best Newcomer-nominated Edinburgh show.

Let’s get the critique out of the way first though. Wozniak’s very deliberate delivery is both a strength and a weakness. The crafted wordsmithery of his tales are given a beautiful rhythm, but also fuses a bit too easily with the style of Richard Herring, something made all the more apparent by Herring’s Edinburgh show ‘The Headmaster’s Son’ following twenty minutes after this*.

However, while Herring increasingly is mining a intellectualised shock-value seam that tries to create a tension before subverting, Wozniak aims for the right level of squirm, taking grotesque, coprophilic and penoscrotal imagery but wrapping it up in such tight lyrical nuggets that they easily bypass offensiveness.

While the delivery may be reminiscent of both Herring and his erstwhile colleague Stewart Lee, the take on his subject matter is much more akin to Rhod Gilbert, particularly the Welshman’s latest “…Award Winning Mince Pie” show, where reality is bubbled, stretched and warped so as to have a surreality whilst retaining an anchor in the conceivable.

His Polish background and his moustache (the kind you could lose your dinner in) are weaved in and out of the tales but in the most part the stories concern his amateur scientist father and yarn-spinning grandparents. How much is actually true scarcely matters, as his characterisation embodies these figures with distinct warmth, despite the often gruesome nature of the stories. The call-back lines don’t always work as well as they might, but the dovetail at the end, bringing all his narrative threads together in the form of imparted advice, is a triumphant pay-off.

*As a side point, £6 for two full-length hour shows in central London is a real steal; Alexis Dubus and Sy Thomas, the comics behind ‘Falling Down With Laughter’, should be duly commended.

Tony Law, Stephen Dick, Eddie Hoo, Eilidh MacAskill, compere Sandy Nelson - The Stand, Edinburgh, 13/09/2008

2008-09-18T10:01:00.008+01:00

Photo courtesy Diamond Geyser, reproduced under a Creative Commons license

September at the Stand tends to be a quiet month, as the city calms down after the excesses of the festival, but the club still fairly buzzes for a weekend show, and while the lineups may feature some less well known names, they still manage to draw the odd top headliner to pull in the punters.

Glaswegian Sandy Nelson is one of the regular MCs at the club, and always sets a good tone for the night. He has a quick mind and a way with a snappy retort, and he is served well on this night by the presence at the front of a large gaggle of Welsh thirtysomething women out on a birthday shindig (but amazingly not a hen party,) together with a group of squaddies standing near the back who he attempts to hook up with them.

Sadly, his initial efforts go to waste when opening act Eddie Hoo takes the stage. At this level one tends to expect that the opener will be a well established club act with experience, professionalism and finely crafted routines. Hoo demonstrated none of these things. He looked uncomfortable and nervous, stumbled over his words, and his jokes suffered from overly complicated and convoluted set-ups leading to punchlines which seldom rose above the level of "and then I fucked her." He was clearly attempting to be controversial, but doing so with such an utter lack of wit or charm that he barely raised a titter despite this being a crowd that was clearly "up for it." In the ten minute try-out spot, this may have been just about acceptable, but as an opener it was highly disappointing. Hoo does seem to have been on the circuit for some time, so one can only hope this was merely an off night.

Thankfully, this turned out to be a temporary abberation, as the try-out act, musical comedian Eilidh MacAskill, turned out to be an utter delight from beginning to end. Billing her act as Eilidh's Daily Ukelele Ceilidh (all of these words rhyme with Daily for the uninitiated,) she fired off silly jokes and daft songs which were short enough to hit their mark quickly without ever outstaying their welcome. With a bright and engaging personality, she held the crowd easily and I could happily have sat through a set twice as long.

Main support Stephen Dick is well established on the Scottish scene as a comedy magician who, thankfully, keeps the emphasis firmly on the comedy. The magic, it has to be said, was nothing out of the ordinary, the usual card tricks that we have seen a hundred times before, together with the old chestnut of taking money from an audience member and seemingly destroying it before restoring it unharmed. But there's very little else a magician could do in the close confines of the Stand's tiny stage, and what Dick does very well is to supplement the tricks with some great gags and some fine self-deprecating humour, as well as putting the odd new twist on the trick to keep it reasonably fresh.

And so we come to headliner Tony Law, a master of surreal and twisted humour who, after a slightly shaky start, quickly has the audience in the palm of his hand, so much so that despite massively overrunning his slot he continues to hold their rapt attention with not so much as a single fidget in a seat.

Law's act affects a constant bewilderment at the world around him, but it's not a world the rest of us would recognise, populated as it is with random anthropomorphisms conjured out of an imagination most of us would give everything we own just to spend one day in. The bulk of the set is taken up with an instructive guide to setting up a fight between a black bear and a shark, but his attention is easily drawn such that this line of thought is regularly abandoned as he trails off onto yet another lengthy digression.

This is a kind of comedy that you have to be in the mood for, but on this night the audience certainly were, and rounded off the night well. A night of ups and downs, to be sure, but with the ups firmly in the majority.

Juliet Meyers, Holly Walsh, Liz Bentley, Rosie Wilby, compere Maureen Younger - The Bath House, Soho, 04/09/2008

2008-09-12T08:58:00.002+01:00

When it comes to stand-up comedy, you know you’re in trouble when you turn up to the venue to discover the show’s being held up on your account. Cursing the queue at Viet that delayed our arrival, we take the full brunt of regular Laughing Cows compere Maureen Younger’s playfully aggressive questioning, but there’s plenty of other grist to her mill sat around us, not least a professional film extra called Brian with a most extraordinary quiff who tries to give as good as he gets.

First up is Rosie Wilby, who started out as a musician and fell into comedy when she realised her between-song banter was getting a better response than the songs themselves. There are some clever moments in her set – not least the bit about her fear of being out collecting one parcel when Royal Mail try to deliver another, thus ending up in a weird kind of postal groundhog day – and her self-deprecating humour is largely well received, but it’s a shame the sometime MC for Glastonbury’s Leftfield Stage hurries some of her darker thoughts as if reluctant to let them sink into and fester in the minds of the audience.

Liz Bentley also ended up in comedy via a circuitous route, having tried her hand at novel-writing and then discovering that her short stories elicited more than just a few laughs when read aloud at open mic nights. In fact, the confident sit-down stand-up opens up by denying she’s a comedian at all, describing herself as a poet instead – albeit a poet who performed in a swimming pool at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. A keyboard-led ditty about a tenants’ association meeting is probably the highlight, though later Younger’s right in noting that we probably hadn’t come out expecting to join in a sprightly singalong about breastfeeding.

The pick of tonight’s bunch, though, is Holly Walsh, by some way (I’d guess) the youngest. Dressed in a blue anorak and looking, in her own words, like “a gardener”, she has a nicely unstudied style (or at least a style so studied it’s been made to look unstudied). Not only does she cope swiftly, easily and wittily with being picked up on geographical distinctions in East London – “It’s like being heckled by a sat nav” – she also comes out with the evening’s most memorable and repeatable punchline: “That’s midwifery!” (I leave you to speculate as to the joke it belonged to). Little wonder, then, that she was named 2008’s Best Newcomer by Chortle, and we’re left wanting more than her allotted fifteen minutes.

Like Liz Bentley, Juliet Meyers is fresh from Edinburgh, where one night she performed her show ‘Strange Ears’ to just three people, one of whom happened to be a Chortle reviewer. Thankfully there are too many of us tonight for her to feel she needs to know everyone’s name, though she does hark back to her Edinburgh experience by recalling what happened when she told the (very Scottish) mother of a young boy who’d come to her show that it contained use of the ‘C’ word – the woman looked down at her son and said, “David, you know ‘cunt’, don’t you?” Whereas Rosie Wilby races through anything remotely controversial, Meyers pauses to make a tumbleweed noise after her edgier jokes as though to draw more attention to them (unnecessarily). Her best routine is based around that idea that one little untruth can snowball out of control, beginning with her confession that she often refers to herself as “Mrs” so as to avoid the potential social embarrassment of “Ms” and ending with her realisation that she’s invented a husband who’s a bearded accountant called Tim.

The first Thursday of the month, then: the night for lady-shaped laughs...

A joke Patrick Kielty could steal - and did

2008-09-04T08:43:00.001+01:00

In his show ‘90s Comedian’ Stewart Lee, affronted by the fact that Joe Pasquale had nicked one of his jokes, responded to those who attacked him for ‘Jerry Springer: The Musical’ with a long-winded and deliberately obscene anecdote-joke that Pasquale certainly couldn’t steal.

So it was odd to watch last night’s installment of ‘Live At The Apollo’ on Dave* and witness another comic no-mark Patrick Kielty parroting Lee’s joke about feeling nostalgic for the good old days of the IRA, “gentlemen terrorists” who always had the courtesy to ring up the authorities to give advance warning of bomb attacks…

* Yes, I’m aware I’ve just outed myself as too much of an armchair fan these days. That said, I am going to see some stand-up in the flesh tonight, for the first time in ages…

Fringe Review - Jim Jeffries: Hammered, Udderbelly, 25/08/2008

2008-08-29T10:28:00.002+01:00

It's been a bad year, Jim Jeffries tells us at the top of his show. But then, he said the same last year. And the year before. Lets face it, when you're Jim Jeffries, it's pretty much been a shit life. No wonder he feels the need to let off steam. It seems like God doesn't like Jeffries much, but that's okay because the feeling is mutual. In fact the only deity he does have time for is Buddha, and that's just because he looks like he might be a bit of a party animal.

Jeffries is an offensive comedian. It says so, right there on his posters, so if you are the type who takes offense easily, you're pretty much an idiot if you still turn up at one of his shows. But Jeffries is also a very clever comedian, much as his perpetually drunk and stupid stage persona would suggest otherwise. He knows that the way to get away with being offensive, is to make the offense itself the object of the humour. So, for instance, rather than say "aren't retards funny," his take is, "isn't it ridiculous that we laugh at retards?"

It's an approach he uses time and time again during his show. Racists are evil and bastards, but you'd still shag one if she was hot. Dwarves are an unfairly oppressed minority, but we still think nothing of putting them in films. Sharon and Kelly Osborne are morons... no, actually there are no mitigating circumstances needed for that one. But it is this subversion of the form that sets him apart from the likes of Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson. Their jokes are simply cruel, and their only excuse is "it's just a joke." In Jeffries case, although he may be tackling the same subjects, the butt of the joke in the end is always himself.

An hour with Jeffries is an hour being indoctrinated into his particularly warped world view, and a very persuasive hour it is, as his views contain an internal logic that it is actually very hard to argue with. But cleverly he always extends the logic just that one twist too far, allowing us to see it in the end for what it really is.

He is, without doubt, an acquired taste, and it goes without saying that there are plenty out there who will have no wish to acquire it. The signs are there right from the start, the audience taking their seats while an introductory film shows butterflies and bunnies frolicking in a rainbow-filled wonderland to the joyful strains of The Carpenters, transforming into black spiders, bleeding hearts and heavy rock guitars as he prepares to enter the stage.

I'm not sure this show had the same impact as in previous years. He seemed a bit more rambling, even by his own rambling standards, and things never seemed to come to any particular point. But as a masterclass in barroom philosophising, and for some relatively guilt-free guilty pleasures, you can't go far wrong with Jeffries.

Fringe Review - Andrew Lawrence: Don't Just Do Something, Sit There, Pleasance Upstairs, 24/08/2008

2008-08-27T10:09:00.003+01:00

When life gives you lemons, they say, make lemonade. When life gives you bright orange hair, the face of a troll, the voice of a chimp on helium and the body of the bloke off the Mr Muscle adverts, be a comedian.

Andrew Lawrence, it has to be said, has made great play of his appearance in the past and continues to do so. However, he does seem to also be trying to tone down that aspect of his act. The wild haired bug eyed loon of two years ago is gone, as is last year's uncomfortable looking scrawny youth looking like he was dressed by his mum. Instead, his hair cut fashionably short and wearing a well fitting sports jacket, he's the kind of guy you would hardly take a second glance at in the street.

And in some ways that should be a good thing, as it takes the focus away from the visual and towards the verbal, which has always been his forte. Except that this year, that seems slightly subdued also. His ability to paint horrendous mental pictures using evil twisted words has always been his forte, but this year he seems to have lost some of that amazing verbal dexterity in favour of just being a bit shouty.

What is good is that, despite road testing this show all over the country, he has clearly found the time since arriving to write a whole new section just for Edinburgh which, by its nature he will have to discard upon leaving, concerning the ubiquity of his face on the side of taxi cabs. He had thought everyone would be doing the same, he says, but finding it was just him, he now feels like the only person to turn up to a party in fancy dress.

The theme of the show, and the point of the title, is the sheer uselessness of ambition, the pointlessness of being a driven individual, striving to climb life's ziggurat, to improve ones self, to reach the pinnacle of success, when we're all just going to die in the end anyway. And to illustrate this, his example is, as always, himself, and his pathetic, miserable existance as a man who makes his living standing up for an hour each night trying amuse people, and half the time failing to do so.

The old Lawrence is still there, under the surface, that much is clear. He is still full of misanthropic disdain of the world at large, and a savage loathing of both himself and society in general, but some of the almost poetic nature of his previous diatribes is gone, replaced by more generalised speech, which might make for a more popular and easily accessible show, but for me takes away a certain portion of his uniqueness. We already have plenty of "grumpy old men" comedians, we don't need a grumpy young one, and my worry is that if Lawrence continues down this path he will join the morass of homogenised complainers we already have on the comedy circuit, rather than being the "one of a kind" talent he has been in the past.

Fringe Review - Jason Cook: Joy, Stand 4, 24/08/2008

2008-08-26T09:41:00.003+01:00

In the last twelve months Jason Cook has experienced the happiest day of his life, and the saddest. The experience has taught him to embrace life, to take the good from every day, and to capture every fleeting moment of joy and celebrate it, and it's a message he wants to communicate to each and every one of us.

The show, essentially, revolves around these two incidents, and leads us from one to the other. The first, his marriage, introduces us to his madcap family, his slightly racist gran, his sock-obsessed mother, and his pragmatic, sea-faring, Christmas-loving dad who will become the central character in this tale. And, of course, his beautiful new wife, through whose introduction into this madhouse, and to the concept that the Cook family are plagued with bad luck, we are led to the second event.

This is a beautifully structured show. Cook quickly establishes his credentials as a kind of loveable everyman character, and the warmth with which he introduces us into his life is infectious. Lavishly illustrating his tales with family snapshots, he leaves his audience in no doubt that, although they may be embellished slightly, his stories are essentially true ones and not some flights of fancy, and that is vital to the impact of what is going to come.

Right at the top of the show he tells us that there will be a heavy moment, and asks us to raise our hands if we think we have spotted it. It's a clever move, because when that moment comes it helps to break the tension, and that moment is a doozie, a real heartbreaker that, even if you were already aware of what was coming, causes a lurch in the gut that could kill a show stone dead in lesser hands. But in Cook's, it merely takes it in a new direction which builds slowly towards a gloriously joyful climax.

As Cook himself explains during the show, he spends most of his year working the Northern comedy circuit, MCing and gigging in clubs whose clientelle came to hear him tell cock jokes and really don't give a crap about the rest. An Edinburgh show is his chance to stretch himself, to tell personal stories and create something more meaningful. His last show ended up touring around the festivals for much of the year. I truly hope the same happens this time, because this is a story that deserves to be heard.

Fringe Review - The Angry Puppy, Stand 3, 23/08/2008

2008-08-25T15:24:00.003+01:00

I'm not usually a fan of sketch comedy. Mostly I find the situations too outlandish and the characterisations too far outside anything I have encountered in the real world for it to make any kind of impact on me. However, I was enticed along to this one by the presence of the wonderful Susan Calman, and very glad I am that I made the effort.

The show starts slowly, and there are a few duff sketches in the first twenty minutes or so, but from an infectiously brilliant skit set in an electrical store onwards, they all seem to hit the mark perfectly providing a last half hour filled with energy and plenty of laughs.

For the most part continuing characters and catchphrases are avoided, apart from one running gag about a bizarre girl obsessed with her dad, and instead the scenes are populated by people we could almost recognise from our daily lives.

The female foursome do tend to each play to their strengths. Marj Hogarth tends to stick to slightly officious, haughty characters, Kirsten McLean to the overenergetic organiser type, Leah MacRae is generally a down-to-earth street character, and Calman usually portrays the kooky one of the bunch, although they do mix this formula up from time to time.

They make up a good team, complementing each other well, and the sketches themselves are full of inventiveness, from an unusually intense encounter in an opticians to a scene in which the foursome each attempt to remove the top from a jar performed in the style of a Superstars-type television show.

I'm still not a fan of sketch shows, but this one made me laugh far more than it did otherwise, and if they return next year and can keep up this level of quality, then television could do far worse than come knocking at their doors.

Fringe Review - Tim Fitzhigham: The Bard's Fool, Pleasance Hut, 22/08/2008

2008-08-24T16:44:00.003+01:00

Britain is not a world leader in very much any more, but the one thing we produce more and better of than anyone else is eccentrics. Sir Tim Fitzhigham, knighted by a deposed West Indian monarchy and holding the rank of Commodore in the Royal Navy as commander of the docks of a landlocked town, who has navigated the Thames in a paper boat, rowed across the English Channel in a bathtub, and lived as a medieval knight in a cave in Spain, qualifies for this title admirably.

Fitzhigham's problem, it seems, is that he reads too much. And that this reading leads him to thinking, and that's what gets him into trouble. Each of his previous adventures have come from "I wonder if I could do that" moments after reading some historical feat, and this year has been no different, after reading the poem Nine Daies Wonder by Will Kemp, the leading clown of Elizabethan England who, on being told by Shakespeare that there would be no role for him in the play Hamlet, as there would be no comedy in it, decided to teach the Bard a lesson in comedy by Morris Dancing from London to Norwich.

There were a number of problems facing Sir Tim in recreating this feat, however. And pretty much all of them could be summed up using the two words, "Morris Dancing." But problems are the stuff of comedy, without them there would barely be a show, so more power to the problems. Fitzhigham leads us through his preparation and his journey in increasingly frantic and frenetic style, whilst under the protection of his own flag, which as a Commodore he is entitled to fly giving him full jurisdiction over the surrounding area.

It's a scrappy show, to be honest, but that is part of Fitzhigham's charm, the fact that, whilst most likely every last word has been worked out in advance, he gives the impression that he is merely bumbling through whilst making everything up on the spot. And the fact is that he is such a likeable fellow that you can't help but be charmed by him and caught up in proceedings, even during a section of the show that skates perilously close to being in extremely bad taste.

In one portion of the show he makes fun of Brendon Burns' triumph in last years if.comedy awards, but the humour is in the fact that he must be aware himself that such accolades are almost certainly never going to be troubling his door. But it's an entertaining hour nonetheless, and a decent enough way to spend the early part of a rainy Edinburgh evening.

Fringe Review - Bethany Black: Beth Becomes Her, Baby Belly 3 at the Underbelly, 21/08/2008

2008-08-23T17:26:00.004+01:00

On a rain-sodden night, when Beth Black informs her audience that she has paid five and a half thousand pounds to hire the wettest cave in Edinburgh, you believe her. As it is, the audience have to be led through darkened tunnels via a back entrance because the main one is flooded, to find Beth herself waiting to greet everyone personally and thank them for coming to her show. Which is an apposite way to begin, because by the end of the night, that same audience will feel like they know her as an intimate friend.

The show is titled Beth Becomes Her, and she quickly gets the reason for this out of the way for those who arrived not already aware. Beth literally became her, having lived the formative part of her life as him. And what we get in this show, in raw and sometimes graphic, but never uncomfortable detail, is the full story of how this came to be.

It's a tale involving hardship and heartbreak, depression and near suicide, and if that doesn't sound like the stuff of comedy, you're probably right, but in Black's capable hands it is very very funny nonetheless. And that is what makes this show something special, that without ever compromising in the telling, she can still wring humour out of real situations that she lived through that must, at the time, have taken her to some of the blackest places imaginable. One moment, in which she acts out in a brutal and uncompromising style the final thoughts running through her mind as she prepared to take her own life, and still manages to get a laugh at the punchline, sums up exactly why this show is such a must-see.

And it isn't all bleakness and heartache, because as she moves through her journey to the feminine side, from acceptance that she will never live happily in a male body, through the support of her family and friends, to finally finding happiness and love in her new life, it turns into something of a life-affirming tale. Beth advertises herself as a transgendered lesbian goth, which might lead some to expect something of a freakshow, but the result is anything but.

This is her first Edinburgh show, but it won't be her last. It isn't perfect, some of the gags are a little obvious, and there are sections which probably could be slicker, but these are minor niggles. There are plenty of comedy shows that will make you laugh, that's part of the job description, and a good few that will make you think, but it's a rare one that will rip your guts out and then put them back again intact. Beth has already made one transformation, and there's another one coming. Mark my words, a star is in the making.

Fringe Review - Mark Watson: All The Thoughts I've Had Since I Was Born, Pleasance Grand, 21/08/2008

2008-08-22T16:03:00.004+01:00

The habit Mark Watson has of starting his shows from within the audience can be an effective trick. Except on a night when the Pleasance Box Office computer systems have failed, and queues are stretching round the block for the ticket collection windows where harrassed students write tickets out by hand and he's been told to hold the start until they can get everybody processed. When it means being trapped in amongst an increasingly fractious group of people who already had their tickets and arrived on time, while the remainder of the audience trickle in by ones and twos.

But if Watson was stressed by the situation, it's difficult to tell, being that he is a barely contained bundle of nervous energy at the best of times. But we must hope not, considering that being stressed, and how it led to him being rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack shortly after last year's festival, was the main subject of the show. But if stress there was, it couldn't have been helped by the eventual start of the show and the discovery of a fourteen year-old girl in the audience leading to the even more horrified discovery of an eight year-old one.

Who exactly would take an eight year-old to a clearly grown-up comedy show was clearly beyond the grasp of pretty much everyone, but Watson took the fact in his stride, despite his announcement of it as a personal record, constantly referring back and gleefully pushing the boundaries of filth while checking in with the confused child.

The show itself, then, details his efforts to de-stress his life, and taking into account that his job, standing in front of people talking shit for an hour a day, cannot possibly be as stressful as deciding how long to send people to prison for, he looks at the rest of his life for the answer. This, really, is just an excuse to delve into whatever areas his quirky sense of humour has led him to, from a horrendous night in a travelodge, to a schadenfreude-fuelled event on a train station platform, via a spot of J.K.Rowling envy along the way.

It is Watson's talent to take these seemingly minor events and spin them into trauma-filled tales of epic proportions, all the while jittering in his nervy persona while still having the confidence to keep checking with the audience as to how it's all going, safe in the knowledge that the answer will be "good." Watson's rise to the stature of comic who can sell out this huge venue has been rapid, and on this evidence it shows no sign of stopping.

Fringe Review - Lucy Porter: The Bare Necessities, Pleasance One, 19/08/2008

2008-08-22T10:02:00.002+01:00

The unique selling point of Lucy Porter has always been her cute, bubbly, sweet demeanour allied to a vicious tongue and a filthy mind. This year she has overloaded on the cute, performing her show in front of a backdrop featuring a kitten and two ducklings. It provides her with a nice sight gag, but sadly it may also be symptomatic of something else.

Porter's humour has always relied heavily on her disastrous love life, but this year she is happily settled and in a relationship, and this seems to have spilled over into her humour, because there is just something lacking here. Her biting wit seems to be just that little bit lacking in bite for once, almost as if, having reached the level where she can sell out the three and four hundred seater venues, she's settled back and decided to coast for a while.

Not that this show is bad, exactly. It is an entertaining hour, and Porter is still capable of delivering a few absolute killer punchlines during its course. And her theme could not be more timely in this year of belt tightening, as she tackles the subject of identifying the things that are essential to us in life for our own happiness and wellbeing, and divesting ourselves of all the extraneous frivolities.

But it all seems a little flat. The laughs are there, but they are fewer and further between and separated by an awful lot of filler. If this were your first experience of Porter you might find yourself wondering why so many had come to pack out the room. It's a decent enough show, but pales by comparison with some of her previous triumphs.

Still, Lucy may be diminuitive of stature, but she is fiesty of nature, and I'm sure this is just a minor blip in what is an otherwise excellent CV and that next year she will bounce back with the kind of quality we have come to expect.

Fringe Review - The Best of Irish Comedy, The Stand, 17/08/2008

2008-08-20T11:08:00.005+01:00

Ensemble shows with an ever changing line-up can be a bit of a hit and miss affair at the Fringe. The "Best of Irish" and "Best of Scottish" shows at the Stand can some days feature some of the biggest and best in the business, and the next you can be treated to four complete unknowns. On this day, however, the bill featured two of the old stalwarts of the Irish comedy scene, so disappointment was unlikely to feature.

Opening the show and acting as compere was Bernard O'Shea, a new name to me but clearly a very experienced and natural performer. A chirpy chappy from Northern Ireland, he made great play over the complete lack of sexiness in both his appearance and his name, entertains us with a shaggy dog story in the form of a song, and makes a lengthy plea for more global warming so that he can improve his tan. There isn't much audience interaction, but he doesn't need it as he is great fun and gets the room nicely warmed up.

Elaine Malcolmson may, however, have been slightly put out by the fact that he introduced her as Elaine Williamson, and repeated the error later in the show, which is something he should maybe sort out, as it is disrespectful at best. I am an unashamed fan of Malcolmson's dry deadpan humour, but have to admit that she struggled a little at this show. I think maybe the early hour in the evening did her no favours, with an audience in from work or from shopping, looking for easy laughs and not in the mood for clever wordplay. Her "I'll do anything for a biscuit" material went down well, but some of the more intricate jokes seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Owen O'Neill is such an experienced old hand at the stand-up game, and such an instantly recognisable face to anyone who has spent any time in Ireland from his appearances in various TV shows and movies like The General and Michael Collins, that it is something of a surprise that he is not the headline act, although an indication of the quality of performers The Stand can attract. His laid-back but incisive humour holds the audience from the word go, from comparisons between expensive hairdressers and old-fashioned barbers, to tales of growing up in a family of 16 children, all punctuated with trademark bizarre facial expressions.

Headline act Michael Redmond is equally recognisable, as evidenced by the fact that the moment he took the stage an audience member shouted out "you were electrocuted in Father Ted!" But Redmond's style is the antithesis of O'Neill's carefully constructed anecdotes, as he shambles around the stage seeming to make his act up as he goes along. Much of his time is spent talking randomly to audience members, especially a front row South African whose beer he quickly appropriates. But Redmond makes it all look effortless, and he is one of those comedians blessed with the ability to get as big a laugh from a simple hangdog expression as he can from any of his gags.

Of course this is a show with a line-up that changes day by day. But with a roster this strong, it is a clear indication that the quality on offer is never likely to disappoint.

Fringe Review - Rhod Gilbert and the Award Winning Mince Pie, Pleasance Cabaret Bar, 10/08/2008

2008-08-13T11:45:00.003+01:00

For his fourth full length Edinburgh show, it is clear from the venue that Rhod Gilbert is moving swiftly up the comedy ladder towards "star attraction" status. It is also clear that it is taking it's toll on him physically, as his always throaty voice is now so raspy it sounds like someone has taken a power sander to it.

And the pace with which this show moves can't help. Those who have experienced Gilbert's brand of "not comedy but misery" will know to expect a slowly building tale in which disaster and disappointment pile on each other with ever increasing frequency until it arrives at a cataclysmic conclusion.

The premise, this year, is that Gilbert has been persuaded by others to move his comedy into the real world, and leave behind the fictional Welsh town of Llanbobl where his previous shows have been set. Doing so, however, has led him inexorably towards a fateful encounter with the staff of an almost deserted Knutsford service station on the M6 at two thirty one morning, where he finds himself buying myriads of useless tat, hoping to catch some form of entertainment show in the toilets, and having a mental breakdown over the titular award-winning mince pie which is the last item left in the cafeteria.

In his incandescent rage at these seemingly minor irritations, Gilbert raises the mundane to the level of Greek tragedy, providing his audience with the catharsis he fails to attain for himself. The pace is relentless, but occasional respite is given to the audience through various sidetracks in which he discusses his relationship with a much younger woman, a trip to Afghanistan to entertain the troops, and an explanation of the difference between "ballroom" and "cabaret" style venue layouts in Ebbw Vale.

It's all wildly entertaining stuff, and when he finally collapses in exhaustion into his service-station bought canvas directors chair to deliver his conclusion, the audience feel like collapsing alongside him. It's been a wild ride and we can feel his fatigue as if it were our own.

Gilbert grows in stature year on year, and could be the perfect Edinburgh Fringe comedian. Where other comics often find difficulty in sustaining an hour long show, he thrives on it, using the time to build the various strands of his tale until it finally explodes into a climax of callbacks. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next year.

Fringe Review - Andrew O'Neill, Banquetting Hall at Nicol Edwards, 10/08/2008

2008-08-12T10:40:00.002+01:00

"Welcome to the Banquetting Hall," Andrew O'Neill tells his audience at the start of his free show, "the most inappropriately named venue on the Fringe." He's not kidding. We are in a dank cellar under the South Bridge, with a floor made of loose rubble and water dripping from the ceiling. But somehow it seems an appropriate space for this slighly surreal and unusual looking comic.

O'Neill has been hovering around the edges of the big time for a while now, without ever quite breaking in. With a few low-key TV appearances under his belt, and a whole series of strange but interesting Fringe shows behind him, this year he has decided to perform twice a day. Late at night he does his paying show, the
Totally Spot On History of British Industry. O'Neill is a bit of a history buff, as previous shows have established. But in the afternoon it's just a straight stand-up set, performed as part of the Free Fringe, for donations only.

Nearly everything you need to know about O'Neill before his show starts is summed up by his appearance. The long, jet-black dyed hair and black cut-off tee-shirt showing his collection of tattoos all act as a frame to highlight the face of a nerd. His act veers from the fiercely intelligent to the supremely silly, with bizarre asides that punctuate his set and allow him to move from topic to topic without any forced links.

His star is clearly still in the ascendency, as witnessed by a room bursting at the seams, an unusual occurrence for a Free Fringe show. And he didn't let them down, with strange tales of heterosexual cross-dressing, horrendous night-bus journeys, and his experiences of dealing with American tourists at the Cabinet War Rooms museum which includes the most perfect response to the charge that we'd all be speaking German if it wasn't for the Yanks that you will ever hear.

Not all of the show works, but over the course of an hour the success rate is as good as you will find in many top price shows at the Fringe, and a good deal better than many, and all this for Free. It's a testament to his determination and his work-ethic that he is willing to put in the effort to build his reputation in this way, and a clear signpost that he is surely destined for a long and successful career.

Fringe Review - Jason John Whitehead: The Joker, Belly Laugh at the Underbelly, 09/08/2008

2008-08-11T16:17:00.006+01:00

Canadian comic Jason John Whitehead is so laid back there are points during his set you wonder if he's about to fall asleep. But his easy smile and stoner demeanour work well in his favour, because as an audience you find yourself almost willing him to succeed.

He has, sadly, been landed with one of the very worst venues in the Fringe. The Belly Laugh is essentially a long narrow tube, far too long to use end on so instead it has been rotated ninety degrees and is now simply ridiculously wide and shallow. Add to this the tendency towards front row avoidance in the average Fringe audience and the result is an audience scattered so widely it makes it difficult for the comic to address them all directly and results in his having to move the focus of his attention on a regular basis to keep everyone involved.

Whitehead has, in the past, wisely eschewed the Edinburgh propensity towards themed shows, preferring instead to simply range randomly through any subjects that take his fancy. But this year, after a decade in the comedy business, he has chosen instead to take a step back and look at what made him want to take up the comic lifestyle, and the choices he has had to make to maintain it. Or, to put it in his own rather more simple way, it's a show about being a comedian.

Whitehead takes us from his early years at a dolphinarium in South Carolina, to his arrival in Edinburgh ten years earlier and his search for a job to fund his stand-up fixation, an end only achieved when he ceased trying, and through some of the drink and drug excesses of his years since.

All of this is narrated in an easy, unhurried and non-threatening way, and most of it is very entertaining, but there is never really a wow factor with Whitehead. He never seems to hit that killer punchline that has you doubled up in your seat or draws a spontaneous round of applause. And maybe it's the fault of the room, but in the end, he is something like the old comedy cliche of the Chinese meal, he leaves you vaguely satisfied, but in half an hour you'll be wanting something more.

Fringe Review - Liam Mullone: In a Dead Man's Hat, Billiard Room at the Gilded Balloon, 09/08/2008

2008-08-11T10:57:00.004+01:00

Towards the beginning of this show Liam Mullone informs his audience that this is going to be more of a storytelling experience than straight stand-up. What follows is essentially a series of reminiscences, framed by the tale of a potentially life-altering experience during a trip to the United States.

For various complicated reasons, Mullone found himself, some while ago, having to survive for six weeks in a dilapidated van in a dry ravine in the Nevada Desert with only a big bag of pork chops and the world's worst paperback for company. Like a cut-price Jesus Christ, he endured forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, and came away from it wiser, but probably not ready to form his own religion just yet.

Despite his Irish sounding name, Mullone is a big shambling Englishman, the product of an upper-middle class family from Leicestershire who spent some of his childhood in Hong Kong. Tales from that childhood, and of family life in general, are intersperced into the main narrative giving a sense of a man re-evaluating his life during the long hours of loneliness.

It's an entertaining and engaging tale, and if not often laugh-out-loud funny, it contains enough humour along the way to hold the attention. Mullone holds his audience with an easy charm, and makes good use of lighting and the various areas of the stage to suggest different modes of rememberance. As an early evening show, it works very well, and for anyone planning a full evening on the Fringe, it will serve as a very nice appetiser.

Fringe Review - Richard Herring: The Headmaster's Son, White Belly at the Underbelly, 08/08/2008

2008-08-10T10:49:00.003+01:00

It has almost become a tradition now. This is the fifth year in succession I've been to see Richard Herring's solo show in the Fringe, and he seems to get better year on year. I am happy to report that this year is no exception.

For the past few years his shows have been straight, vaguely themed stand-up, as opposed to the rigidly structured shows that went before. This year he's moved back towards those older shows, but the theme remains broadly the same as the one that seems to have obsessed him for a while now, namely that of why he is moving into middle-age without ever having seemed to grow up.

Herring is 41 now, never married, no children, sexually promiscuous, and still seemingly trying to act like a teenager. And he has recognised that a great many people who act inappropriately in their advancing years blame all their problems on their childhood. It has become something of a trend these days to blame your parents for almost anything you do which society frowns on. So he decided to examine whether his parents could be responsible for his behaviour, particularly his father, and his experience of growing up in a school where his dad was also his headmaster.

Of course, he instantly recognises the absurdity of claiming to have suffered psychological trauma from what was, essentially, a nice, happy, middle-class upbringing in the picturesque Somerset town of Cheddar. But he still manages to get easily his hour's worth of mileage out of the situation, often brilliantly, especially the section in which he reads excerpts from his teenage diaries, pricking the pomposity of his former self, and culminating in a conversation between his 16 and 41 year-old selves discussing the way his life has gone against the way he expected it to be.

It's a more rigid and rehearsed performance than we've been used to from Herring of late, and this caused some problems on the night as he had to battle against a large group of Portuguese schoolgirls who sat right at the front, didn't speak much English, and insisted on talking to each other all the way through. But if he was thrown off his stride at all, it didn't show, and the rest of the room seemed to lap up his verbal dexterity and intricate wordplay. It may not be the show that finally breaks him through into the big-time, but if not then it can't be far away.

Fringe Review - Jason Byrne: Cats Under Mats Having Chats With Bats, Assembly Hall, 07/08/2008

2008-08-08T11:04:00.004+01:00

At this point in his career, it appears, Jason Byrne has given up any pretence at having a theme to his shows, thus the nonsensical titles which grace each year's offering, (last year it was "Pigs With Wigs Hiding in the Twigs.) This is a good thing, because the only thing you are guaranteed with Byrne is that on any given night there is no telling what he will decide to talk about.

By all accounts, there are nights when he ad-libs entire shows, and this is probably a good thing as generally his rehearsed material is the weakest part of his performance. But this year he seems to have upped his game a little in this respect, and tales of moving his family to the countryside or fixing a television bracket in his son's bedroom are well worked out and often pant-wettingly funny.

As usual, his long-suffering wife is the butt of much of his humour as he prowls the stage screaming in frustrated rage at this impossible harridan. But of course the audience is always in on the joke, well aware that in reality she is most likely a nice and normal woman merely driven demented by years of having to live with him.

But of course it is in the audience interaction that Byrne really shines. It is his ability to think on his feet which moves him out of the category of competent comedian and into the super-league of comics able to sell out huge venues.

Tonight he has plenty to work with. There is the couple who have brought their twelve year-old son and sat in the front row. "There goes half the show," he says, "you're going to learn a lot tonight kid!" Then there was the man trapped somewhere inside the middle of his body, the doctor who makes models out of poo, and the man who, on being asked questions, merely shouts out random words.

Byrne makes great play with all of them, continually returning to them as characters in a narrative he is constructing in his head. Everything seems to be clicking in this year's show. Even his closing set piece, often a disappointment after what has gone before, is this year suitably barking mad to provide a fitting climax to the show.

Brilliant and possibly borderline insane, it's always a banker at any Fringe that Jason Byrne is going to give value for money.

Fringe Review - Pete Firman: Flim Flam, Belly Button at the Underbelly, 06/08/2008

2008-08-07T16:04:00.003+01:00

Magic, like so many other forms of entertainment, has undergone a radical rethink over the years. Like so many things before, it has been referred to as the "new Rock and Roll." So if Paul Daniels was the Val Doonican of the genre, we moved on to the Manilowesque gloss and glamour of David Copperfield, to arrive at the Kurt Cobain grunge of David Blaine. Pete Firman would clearly like to associate himself more closely with the latter of this trio, but it has to be said that underneath the surface appearances he has more in common with the first.

He starts well, employing shock tactics to get the audience squirming in their seats, hammering a nail into his own face and doing something with a maggot which defies description. But that seems to be a mistake, because he has nothing much to back it up, and for the rest of the set falls back on the old staples of making objects appear and disappear and appearing to predict the results of various "random" set-ups.

Even his big finale trick, in which he tries to present himself as being in great danger, is so obvious it is hard to believe that any audience member could not have been aware of how it was being done. And when he follows that up with a final "flourish" performing cutting the rope tricks that we all learned how to do at school, you can't really prevent your eyes starting to roll.

All that said, the tricks may be old and obvious, but the showmanship is quite definitely all present and correct. His banter is amusing, the little twists he puts on his stage equipment are fun, and the silly spoof tricks he performs to blind-side the audience are all pulled off well.

But in the end, it's just a magic show, and one that, the first ten minutes aside, offers very little that's new, and that is a problem. Firman is clearly a talented man, and he has had some television success recently and maybe he's just resting on his laurels a bit here. Flim Flam will keep you entertained for the hour you are watching it, but will probably leave you with a vague lack of satisfaction afterwards. Must try harder.

Fringe Review - Tom Wrigglesworth: I'm Struggling To See How That's Helping, Pleasance Below, 03/08/2008

2008-08-06T10:32:00.003+01:00

Hardly a household name, despite having won So You Think You're Funny five years ago, Tom Wrigglesworth is a lanky Yorkshireman with wildly unlikely hair who adopts the always popular style of the slightly befuddled Englishman nonplussed by the world around him.

Wrigglesworth greets his audience from the stage, already there seated on a stool, noodling away on a guitar while making wryly sardonic comments about those coming in. On this particular day he seems to have an obsession with umbrellas, having spotted a large and burly man carrying a particularly effeminate-looking example of said article, and this acts as a good way to get the audience warmed up and ready for comedy by the time they are in their seats.

The broad theme of the show, as can probably be surmised from the title, is the little things in life which seem designed to baffle us. But Wrigglesworth himself admits very early on that this is merely a device to allow him to paint on a wide-ranging canvas by being deliberately vague about the actual focus. It is admissions of this kind that help him to make the show seem like an inclusive experience, a kind of "we're all in this together" attitude which you can't help finding yourself warming to.

Many of his themes during the show are broad, a number of them are the usual popular targets, and he includes a routine on Facebook which seems to be becoming this year's ever-present topic, and while nothing he does is exactly ground-breaking most of his routines are funny, find original things to say, and hit their mark.

Meanwhile his audience banter is very good, and he finds particular fun in having a French girl in the front row whose boyfriend frequently has to explain points of reference to her.

Overall this is one of those shows that you often come across in the Fringe, that are not going to be troubling any of the awards panels, but nonetheless prove a highly enjoyable way of whiling away an hour and send you back onto the street with a broad smile on your face.

Fringe Review - Tim Minchin: Ready For This?, Pleasance Grand, 01/08/2008

2008-08-03T20:29:00.004+01:00

The title of Perrier Best Newcomer is not always a guarantee of great things to come. One or two of the recipients have gone on to great things, but some have fallen by the wayside and most simply went on to be jobbing comedians. Few, surely, have ended up, just three years later, filling one of the largest regular venues on the Fringe.

Such is Tim Minchin’s talent that it is hard to believe that it can only have been three years. But so meteoric has been his rise that, with this, his third Fringe show, with a documentary film about his life already under his belt, this is beyond doubt one of the hot tickets of the year.

Which is a lot of pressure to put on someone so, relatively speaking, inexperienced. And as a musical comedian, it must be equally difficult to leave behind songs that have served him long and well, especially with loyal fans who would have been just as happy with another outing of Inflatable You and Canvas Bag.

But this is an all new show. Nothing borrowed from earlier shows, nothing recycled. And once again, Minchin has come up trumps with a set of songs which range from the silly and fun to the complex and thought-provoking. If there is a disappointment in the show it is maybe that the opening “Ready For This” song is a little too reminiscent of the previous “So Rock” from his last show, with a similar “pretend instrument” theme to it.

But that’s just a niggle, a minor blip in another all-round triumph which can only enhance Minchin’s reputation. It’s a show in which he appears to be airing a few general grievances, working through some of the things that bug him in life, whether it be religious fundementalists trying to tell him how to be a good person, new age hippie idealism and the rejection of science, or just intolerance that he is subjected to on a more, shall we say, hirsute level.

Minchin is really a comic who entertains on every level. His show combines superb physical comedy and slapstic with amazing verbal dexterity and virtuoso musicianship, and even some risk taking as there are few who would have the guts to hand over nine whole minutes of their hour long show to a beat poem which is, in essence, just a single extended joke.

But it works, and does so superbly, blending with all the other elements to create what would, if I were the kind of reviewer to give out stars, be the first this year to receive all five of them. Minchin is unmissable, and long may he remain so. It will take something special if I am going to see another show this year as good as this one.

Fringe Envy

2008-08-03T09:11:00.007+01:00

For those of us not fortunate enough to make it to Edinburgh this year, we still have the opportunity to live vicariously through others...

Chortle are posting daily video clips, giving a taste of a different act each time, http://chortle.blip.tv.

Ewen Spence is back for the 4th season offering a very good Edinburgh Fringe podcast that contains interviews, news and reviews, http://edinburghfringe.thepodcastnetwork.com.

The Guardian will also be providing their own podcast offering, hosted by Miles Jupp, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/series/comedypodcast.

The BBC will be recording two shows at the fringe, hosted by Sean Lock and containing performances by a number of Edinburgh favourites and new comers, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/comedy/edinburgh2008.shtml.

E4 also have a podcast, which will be hosted by different people throughout the fringe run, http://www.e4.com/edinburgh/podcast-listen.html.

There will also be radio shows, more videos, podcasts and articles cropping up all over the place, and we will be updating this list as we find them. If you see anything that we haven't, let us know!

Fringe Preview - Nick Revell: Sleepless, Wee Room at the Gilded Baloon Teviot, 01/08/2008

2008-08-01T23:28:00.004+01:00

Although he emerged as one of the alternative comedy crowd of the early eighties, doing his apprenticeship at the Comedy Store and on Friday Night Live, Nick Revell was never really an angry young man of comedy, more his thoughtful intellectual cousin. And now, quarter of a century later, it is that thoughtfulness which keeps him from being just another of the grumpy old men generation. He may be grumpy, but his concerns, for the most part, are by no means trite.

It was quite a surprise to me to see this elder statesman of the alternative scene in such a small room at such an early hour. But maybe today's audiences don't know their history so well, because while the comedy literate will be well aware of the huge influence he has had on British comedy, he has never been much of a one for pushing himself into the public eye, content to make his home in Radio 4 satire rather than BBC2 panel shows.

Revell begins by explaining the title, saying that the theme of the show is things that keep him awake at night. But like so many Fringe shows, it's a theme he almost entirely forgets about from the moment the words leave his lips. Apart from the occasional mention along the way, what the theme really is, is simply things that bug him. And we're not talking things like loud music or not getting a seat on the bus, Revell's concerns are of a serious bent, world politics, global warming and why the world seems to care more about the cult of celebrity than genocide in Darfur.

These are tricky subjects to tackle, but Revell does so with eloquence and intelligence, and while very little of his set is bust-a-gut funny, nonetheless he never loses your attention. And that attention is adequately rewarded by the few occasions when he does let loose with a killer punchline.

So perhaps the early evening slot is a blessing after all. This is comedy that should not be viewed through the bleary eyes of excessive alcohol consumption, even thought that too is a topic covered along the way. This is smart and clever and you'll want your wits about you to appreciate it properly. So perhaps not a show to go to if you just want a bunch of giggles with your mates. But for the more discerning viewer, a thoroughly enjoyable experience nonetheless.

Fringe Preview - Reginald D Hunter: No Country for Grown Men, Pleasance Grand, 30/07/2008

2008-08-01T11:22:00.001+01:00

Is Reg Hunter mellowing in his old age? After courting controversy with show titles such as "Pride and Prejudice and Niggas" and "A Mystery Wrapped in a Nigga", and last year responding to the furore with a show called "Fuck You in an Age of Consequence," this year's strapline seems positively tame. It does, however, succinctly sum up the idea that Reg is trying to put across.

The theme of the show is the way in which, in modern life, we are not trusted to be grown-ups, even in a matter such as choosing what to do when you find there is no paper in the pub toilet. His beef is that men are not being allowed to act like men any more, but this isn't a macho thing, just a question of disposing of the "rules" and letting us get back to using our basic common sense.

Hunter has some great routines and a few killer lines in here, but this being a preview show, it has to be said that it was yet to really gel into a coherent whole. There were a few points where it was clear that he was struggling to remember what he had planned to talk about next, and one or two of the topics seemed a little random and scattered.

But that's what previews are for, and it was equally clear that there was enough good stuff in here that, once he's up and firing on all cylinders, it will live up to the quality we have come to expect.

And of course Hunter always has the main weapon in his arsenal, that deep-voiced warm soothing southern drawl that you could listen to all day. Combined with the baffled grin with which he punctuates his most salient points, it makes him an extraordinarily charismatic performer, which gives him the freedom to draw the audience to him rather than reaching for laughs and punchlines.

As more of an initial overview than a finished product, it is difficult to say, but I'm not sure this show is ever going to reach the heights of some of his previous outings, but nonetheless it maintains a very high standard, and in its late night slot could make an excellent end to a packed Fringe day.

Fringe Preview - Miles Jupp: Drifting, Dining Room at the Gilded Balloon Teviot, 30/07/2008

2008-07-31T08:33:00.008+01:00

Since winning So You Think You're Funny seven years ago, Miles Jupp has gone about having a quietly successful career combining stand-up with acting roles, most notably probably as Archie the Inventor in the BBC children's series Balamory.

Most of his stand-up career has been as a kind of character act, albeit the character being essentially himself, a "nice but dim" upper-middle class, slightly out of touch with the real world ditherer. His appearance, the unfashionable spectacles, wilfully unstylish wild curly hair, puppy-fat face and twenty years out of fashion clothing, has always added to and enhanced this persona, almost a shorthand for what was going to come.

So when he bounded onto the stage for this performance, looking fit and trim, contacts firmly in place, short-haired, trendy bearded and wearing well cut jeans and a casual shirt, it took a moment to realise that some random stranger hadn't just wandered into the wrong gig.

But that was a good thing, because it meant that Jupp had nothing to fall back on, no easy crutch, and had to rely on his own wit and personality only to carry the show. And for the most part, he did just that.

This is occasionally a hit and miss show. Jupp tells long rambling stories, some of which work superbly well, but others seem to fizzle out with nary a final punchline in sight. For instance, his tale of testicular trauma had the audience virtually rolling in the aisles, but the following story, involving a dead dog, just went nowhere and left you wondering what exactly the point he was trying to make had been. Later, on the other hand, he shows himself to be a man after my own heart with a lengthy rant on the state of the British railway system that is absolutely spot-on.

But with the main weapon in his arsenal, his easy public school charm, present and intact, he is an impossible act not to warm to, and as such an hour in his company passes comfortably. While it probably won't be the most laugh-out-loud show you will see all through the Fringe, it is definitely worth checking out if you want to be left with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

Luke Toulson, Stuart Black, compere Sam Stone - Soho Comedy Club, London, 21/07/2008

2008-07-27T19:53:00.008+01:00

Looking for good comedy while finding yourself free for a night in London, at the moment it's difficult to go wrong. My only problem was trying to find an Edinburgh preview show featuring artists I wasn't likely to go to see during the Edinburgh Fringe itself. This one seemed to fit the bill. With two comics I had heard of, but wasn't terribly familiar with, it was a perfect opportunity to catch them at this rough and ready stage of preparation and see whether they might be acts I would want to explore further in the future. As it happened, in both cases the answer was yes.

Sam Stone hosted the evening, but in all honesty had very little to do on this kind of occasion. With only twenty or so in the audience, all crammed into a small stuffy room above a pub off Charing Cross Road, she had the chance to chat to pretty much everyone, find out where they were from, what they did, but there was little by way of warming up needed and she sensibly kept things brief and got the acts on in quick time.

Luke Toulson (above) is a tall shambling man, possibly best known for those with children as Captain DJ in the BBC kids series Space Pirates. That this fact has failed to impress his own five year-old son formed part of his act, much of which was taken up with similar disappointments experienced in his life.

The show, subtitled "There Are So Many Things I Can't Do," is Toulson's first as a solo performer, although he is something of an Edinburgh veteran, most recently as part of a double act with Stephen Harvey. He tells us it follows the story of two journeys, but in all honesty, as with many of these shows, that is just a framework on which to hang material of all kinds, and although he tells us of a journey to Italy to propose to a girlfriend, the details are sketchy and not really followed through at all.

But that's okay, because his material is good, and even though many of his subjects are well worn, such as a lengthy diatribe about the crapness of Ryanair, he does manage to draw some extra mileage out of them without them ever seeming hack. Indeed I had only one complaint in terms of subject matter, that being did we really need yet another joke about dyslexics not being able to spell dyslexia?

Overall, Toulson is shambling and scruffy and easy-going, and overall an easy person to warm to and the sort of act you could imagine having a pint and a chat with, and his act has plenty to keep even the most hardened punter amused.

Physically, at least, Stuart Black could not be more different from Toulson if he tried. Where the latter is gangly and awkward looking, Black is small, sleek and ferret-like. But where there is a similarity is that they both adopt a slightly distracted style to their delivery. In Black's case, to the point where he spends much of his time wandering around on stage, ever-present beer bottle in hand, looking a bit lost and as if he isn't quite sure what to say next.

But the audience should not be taken in by this approach, because it soon becomes clear that he knows exactly what he is doing. The delivery may be fragmentary, but the material itself is anything but, the humour cutting and very direct. Meanwhile his soft West-Country accent lulls you into a false sense of security so that the killer punchlines seem to land with much greater effect.

Black is a relative newcomer by comparison with Toulson, but in all honesty, of the two, is the one I would say was the more likely to go on to great things. Certainly both have the potential to make good club headliners, but Black has that extra quality which makes him one to look out for, and the originality of routines tackling such subjects as why watching hardcore porn makes you gay, shows the kind of off-kilter mind that you imagine could find the humour in almost any given situation.

Andrew Maxwell, Soho Theatre 12/07/08

2008-07-13T22:16:00.006+01:00

With only two and a half weeks to go before the opening of this year's Edinburgh Festival, comedians across the country are working hard to iron out any kinks in their new material before presenting it at at the "exams for clowns". Because of this you will find in random venues the fun that is the "work in progress" show.

A work in progress show can be a dangerous thing, occasionally presenting material that hasn't been thought through, doesn't work and isn't funny. Fortunately, with Andrew Maxwell, this isn't the case. Although not yet as slick as the final show will be, the material was strong, and very funny. Maxwell also knows how treat a WIP crowd, making fun of himself and the occasional need to refer to a some jotted down notes without allowing it to disrupt the atmosphere of the evening.

Maxwell's show considers Evil, the concept with a capital E. What he finds is mostly that there are a lot of misguided and incompetent people, but Evil is a lot harder to find. The show is very funny, but does something which I love in a comedy show, which is to use the comedy to make you think of something a bit more serious.

So yes, the show's not perfect yet, but I have every confidence that it will be fantastic by the time he opens the doors at the Pleasance Courtyard, and heartily recommend it to everyone up in Edinburgh. (And think of me while you're there enjoying yourselves...I can't make it up this year.)

Interview: Go Faster Stripe

2008-07-07T21:17:00.003+01:00

Partly because it's gone a bit quiet on here, and partly because I'm feeling guilty at having contributed very little since the site's inception, here's a post that went up on my own site last summer all about Cardiff's premier champions of stand-up comedy, Go Faster Stripe.

* * * * *

Over the last year and a half, I've written a great deal about what seems to me to be the wealth of musical talent to which Cardiff is home. But it's important to point out that there are many other creative enterprises going on in the city, all deserving of promotion and wider attention. One such enterprise is Go Faster Stripe.

At a time when only the biggest comedians - Peter Kay, Ricky Gervais - seem to get the opportunity to record DVDs (which subsequently sell by the bucketload), the Go Faster Stripe team invite top-class stand-ups to perform in front of live audiences at Chapter and have the performances recorded for sale online. Not only does this mean that Cardiff is suddenly attracting some bigger names - I've seen Stewart Lee, Richard Herring and Robin Ince at Go Faster Stripe gigs - but it has also ensured that whole shows haven't passed into history unrecorded. That foresight and generosity should be applauded.

Fresh from a scouting mission to the Edinburgh Festival, GFS's Chris Evans was kind enough to find time to tell me a bit more...

How did Go Faster Stripe come about?

"I read on Stewart Lee's website that he was sad that his show '90s Comedian' was not going to be recorded. He'd tried to give it away to late night satellite channels, and no one was interested. I was sad about this too. And then I remembered I've got a few mates that know one end of a camera from the other, so I wrote to Stew and told him. We recorded the show, and it surprised everyone when it came out rather well."

What inspired and / or continues to inspire you?

"People in any walk of life that follow their heart, rather than money. In the comedy world, it's the comedians who are doing something new with the artform. And they do this even though they remain at the sidelines of the business."

How many people are involved in the work of putting together each DVD?

"There's five of us at the recordings - two cameramen, a stills photographer, a sound guy and me. Chapter supply a couple of staff to collect tickets and operate the lighting. Once we've got the show, we've an editor who makes what we've recorded look lovely. And then there's the sleeve designer, who also does our adverts - although he's the still photographer too, so I don't know if that count as another person. Finally, my girlfriend packs up the orders that we get through our website."

Which has been your favourite DVD to record so far?

"I've only asked people that I love - so I couldn't possibly pick one. They are all magnificent."

Who would you most like to work with?

"I think it might be interesting to work with a much bigger name - someone that is - or at least has - had a big DVD produced for them. I think the way we record stuff is often more powerful as we record it in a more intimate setting."

What are the plans for the future? Any new releases on the horizon?

"There's an unstoppable machine in action. We've got new DVDs coming out from Simon Munnery, Robin Ince, and another from Richard Herring. These are all in the can, and are at various stages of post-production. And in September [8th, at Chapter], we are filming a show with Lucy Porter, which will be lovely."

Great to see a venture like this snowballing. Thanks to Chris for his time, and best wishes to the team for the future.

* * * * *

Since the interview, the Simon Munnery, Richard Herring and Lucy Porter DVDs have all come out (not quite sure what happened to the Robin Ince one), and their new release is Wil Hodgson's 'Skinheads, Readers' Wives And My Little Ponies'. Plans are afoot for them to branch out into publishing, too, with a book of the first six months of Herring's blog Warming Up in the pipeline.

George Carlin - The End of an Era

2008-06-24T20:49:00.008+01:00

For comedy fans the world over, the death of George Carlin on Sunday, at the age of 71, in Santa Monica, California, severed the last link with a generation of comics who changed the face of comedy forever.

Carlin was one of the greats. There is no doubt about that. His influence on those who followed, from Robin Williams to Jerry Seinfeld to Bill Hicks, is undeniable. What is equally undeniable is that he was unique, one of a kind, and one of the few comedians who remained a vital and original force in comedy right up until his dying day.

Born in New York on May 12th 1937, Carlin was the son of middle-class Roman Catholic parents, of Irish descent. He was raised by his mother after his parents split up, and left school at the age of 14. Joining the US Air Force, he served as a radar technician, but by his own account was seldom out of trouble. While serving, he began to work as a disk jockey on the side, and after his discharge in 1957 he continued in this line of work, taking a job at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas.

While working for the station he met Jack Burns, and the two became close friends, and later formed a comedy double-act. The comedy was of the traditional style of the time, straightforward gags performed wearing suits for a mostly middle-class or business type audience. They were successful and, quitting the radio station, took the act on the road. Then in 1962, while the pair were performing in Chicago, they went to see another comedian performing locally. This was Lenny Bruce, and as soon as Carlin witnessed Bruce's revolutionary anti-establishment comedy, he knew that the mainstream was no longer for him. Shortly afterwards he and Burns went their separate ways, and Carlin began to develop his act in a less straightforward style. Burns would go on to enjoy a moderately successful career of his own, including becoming the head writer for The Muppet Show.

Through the sixties Carlin developed a style of character comedy, inspired by Bruce and which would later itself prove an inspiration to the young Richard Pryor, both of which men he struck up friendships with. He began to appear regularly on television, most notably on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, which he also guest hosted. He was present during Bruce's infamous arrest for obscenity, allegedly being arrested himself for refusing to show the police his ID.

In 1970 he changed his act again, and it would lead to his own arrest and obscenity charge two years later. Growing his hair long and in a pony tail, with a matching beard, and dressing all in black, Carlin began to perform political anti-establishment material, including routines in which he openly admitted drug use. But it was his "seven words you can never say on television" routine which resulted in his brief incarceration. He was arrested in Milwaukee on July 21st 1972, but the charge was dropped later that year after a judge ruled that the words had been indecent but not obscene.

The seven words later led to a change in the US law, an fact that Carlin declared himself proud of. When a New York radio station broadcast a recording of the routine in 1973, a complaint by a listener that his son had heard the words led to a five year court battle which ended up in the Supreme Court, and resulted in the creation of a 10pm watershed for the American media, before which no material unsuitable for children was to be broadcast.

In 1975, Carlin was the guest host for the first ever episode of the legendary US late night comedy show Saturday Night Live, and in 1977 he recorded the first of his 14 HBO comedy special shows which would elevate his status in the US to that of a household name. It was around this time, unknown to the public, that he also suffered his first heart attack.

Carlin continued to perform edgy and daring comedy, his constant themes being criticism of the US government and puncturing the pomposity of the establishment, as well as mocking established religion and forming one of his own, frisbeetarianism, the belief of which was that when a person died, his soul got slung on the roof and had to stay there. In the late '80s he found a new young audience through his performances as Rufus, the time travelling mentor of the titular characters in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and it's sequel. He also, rather more bizarrely, provided the narration for the American releases of the Thomas the Tank Engine television series.

In 2003 he was at the centre of controversy again, after being fired by the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas for telling his audience that everyone who visited Las Vegas were "fucking morons" and of "limited intellect" and on being challenged by the audience told them to "blow me."

In early 2006 he suffered his second heart attack, and later that year increased his popularity again when he appeared as the voice of Fillmore, the hippie Volkswagon minibus in the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. He carried on performing right up to his death, his last performance being in Las Vegas, the city he hated so much, on June 15th. Three days later it was announced that he would be the recipient of this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, a prestigious award whose previous honourees include Richard Pryor, Bob Newhart and Steve Martin. The award ceremony in November is set to go ahead, when he will become the first ever posthumous recipient.

On Sunday afternoon he was admitted to hospital complaining of chest pains. It was his third and final heart attack, and he died at 5.55pm local time.

Carlin will be remembered not just for his own long and frequently brilliant career, but for the generations of comedians worldwide who have drawn inspiration from him. In a tribute this week, Jerry Seinfeld spoke of how, no matter what idea you might come up with, someone would always tell you "Carlin did it first." I will leave the final words to his daughter, Kelly Carlin:

"Most people know George Carlin as an icon of comedy and an advocate of free speech. I just know him as Dad … and what a dad he was. He taught me the value of speaking the truth in a world that doesn't always want to hear it and gave me the gift of laughter. He was loved and revered by so many and will be missed beyond words — but never forgotten."

Jason Rouse, Gary Delaney, Vince Fluke, Rab Brown, compere Lucy Porter - The Stand, Edinburgh, 05/06/2008

2008-06-19T22:28:00.003+01:00

Some comedy nights are a little strange. On this particular night, I found myself seeing a bill of comedians none of whom I was at all familiar with or knew what to expect from, aside from the main draw, being the MC, Lucy Porter, one of my favourite comics whose last four Edinburgh shows I have attended and very much enjoyed but who I had never seen plying her trade as a club comedian before.

In fact she makes a perfect host, her big personality which belies her somewhat diminutive stature filling the room and setting up the room perfectly for laughs. It’s a shame then, that few of the acts were able to take advantage of this, but this takes nothing away from Porter who, during the course of the evening, may even have created the beginnings of a beautiful transatlantic romance between a gruff voiced bearded American and a young girl out celebrating her birthday in the front row.

For the opening act, Vince Fluke, I have to be fair and point out that I later learned that he had only been brought in as a very last minute replacement. Sadly, it showed. A personable Canadian, he never seemed to get to grips with the audience, and from the very beginning of his set seemed to be floundering and constantly changing tack trying to find something to hook the attention with. But the result made his set jumpy and disjointed and make very little sense. Further, he seemed to spend an inordinate amount of his time informing people that he was going to be working at the T in the Park festival, without saying anything particularly funny about it, as if it was going to cause a ripple of recognition, something that was never going to happen in front of a crowd most of whom were either too old or too English to know what it was.

Glaswegian Rab Brown came next, and as the “newcomer” act of the evening, was the one performer who really shone. Taking his chance well, he performed a set of not necessarily very original material, but his take on hen parties, homosexual flirting and his own lack of attractiveness was at least different enough to be memorable, and fulfilled the main objective of being really very funny.

Next up was Gary Delaney, something of an old fashioned gagsmith whose set consisted almost entirely of a series of one-liners and puns. An accomplished writer as well as a comedian, whose jokes can often be heard coming out of the mouths of established TV acts, including Basil Brush, Delaney has a number of excellent gags which soon have the audience on his side. But twenty minutes is a long time to be firing out one pun after another, and to be honest the set could have done with more variety. By about half way through the whole thing felt a bit overloaded, and the audience were becoming noticeably quieter. However, an excellent final few minutes won them back over in the end.

And then came Jason Rouse, another Canadian act, and it’s difficult to know what to say here. Leather clad, tattoo covered and dripping with metal accoutrements from countless piercings and the lining of his teeth, Rouse is a comedian whose main objective is to offend. He sets about this from the word go, reading the mood and the demeanour of the audience and almost resolutely setting himself up in opposition to it. There is little by way of actual humour in his act, rather it consists of a series of statements each designed to push the audience to the limits of their tolerance.

This, in itself, is not a bad thing. There are a number of acts who rely on the same concept, and some of them pull it off very expertly indeed. Rouse, sadly, does not appear to be one of them. There is nothing wrong with being offensive, and it is good when comedy can challenge, but it seems to me that this kind of material should either be leading towards a point, or if not then should at least be very very funny. Rouse’s material was neither. And so relentless was he in piling one sick and twisted image onto another and another, that within not too many minutes, it had even lost the power to shock, simply becoming mundane and, difficult though it is to see how this is possible with subject matter including rape, incest, paedophilia and taking sexual advantage of the mentally impaired, quite frankly boring.

Daniel Kitson - The Impotent Fury of the Privileged - The Stand, Edinburgh, 20/05/2008

2008-06-07T01:05:00.004+01:00

Two years ago, when Channel 4 broadcast their list of the hundred greatest stand-ups, voted for by the public, a good many of those watching were probably surprised when a strange little bearded man named Daniel Kitson popped up at number 27, higher than the likes of Bob Monkhouse, Lenny Henry and Graham Norton. Even Channel 4 were probably surprised, the only clip they could find to show was a some poorly shot hand held video footage of the man at an improbably young age.

Kitson has always been something of an oddity in the comedy world, a prodigy who set out at the age of 16 with the ambition to be the best comedian in the world. Not necessarily the most famous, just the best. Whether he has succeeded or not is a matter of taste, but the fact that, despite steering a course which has not included television exposure or the endless rounds of comedy panel shows, his two nights at The Stand were sold out a month in advance, demonstrates how firmly his reputation has rooted itself among the comedy literate.

In recent years Kitson has been moving away from pure comedy towards shows which are scripted monologues, a cross between traditional stand-up and theatre. This show doesn’t quite straddle that line to the same extent as his last few, it remains Kitson talking to his audience rather than going into character, but nonetheless it is a rigidly structured piece focussed around a single idea, which is remarkable for its length.

All told, Kitson is on stage for a little over two hours, although the show itself, as he describes it, takes up one and three quarters of that, the remainder being a warm up and introduction, part explanation of what he is trying to do, part general comedy, and a small part involving a quite devastating put-down of an audience heckler which shows that, whatever else might have changed along the way, he’s still got the goods to deliver.

The show itself revolves around an incident which occurred on the night before Kitson moved out of his flat, a quite slight tale but one which takes on greater and greater significance as he takes diversion after diversion, examining the implications of the incident from every angle and with each revelation leading to the next dilemma. Along the way he takes us through a thorough exploration of the morality of the modern world, and the idea that we all want our world to be a better place but none of us are prepared to do what it takes to bring it about while being critical of others for failures no worse than our own.

And if all that sounds extraordinarily heavy for a comedy show, it is. But in Kitson’s capable hands it is also extremely funny. Delivered at almost inhuman pace, no line of inquiry is left unfollowed, no thought unexplored, and every word is carefully selected and relished until the result becomes almost comedic poetry, floating over an audience who have to work almost as hard as the performer just to take it all in.

And therein lies the one problem with this show. Because two hours without a break is a long time for any comedy audience to concentrate, without the level of complexity and intensity that Kitson brings to the table, and the result is that there are times during the show that you find yourself tuning out and just letting the words wash over you for a while before girding your loins to dive back in.

So while this show is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement, there is such a thing as being too damned clever for your own good, and this probably steps a little too far across that line. Regardless, whatever the shortcomings, Kitson in full flow is a sight to behold, and in the end he only solidifies his reputation and delivers some of the most thought-provoking material you will ever hear while laughing. Overlong and often overcomplicated it may be, but every other comedian in the country would kill to be this good.

Richard Herring, Neil McFarlane, Keith Farnan, Gordon Alexander, compere Susan Calman - The Stand, Edinburgh, 25/04/2008

2008-06-01T11:29:00.006+01:00

One of the problems that The Stand encounters as a comedy club is that as the Edinburgh Fringe draws ever closer, so the bigger names on the circuit start to be reluctant to play the city. As such, to pull in one of the biggest names of all at the end of April is quite a coup, and reflected in the bustling house.

Diminuitive Glaswegian Susan Calman is in charge of proceedings for the night, and to my mind she is fast becoming the best MC on the Scottish scene. She has everything you want in a compere, a fast mind, a cutting wit, and a seemingly genuine interest in her targets. She knows when to attack and when to hold back, and how to keep control of the punters who want to take things a bit too far, as well as an innate ability to take anything thrown at her and seamlessly find the right bit of material to suit the moment.

Opening act Keith Farnan set the pace of the evening well. A laid back Irishman from county Cork, he has that easy Irish charm that benefits so many comics from the Emerald Isle. His comedy is very much performed with a wink and a grin, drawing the audience in with a warmth of delivery and a conversational style. And although much of his material is not exactly ground-breaking, mostly revolving around “look at us Irish, aren’t we eejits, we can take anything and make it Irish,” it is nonetheless extremely funny, and as such does the job it sets out to do.

Gordon Alexander is a very blokish comic. Hailing from the north of England but now resident in Scotland, he has been slowly making a name for himself on the local scene. Standing six feet six and with a shaven head, he looks quite a scary sort, but his delivery is quite matey. Unfortunately, although this performance shows promise, his material is not really strong enough for this sort of level and routines which include saying stupid things to the Bullseye Bully’s Prize Board tune, while quite amusing, don’t seem to go anywhere.

Neil McFarlane is another local comic, but one who is starting to move out onto the national scene. Like Farnan, much of his material is based in the experience of being Scottish, and routines revolve around annoying Edinburgh tourists, his middle-class Scottish upbringing, and his years spent working in the BBC Glasgow complaints department. He’s an experienced and polished act, and one who can draw his audience in with his relaxed and often seemingly random style.

Finally we came to Richard Herring, and this was an interesting experience for me, because while I have seen him performing countless times in his own shows, I wasn’t quite sure how he would fit in the more pressured environment of a club night, in front of an audience many of whom had come out for a night of good laughs rather than because of who was on the bill. Herring can be an acquired taste, with his penchant for pedantry, and for often drawing out a gag at excruciating length to the point at which he courts losing his audience altogether.

And the answer, to be honest, was that I’m not sure that he did fit very well. Most of the material for the night was drawn from last year’s Fringe show, and while he started well with some snappy deconstructions of common mottos, when he moved into a lengthy dissection of the slogan on a tee-shirt, which proceeded to form the bulk of the set, I could see he was starting to lose certain sections of the audience who were wishing he would move on and not keep hammering the same topic over and over.

Herring is the first to admit that, despite two decades of stage experience, much of it was spent in the “rehearsed show” format, and he came to pure stand-up late in the day and as such is still learning. His name on the bill, of course, is always going to be a draw, and for a comedy literate crowd the brilliance of his wordplay is a sheer delight. But I think he needs still to learn to judge his crowd and tailor his material to the night. He’s a class act, and no denying it, but for me, on this night, there was just something missing.

Carey Marx, Bishop & Douch, compere Nick Page - The Cellar, Oxford, 28/04/08

2008-05-09T00:27:00.002+01:00

How to get people out to comedy gigs on a Monday night? That was the dilemma faced by Paddy Luscombe, the man behind The Free Beer Show. Can you guess how he manages it?

If the students who comprise the vast majority of the audience are aware who compere Nick Page is, then they do a good job of hiding it. Perhaps in these times of tuition fees and rising academic expectations, they're just too conscientious to spend their days sprawled in front of daytime TV, in which case they might not recognise the former presenter of shitey BBC property series 'Escape To The Country'. But somehow I doubt it.

Having begun by getting an uncomfortable laugh with a topical quip about us being squashed together into a confined underground space, Page does briefly savage the programme on which he prostituted himself, but gets more mileage out of his home county, Gloucestershire, being famous for only two things: the bizarre practice of cheese rolling and Fred West. Apparently there's so little to proud of if you're from Gloucester that if you badmouth West someone will come up to you and say "Yeah, but he was a fucking good builder..."

The fact that when Page reappears, some twenty-five minutes later (though it feels like twenty-five hours), he has a bemused smile plastered across his face should tell you something about support act Bishop & Douch (and friends). That that bemused smile raises a far bigger laugh than they could manage certainly should. That his first words are "Anyone need a drink?"...

Tonight's set consists of an amorphous and incoherent sketch that shifts in content and location. It begins with the hapless duo being chastised for a dereliction of duties by their boss at Disneyland, then becomes a tiresomely repetitive deconstruction of the familiar unmasking of Old Man Winters from 'Scooby Doo' with the backing cast stepping out of role to hijack the script, and ends up in a grim place called Sesame Lane.

Whether or not these three phases are deliberate nods to the first series of 'The Mighty Boosh', Charlie Kaufman's 'Adaptation' and David Chapelle's take on 'Sesame Street' respectively hardly matters - it all hangs together by the most tenuous of threads, and elicits far more awkward silence and bewilderment than it does laughs. Page has confessed that the thing he's inherited from his father (other than an excess of body hair) is the inability to avoid saying or doing something if he'll thereby amuse himself, even if only for a moment. I get the feeling I'm not alone in thinking it's unfortunate that Bishop & Douch seem to suffer from the same affliction.

Page welcomes us back after the interval by recounting his fondness for finding lists of names on noticeboards, very deliberately highlighting just one with a fluorescent marker pen and then making his escape, chuckling at the panic his mischief may have unleashed. But any whimsy is soon swept aside as he tells us, in the accelerated style of delivery he uses at times, of the night (which I suspect may be fictional) when he accidentally dosed himself with Rohypnol.

Tonight's billed headliner Rob Deering, who's had to pull out due to family illness, has been described on Chortle as an "easy-going act" whose "audience rapport is in the Eric Morecambe league, with a natural, non-threatening geniality that only the hardest of hearts wouldn't warm to". The same could hardly be said of his last-minute replacement, who apparently once made Princess Beatrice cry for more than an hour - quite probably not with laughter, one suspects.

For the most part, Carey Marx deals in the comedy of cruelty - or what he repeatedly refers to as "harsh jokes". Most are about midgets and women, and most are pretty unfunny and forgettable. All are delivered with a self-satisfied smirk. If there's anything worse than gratuitous offensiveness purely for the sake of it, then it's gratuitous offensiveness purely for the sake of it that tries to dress itself up as something more noble and purposive. Rather than pressing on regardless of the offence his material might cause, Marx irritatingly feels the need to try to justify and defend himself - but just doesn't have the arguments to do so.

It's a shame as much as an annoyance, though, because there's undoubted potential in some of the material, which has been culled from his diary and which is likely to form the basis for an Edinburgh show called 'Careyness' (and hence why I feel a bit like Herod, sticking the knife into the show in its infancy). We follow him out of his front door, through London, up to Scotland, in and out of hotel rooms, and back again - all the time on the look-out for subjects and incidents to riff on. It's a revealing window into the world of the professional stand-up, and the creation of a set, though much of it will probably rightly end up being filtered out when he sits down and seriously pans for the gold.

When he does dwell on something for long enough to probe a little deeper - such as Australian MP Ann Bressington's call for the introduction of "sex contracts" - it's clear that there's a perceptive wit lurking beneath the laddish exterior. Arguably the best element of the set is the mystery of the various bald men spotted around London folding and tearing up newspapers. But Marx's delivery of the punchline, which would make a neat conclusion to the set, is flat and hurried - and indeed would have been forgotten altogether if not for a prompt from a curious audience member.

Perhaps, to adopt a culinary analogy, you shouldn't sample and criticise what the chef's rustling up when it's still undercooked and far from ready - but even still the evening left rather a sour taste in the mouth.

John Bishop - The Stand, Edinburgh, 22/04/2008

2008-05-04T22:52:00.002+01:00

The comedy world tends to divide itself into two camps, the modern observational or “alternative” comic, and the old fashioned gag-teller or “mainstream” clown as they are usually described. John Bishop is something of an anomaly, because he seems have fallen with a foot in both camps.

From the moment he walks on stage, wearing an expensive suit and with his hair coiffed within an inch of its life, it is clear that Bishop is closer, fashion-wise, to his seventies counterparts than to most of today’s tee-shirt and jeans brigade. And after an opening in which he explains how unhappy he is to be playing the gig while Liverpool’s European semi-final first leg is live on the telly, and informs his audience that for the first time ever he wants them all to keep their phones on and let him know the score if anyone hears anything, he then spends the rest of the gig perched on a stool, again reminiscent of an earlier style of comedy.

And then there is the first half of the show. Bishop informs us that for the second half he will be performing last year’s Fringe show “Stick Your Job Up Your Arse,” but that for the first half he will simply be talking, acting essentially as his own warm-up act. And having said that, he proceeds to regale us with a series of his most showbiz tales possible. There’s the one about playing golf with Alan Shearer, and the one about going to a private gentlemen’s club in Hong Kong with England rugby star Mark Regan, and then there are others about the various famous names he has met and performed for, and it is all a bit “Tarby and Brucie” if truth be told.

His excuse for telling these stories is his amazement at how suddenly, after turning professional as a comic, he found himself moving in these sorts of circles. But you know somewhere deep down a big part of it is the desire to namedrop wildly. But for all that, he is an excellent raconteur, and so while the subject matter of his material might be something of a throwback to another age, he nonetheless has the ability to take the audience with him and keep the laughter coming at a regular pace.

The second half of the show is more thoughtful and paced. Here he tells the story of how, disillusioned with his life, his job and his marriage, he went through something of a personal crisis and found his way out of it when he discovered comedy. It is a story of giving up the things that made him successful in life, in order to pursue the things that gave him self-respect. And of how trying to be all things to all people nearly lost him everything, but being true to himself won them back again.

It is an engaging tale, if at times slightly self-indulgent, and Bishop has a keen eye to spot the humour in every situation. But it lacked the immediacy of the more unfocussed first part of the show. So that overall I came away with the feeling that Bishop is a good comedian, but he will probably never be a great one. He comes across as likeable, charming and decent, but somehow just a little too glib. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that he won’t be needing to return to his day job any time soon.

Dave Fulton, Dan Evans, Niall Browne, Jay Lafferty, compere Joe Heenan - The Stand, Edinburgh, 17/04/2008

2008-04-27T09:45:00.004+01:00

After a weekend show where I had seen almost every act in the recent past, it was refreshing to move on to one where, apart from compere Joe Heenan, I had only seen one of the performers previously, and that one nearly four years ago. Heenan as usual won the audience over quickly with his face-splitting grin, laddish charm and bizarre Arnold Schwarznegger impersonations. He has mastered the art of taking whatever the audience throws at him and adapting his material to make it seem completely off the cuff and applicable. And on this evening he was quick to realise that what every comedy show needs is an enormous shaven-headed publican who looks like he’s about to kill you sitting right in the middle of the front row.

Niall Browne is a Northern Irish comedian now resident in Scotland, and is in many ways a bit of an old fashioned gag-smith. Homely and cheery, he is one of those performers whose act sort of breezes over you in a great big waft of good will. His material is good, and ideas like randomly choosing Olympic competitors in the manner of juries were very funny, but the only time he moves towards any kind of edginess is when he talks about what it was like growing up in his homeland. He takes to the stage on this occasion with his arm in a sling, a fact he refers only briefly and that I thought he could have made a lot more of. Overall his was an entertaining performance, but not a terribly memorable one.

Jay Lafferty is one of the up-and-coming young stars of the Scottish scene at the moment, and it doesn’t hurt that she is also a bit of a babe. This isn’t the only thing about her that draws the male attention, however, as she opens her act with a routine which provides a perfect explanation of the offside rule using shopping as a metaphor. Bright and bubbly, she combines a girly style of delivery with a sometimes unexpectedly twisted mind, and on the evidence of this set it won’t be long before she is moving up from the ten minute try-out spot to become a regular support.

Dan Evans is a name I had heard bandied about a lot, he’s a comedian’s comedian, widely known and appreciated by others in the business. I have to say my first impression of him was as Harry Hill without the collar, and for much of the act his mannerisms, and indeed the bald head, did little to dispel that image. But that is not meant in any way as a criticism, because Evans brand of surreal stream of consciousness humour is sharp and original, his jokes never obvious, and his delivery is assured and confident.

Dave Fulton is an American comic who has been resident in the UK for some years, and as with many of his countrymen living over here, his act revolves in a large part around a critique of his home country. With long straggly hair and a laid-back demeanour he comes over as something of a stoner dude, and indeed probably is, but this is belied by his sometimes savage cutting to the point.

That said, as a political comedian, which he would clearly like to be, he is sometimes slightly lacking, and for instance attacks on President Bush would seem slightly lazy and not a bit pointless at this moment in time. It’s not as if there’s anyone in the audience thinking “I thought he was doing a good job.” He’s on safer ground when he sticks to the personal, such as his examination of the difference in attitudes to drinking between his homeland and his adopted country.

But Fulton is an old hand and has plenty of experience and plenty of material to keep an audience entertained for a forty minute set. And if he isn’t necessarily as “cutting edge” as some of his contemporaries, not everybody has to be.

Absolute Beginners - The Mercat Bar, Edinburgh, 14/04/2008

2008-04-20T19:36:00.003+01:00

The world of stand-up comedy is split roughly into four levels. At the top end are the star names, the likes of Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard, Jack Dee, who can tour the biggest theatres and sell out every night. On the next rung down are the club headliners, people who are not household names, but make a good living out of comedy nonetheless. Below them are the ordinary club comics, who seldom appear on the telly, who fill up the early evening bill in a club, who earn a bit but probably still have to hold down a day job.

And then there are open spots. The bottom rung. The people just starting out, who have yet to prove themselves, who are still learning what’s funny and what isn’t, and how to handle an audience. They rely on the charity of club owners to give them five minutes of stage time, and will often travel for several hours at their own expense just to get it.

But they are the bedrock of the comedy world. The big pool of swirling potential talent that every act further up the ladder had to once be a part of. Many will never find their way up to the next step. Hardly any will ever make it to the top one. But without them, the comedy world would eventually wither and die.

There’s a vicious circle in play. Most promoters would never let an act appear at their club without a bit of stage time under their belt. But unless they can find a spot to play in, the comic is never going to get that necessary experience. That’s where a club like Absolute Beginners comes in.

Started about six months ago by Glaswegian-Irish comic Keara Murphy, the original idea for the night was as a spill-over from The Stand’s new act night Red Raw. With so many aspiring comics vying for so few places, the waiting list for a spot at The Stand was often five or six months long. Keara’s idea was to give those waiting a place where they could practice their act in front of a non-threatening audience, so that when their Red Raw chance came along, they would be ready for it.

And so, every Monday night, folk can file into the basement of the Mercat Bar to watch Keara host eight acts of varying quality, plus a headliner generally from that second rung level, all for the princely sum of £2.

It wouldn’t be fair to these acts to critique their performance. The whole point of the night is as a learning experience, so those who die on their arse get to pick themselves up, brush themselves down and move on, having learned from the experience.

On this particular night the quality ranges from the excellent to the obvious total newcomer. At the top there was Daniel Webster, an act clearly ready now to take the step up to the next level, who had come along to try out a set of all new material. And very good material it was too. A couple of others impress along the way, a few show promise, two or three noticeably need to work on their delivery, at least one loses it altogether.

None of this matters, because that’s the whole point of the evening. Keara, meanwhile, keeps things moving and keeps things light, skilfully glossing over things that have obviously gone wrong, making sure everyone gets an encouraging word in public and a few handy hints on how to improve in private.

To close the show we get Quentin Reynolds, probably best known to readers of the Scottish Metro letters page as “Q from Airdrie,” but also an accomplished stand-up and comedy writer with many years experience under his belt. He takes us through a whistle-stop tour of life in the Scottish heartlands, an unusual world where muggers haggle and neds discuss open heart surgery on the bus.

It’s a suitably good ending to an evening which has pulled in a good sized crowd of probably forty or fifty, and suggests that the Scottish comedy scene is in good hands.

Scott Capurro, Teddy, Juliet Meyers, Jim Park, compere Vladimir McTavish - The Stand, Edinburgh, 10/04/2008

2008-04-16T23:41:00.006+01:00

They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but this was a night that proved that old adage wrong. On the bill there was only one comedian that I had not seen before, and of the others, none I had last seen more than six months ago, two of them twice within that time. In all honesty, I might have given the show a miss if I hadn’t had been taking a visitor along. But in the end I’m glad not to have.

Vladimir McTavish, it has to be said, is a funny man, but is no MC. His curmudgeonly style is not exactly the best way to get an audience warmed up, and his interaction with that audience leaves a bit to be desired. Beyond a cursory introduction, he makes no great attempt to get to know any of their stories, instead content for the most part to cherry-pick from his large store of material and get the laughs going that way. He did a competent job, but I would prefer to see him as an act rather than performing this role in the future.

First on for the night was Juliet Meyers, the one new name for me. A middle-aged, Jewish and a bit of an aging hippie, she was a bundle of enthusiasm and energy from the word go. Again, as an opening act I would say she did what was required, but she isn’t someone I would particularly seek out again. It was something of a workmanlike performance. Very much a gag-teller, she was funny, but her material was mostly quite obvious and the punchlines were often slightly telegraphed.

Jim Park I have reviewed here twice before, and on both occasions I have been less than enthusiastic. So I’m actually quite pleased this time to be able to say that he is growing on me. With new material in the set, he had re-jigged the best of his older lines into a snappy opening few minutes that had a great rhythm and delivered the laughs well, and the new jokes, when they arrived, were equally strong. Meanwhile the air of vague bewilderment with which he performs disarms the audience and makes him easy to warm to.

Teddy, who followed, I had been equally dismissive of in my last review, and again I can only report a change of opinion. Even though he performed, for the most part, the same material, centred on a lengthy shaggy-dog story about a sexual encounter with the woman of his dreams which turned into a bit of a nightmare, he has clearly been busy trimming and honing the performance in the meantime. As a result, some of the more gratuitous crudeness had been stripped away, and the more bizarre and surreal moments had been highlighted making for a set that was not merely improved, but actually sounded fresher on this occasion than on first hearing it.

And talking of gratuitous crudeness, Scott Capurro is the master of that particular art-form. Seeming to get taller and skinnier every time I see him, the camp San Franciscan could read the phone book and make it sound pornographic. There’s a famous quote by George Carlin that the job of a comedian is to find out where the line is and then cross it, and this is something Capurro seems to have taken very much to heart. He is not a comedian for the faint hearted, as he gleefully pushes and pushes his audience to see how far he can bend them before they will break.

Nothing is off-limits in one of Capurro’s shows, as he runs the gamut of racial and sexual stereotypes, but always if you listen close enough it becomes clear that the butt of the joke is actually ourselves and our own highly-strung middle-class attitudes to these subjects. The basis of his humour is always that people want to tell you what it is and is not acceptable to joke about, without first stopping to consider what it is that they find offensive about it. That most people just hear the key-word and say “you can’t say that,” without listening to the context in which the word is being said. Capurro makes you listen and he makes you think, and he makes you laugh at the same time, and that’s really what all good comedy should be about.

King Gong - The Comedy Store, London

2008-04-12T09:06:00.007+01:00

One of the best things about moving out of the middle of nowhere and closer to "The City" is the improved ease of going to an event just because you fell like it, without needing to plan things in advance or worry about getting home again afterwards. Therefore, when I was wandering around Leicester square the other evening and happened to walk past the comedy store, I decided to pop in and see what things were like. The evening's event was a "Beat the Gong" event, something that I had never been to before, and wasn't sure what to expect from it.

For others who have never experienced a Gong show before, it's a fairly simple concept. The wannabe comedians have to survive on stage for 5 minutes without being gonged off. They can be gonged off by the MC for time wasting, or a number of other petty misdemeanours, but the main power to gong someone off lies in the hands of the audience. Three random people were selected from the crowd and issued with red cards, if all three red cards go up in the air, the wannabe is gonged.

Surviving the full time on stage is a difficult thing to do: five minutes is a long time in comedy and the audience is a fickle mistress. On this particular night only five of the 20+ to take the stage managed to avoid the gong, and that was despite a couple of comedians who, at the request of the audience, were given second (and in one case third) chances. Of those that made it through, the audience then selected it's ultimate favourite who will go on to other things.

A good MC for the night is crucial to keep everything working and keep the audience laughing. This particular night, the MC was Ben Norris and he did a fantastic job. When I spoke to a few people in the crowd, people seemed to be of the opinion that they would quite happily have paid the £5 entrance just for his bits...all the other would be comedians were a bonus.

As a note to anyone who likes the idea of taking part in a gong event: it's a great place to try and find out if you have the makings of a comedian, and build up some stage confidence. But, don't insult the audience, don't make references to the inner workings of the body (male or female) and don't be too vulgar (crude and rude is fine, but careful with the vulgarity). But the most important thing: there are three judges in the audience at any time, don't be put off because one doesn't like you. too many of the acts had one red card against them, reacted defensively to this and floundered a bit...and that caused the other two cards to go up. Ignore the cards, focus on general audience opinion instead.

All in all, a gong show is a good night out, but don't expect the kind of quality of humour you'd get from a more traditional show.

Steve Hughes, Chris Lynam, Mark Nelson, Isma Almas, compere Bruce Devlin - The Stand, Edinburgh, 04/04/2008

2008-04-12T02:17:00.004+01:00

Some nights... just turn out to be a little bit bizarre. I probably should have realised that this was going to be one of them when we spotted the chap sitting in the front row wearing cricket pads and gloves and drinking Magners cider from the bottle through a straw that was actually a bat grip filled with ice. As can be imagined, it didn’t take MC Bruce Devlin more than, oh, about two thousandths of a second to spot and home in on him like a sniper with a laser sight.

As it turns out this is only one of three stag and hen parties in the room on this particular night, which gives Devlin plenty of material to exercise his trademark bitchy camp humour on. As circumstances had forced us into the front row, I was glad of this as it meant that I escaped, at this juncture at least, relatively lightly.

But anyway, the evening started off okay, indeed rather well. Opening act Mark Nelson won Scottish Comedian of the Year two years ago, and he showed why with an excellent performance which combined a very dry wit and some caustic one-liners with a great deal of warmer self-deprecating humour. A regular fixture on the Scottish stand-up circuit, on this performance I can’t imagine it will be long before he enjoys success on a more national scale. A good opener, and a mental image of Heather Mills that will stay with me a long time.

Things started to turn weird, however, when Isma Almas took to the stage clad head to foot in traditional Islamic jilbab and burkha, and proceeded to have a lot of fun with the sheer ridiculous nature of trying to do comedy with nothing showing, at one point setting off a set of Christmas fairy lights so that her costume flashed a variety of colours. She had some good moments, both before and after she removed the strange attire, but overall I felt she telegraphed her jokes a little too much, and maybe needs a bit more stage time to become the finished article.

And then there was Chris Lynam. What to say about this act? Clearly influenced by the likes of Freddie Starr and Max Wall, with maybe a little of Rick and Ade thrown in, Lynam’s act does not contain, to the best of my recollection, a single line of dialogue that could be described as a joke. Rather he simply acts bizarrely for twenty minutes before exiting the stage. Entering it with a babble of nonsense, during his routine he throws ice cubes at people’s heads, dresses in a sparkly evening dress and smears melted chocolate over himself, and at one point, steals my shoe, throws it around the room and then attempts to auction it to the audience. Overall it is comedy of discomfort, and the laughter that eventually arrives is more to do with a general build up of absurdness than through any part of the performance that is individually funny.

So finally on to Steve Hughes, and it is only a few months since I last reviewed his headline act, but in the meantime he seems to have been busy adding new material to his act, as around half the set was new to me despite having seen him several times before. As usual with Hughes, it’s mostly a mixture of politics, satire and paranoia, lengthy ramblings on how every aspect of our lives are controlled by the commercial interests of the super-rich military-industrial complex cabals, but with a few knob gags thrown in just to lighten the load.

Ed Byrne/Maxwell's Fullmooners - The Church on the Hill, Glasgow, 21/03/2008

2008-04-06T21:26:00.009+01:00

Reviewing these two shows as a single entity seems like a logical decision. They were advertised together as part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, with a discount for buying tickets for both, they were in the same venue, one after the other, and Ed Byrne was involved in both.

As a venue, the Church on the Hill had its advantages and its disadvantages. A big old converted chapel, with a high roof, stone walls, booming echoey acoustics and a generally gloomy atmosphere, it was, in a way, the perfect location for a Fullmooners show, although less so for Byrne’s solo appearance. However, it was also bitterly cold inside, was a lengthy trek away from the city centre, had awkward door arrangements and officious staff, and being in a residential area, was subject to strict regulations about how long it could stay open. All of these things made it overall probably a quite poor choice by the promoters to mount the shows there.

The result was that, arriving half an hour before showtime for the first of the two performances, we were left standing outside on a cold night until ten minutes before the scheduled start, whereupon it took around 45 minutes to get the full queue of audience inside resulting in the show itself beginning around 40 minutes late. Which would not have been a problem, had the same procedure exactly not been followed for the second show, even though there was a gap of well over an hour between the two, plenty of time for one audience to be moved out and the next moved in. Instead, those who had booked tickets for both were left standing around, refused permission even to queue up to re-enter, were subject to another late show, and were then effectively denied their money’s worth when the show was forced to end earlier than it should have by fact that the venue had no license to stay open.

All in all, it could hardly have been more of a shambles. So thank heavens the comedy was good, because with the paying public having been treated so badly, it would have been very easy for the whole night to fall as flat as a pancake.

Ed Byrne, of course, was always going to be a huge draw for the crowds. An instantly recognisable face from his many television appearances, there was not a single spot in the venue left unoccupied with even the standing areas packed to bursting point. Byrne has made something of a trademark of pedantic humour, with most people first becoming aware of him through his classic dissection of Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic.” These day’s he seems to be more into movies, with his last tour focussing on the Michael Douglas film “Falling Down,” and this show taking a long hard look at the super-intelligent shark flick “Deep Blue Sea.”

Aside from that, with his quick-fire delivery he tackles a whole host of subjects over the course of the hour, the most in-depth being his forthcoming wedding, and the planning thereof, and more to the point the expense of the planning thereof. He also has a chance to delve into a spot of nostalgia, having attended University in Glasgow, giving him another opportunity to let his pedantic nature run amok on the slogans and banners which used to adorn his Student’s Union.

With Byrne you are always in a safe pair of hands, and the audience lapped it up. My only real criticism would be that the one hour running time seemed rather short given that, unlike the Edinburgh Fringe, there should have been no real time restriction on the show. However, given what would happen later, perhaps that was all for the best.

Maxwell’s Fullmooners has become something of a cult phenomenon since its first appearance on the comedy scene in 2005. Hosted by Byrne’s good friend and fellow regular on Irish TV’s “The Panel,” Andrew Maxwell, it is a late night with comedy, music and breakdancing, and audience participation in the form of howling at the moon, usually best enjoyed whilst in a state of mild inebriation. Part of the charm of the show is the apparent chaotic nature of proceedings, however it can rarely, if ever, have ended in quite so shambolic a manner as on this particular occasion.

Taking to the stage, after inadvertently locking himself into the backstage area, in his customary Dracula cloak, Maxwell himself spends the opening of the show whipping up the audience into a frenzy with his usual hyperactive Irish charm while bantering away with co-organiser Sir Tim Fitzhigham. Having seen rather a lot of the man in the past year or so, much of his performance was familiar, but for anyone who has been following him they might like to know that an ending to the “playing a show for the provisional IRA” saga has moved on a chapter and may be coming to a BBC screen near you sooner rather than later.

The first guest act on the night was Stu Who? Something of an legend on the Scottish comedy scene, and now a regular on the Jongleurs circuit, Stu could best be described as the angry old man of comedy. With jet black dyed quiff and dark glasses, he prowls the stage, laying into the younger audience members as he reels off a monologue on the advantages of growing old disgracefully. Approaching sixty, he has energy that would put much younger comics to shame, and the ability to build an almost instant rapport with his audience, and sets the night up nicely.

After the customary song from ethereal ukulele player Lady Carol of the Moon, on this occasion essaying us with Radiohead’s Creep, and a turn from the energetic Zoo Nation Breakdancing Crew, the second comic on the bill is a slightly strange choice. Billed only as “Not Billy Connolly,” he took to the stage in an obviously fake wig and proceeded to perform with all his namesake’s tics and mannerisms, he performed a set based mostly around the experience of touring Northern Ireland as part of a band during the troubles. The problem was, it was performed in such a way as to assume audience familiarity with the situation, and I simply found the whole thing slightly confusing, and not a little offputting.

Now here’s where things started to unravel, because by now it was five to one in the morning, and at this point it transpired that the venue was only allowed to continue operating until one, and the police were outside insisting the show come to an end. And so matters became highly chaotic, with Sir Tim and promoter Alan Anderson rushing in and out, trying to convince them to allow things to continue, while hasty messages were relayed to the stage, and Byrne, who had been advertised as the star attraction, being rushed on to perform as hastily as possible so as not to let the punters down.

Byrne managed to perform for ten minutes or so, but matters were clearly coming to a head, with threats of arrests being made, Maxwell trying to storm through it as if nothing was happening, Sir Tim trying to keep control of matters and Anderson looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights, eventually a compromise was reached that Lady Carol could perform one last song while everyone was leaving, but of course nobody moved and instead the night ended in a mass singalong of “Ring of Fire” performed with something of a blitz spirit while the police threatened to turn off the power.

So a strange night, all in all, and not one that went exactly the way it could have been expected. But not one that anyone present is likely to forget in a hurry. And having spoken to Stu Who? about it since, he made the point that in a way, there could be no more perfect ending to a Fullmooners show, than in chaos with everybody linking arms and singing Johnny Cash while the bizzies tried to arrest us for smiling without a license.

Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolf III, Gary Little, Chris Forbes, Ailsa Johnston, compere Craig Hill - The Stand, Edinburgh, 20/03/2008

2008-03-31T23:05:00.004+01:00

It’s a strange situation when you go to a comedy night and the MC is the biggest draw on the bill. Although less well known south of the border, Craig Hill (pictured) is something of a star name in his native Scotland. In fact, he was well known even before he was famous, such that here in Edinburgh people still remember him as the assistant at one of the Royal Mile souvenir shops who regularly accosted elderly American female tourists with free samples of shortbread by asking them if he could “tempt them with a finger.”

But since finding television fame on BBC2’s “Live Floor Show,” Craig has never looked back and is now a regular on local TV and radio. A natural entertainer, almost a force of nature, he bursts onto the stage with the energy of several atom bombs, resplendent in muscle shirt and army camouflage kilt, performing a gyrating hi-energi dance to Jackie Wilson’s Reet Petite, and generally camping it up so that you would be forgiven for mistaking him for the secret love child of Liberace and Danny LaRue.

Craig could be the perfect compere, he has the ability to have any audience eating out of his hands within minutes of taking to the stage. His only problem is a tendency to overshadow the other acts on the bill. But that isn’t a problem for the audience, as evidenced when he asked a middle-aged guest house owner in the front row who had never been to a comedy show before why he chose this as his first one, and received the pointed answer, “because of you.”

Another unusual aspect of this particular night at The Stand was that the entire bill was exclusively Scottish. The first act was Chris Forbes, a young comic from Bridge of Weir, whose set, I have to say, was variable. He was entertaining enough, as such, but doing the opening spot, I got the distinct impression that he had not long stepped up to this level, and was trying to stretch material that wasn’t quite enough to fill the allotted stage time. His opening was sound enough, a pedantic examination of a New Scientist article on environmentally friendly arms trading. But by the end of the set he was giving the audience rather too graphic descriptions of his bowel movements, which in all honesty smacked a little of desperation.

I wasn’t overly impressed with Ailsa Johnston either, but I think that may have been more my problem than hers. The best comedy comes from recognition of the situation, and Johnson, groomed up to the nines with more make-up than an air stewardess and a fake tan that could blind at ninety paces, based most of her humour around the experience of being the kind of girl whose interests in life are clubbing and shagging and whose cultural heroes are Jordan and Jodie Marsh. It all seemed to go down well in certain sections of the room, but I’m afraid it left me stone cold.

Things improved somewhat when Gary Little took the stage. An old hand at this game now, and one of those comics that you would know by sight even if you didn’t recognise the name, Little clearly has a wealth of material from which to pick and choose. But even here things were a little off, and as a lengthy routine about a lads stag party trip to Auschwitz, which promised great things, fizzled out without anything resembling a punchline, it seemed to me like the whole night was starting to feel a little flat.

Maybe at such times, that’s when you need a little old time religion to see you right. And if you can’t get any of that, the Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolf III will have to do as a substitute. A character based act, the creation of comic Jim Muir, the good reverend staggers onto the stage in a grubby white suit, beer bottle clutched in each hand, and rips into the miserable sinners gathered before him with the brain-addled logic of a wino. In all honesty, hiding behind this persona is mainly an excuse for Muir to spend the majority of his stage time hurling abuse out into the audience, but he does it so well that it is enough.

Perhaps it was just that Steppenwolf is one of the few acts around with a personality big enough to stand up alongside our Craig (bless his little cotton socks.) But it rounded off the evening perfectly, and left the impression of a night which, if it wasn’t among the best of Stand experiences, was at least good enough.

Dwight Slade - The Stand, Edinburgh, 18/03/2008

2008-03-28T00:40:00.002Z

It can’t be easy living in the shadow of genius. To most people, if they know of Dwight Slade at all, it is as Bill Hicks’ best friend and former writing partner. Even now, fourteen years after his death and more than a quarter of a century after they went their separate ways, it is still a role he is defined by, so much so that he even makes oblique reference to the fact in his own introduction. Yet the truth is, Slade has been out on his own since well before Hicks’ rise to prominence, and if he hasn’t quite reached the same level of eminence, he has at least made it to somewhere near the top of the comedy tree, not through association, but on his own merits.

This was his last performance in Europe before heading back to his home in Seattle the next day, and for an artist more used to performing on big stages and Comedy Central TV specials, maybe a wet Tuesday night in a basement in Scotland might have seemed something of a comedown. But if so, it didn’t show, and though his name might not mean so much on this side of the Atlantic, for those in the know, a decent sized crowd including Scottish TV comedian Craig Hill, it was a rare chance to see one of America’s brightest talents at work at close quarters.

Like Hicks, Slade’s comedy is mostly based on being slightly pissed off with the stupidity of the world. But where they differ is that Slade clearly still cares whether or not the audience like him at the end of the show. He never quite goes for the jugular, careful not to cross over that line of making his audience feel uncomfortable. But nonetheless, he has a wealth of strong material to draw on, and surely one of the advantages for a US based comedian playing over here is that he can pick and choose the best parts of many years worth of shows, secure in the knowledge that he has an audience coming to it with fresh ears.

Occasionally this doesn’t quite work. Performing material about having just had his fortieth birthday, for instance, seems slightly incongruous when you do the maths and realise he has to be closer to fifty, but what it does do is allow him to perform for a full two hours without ever running out of steam or suffering any serious dip in quality.

The overriding theme of the show is that of the difference between rational and irrational behaviour, characterised by those who listen to the Evil Monkey which sits on your shoulder telling you to do all the things you really want to do but know you shouldn’t. Much of this focusing on the general self-absorbed behaviour of others, from people with hands free phones shouting in the supermarket to the guy on the plane rubbing his backside against your face while trying to fit his baggage in the overhead locker. And most of it results in the object of his fury meeting with a violent response at the sharp end of his imaginary pool-cue.

Meanwhile, the highlight of the show is a five minute set-piece mime in which Slade demonstrates to the audience why car radios are a far greater hazard to the road user than alcohol. Contorting his body as he tunes from station to station, each song provoking an exaggerated response from headbanging to disco dancing, it’s clearly a well rehearsed routine honed to perfection.

Slade is an infrequent visitor to our country, but luckily for us he enjoys coming here because it allows him to say the things he can’t get away with in his native land. So hopefully it won’t be too long before he feels the need to let off steam on our shores once again. When he does, seek him out, because you will find it well worth the effort.

Jo Caulfield, Wilson Dixon, Donnchadh O'Conaill, Andrew O'Neill, compere Sandy Nelson - The Stand, Edinburgh, 15/03/2008

2008-03-24T23:32:00.005Z

Saturday nights at the Stand can usually command a pretty strong line-up, but it has to be said that this was one of the strongest. When even the ten minute spot is occupied by a recognisable name comedian, you know you are onto a winner.

The quality showed right from the very beginning, as Sandy Nelson proved himself to be a quite excellent MC with just the right qualities needed for that job. He knows exactly when to push and when to hold back, and exactly where the line is to keep the audience on his side and having a good time. On this evening his job is made much easier by a family from Livingstone on the front row out to celebrate their daughter’s particular milestone birthday which she really didn’t want discussed.

Donnchadh O’Conaill’s job as the opening act was not made easy by a disturbance going on to one side of the club which resulted in some patrons being ejected. But he dealt with the matter well, and with humour, and while his set wasn’t the brightest of the night, he nonetheless gave a good account of himself. A gangly blonde-haired Irishman, his slow-paced, downbeat humour was mainly based in his own social awkwardness. But if that sounds depressing, it’s the care with which he has put his set together with a marvellous mastery of wordplay that ensures that it isn’t. Relatively new to the scene, after winning the Chortle Student Comedy award two years ago, he isn’t the finished article quite yet. But he shows enough to be able to predict that he eventually will be.

It was strange seeing Andrew O’Neill, now a battle-hardened Fringe veteran of many years’ standing, in the slot usually reserved for relative newcomers. But in a way it was a good spot for him, because it forced him to tighten up his usually surreal and meandering monologues which can take a while for an audience to get into. He still produced a number of his bizarre trademark asides, bursting onto the stage with a song about a hot bus. But his bizarre goth appearance tells the audience straight away not to expect straightforward humour, and spending most of his set discussing the problems of being a heterosexual transvestite, while certainly unconventional, seems to work very well.

The slight leftfield approach to the evening continued into Wilson Dixon’s set. Dixon is a musical comedian with a character based set. With an improbably large ten gallon hat and obviously fake long hair, he introduces himself as a country singer from Cripple Creek in the Rocky Mountains, and frequently relies for laughs on wrong-footing the audience, setting up jokes so you think you know where they are heading before sending them in totally unexpected directions for the punchline. Between the songs his softly spoken drawl is sometimes a little hard to hear, but it is worth listening to.

Jo Caulfield has, over the last decade, become one of the most successful and instantly recognised female comics in the country. Known for her frequent appearances on panel shows such as Mock the Week and HIGNFY, she also has her own Radio 4 series, and was head writer for So Graham Norton. All of which is merely background to the fact that she is also a damned fine stand-up.

Her comedy has always been slightly barbed, that of a person irritated that the world is mostly populated by dimwits, and she adopts a style where she is your acerbic best friend embarking with you on a marathon bitching session. And of course it works because, for the most part, we agree with every word she says. However, there was a sense in the show that this was a case of getting a bit more mileage out of last year’s material before developing a new show in time for the Fringe, and some sections felt a little dated. It could be said to be a bit lazy to still be doing gags about John Smeaton and the Glasgow airport attack a year on.

That said, for the most part the set had a little bit for everyone, using a general scattergun approach, and she is a hard act not to warm to. And after three slightly unconventional acts, it was probably best to end with a safe pair of hands, with the overall result of a highly successful night all round.

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue - Wales Millenium Centre, Cardiff 14/03/08

2008-03-21T19:16:00.007Z

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue has been a one of the nations favourite comedy radio shows for over 35 years, since its creation in 1972. During the course of its time at the BBC 50 series have been recorded and tickets to see recordings of the radio show can sell out huge venues within hours and without advertising.

The show grew out of an earlier radio show called I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, a show where the characters would get up to madcap mischievous adventures full of marvellously bad word play. Clue, described as the "antidote to panel games", provided a platform for the same humour, but without the need for a script!

People are now being given a greater opportunity to see the show, as the panel Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and frequent guest Jeremy Hardy have taken the show on its first ever national tour.

The live show with Humphrey Lyttelton obviously in the chair and the nations favourite ivory tinkler, Colin Sell, at the piano, contains many of the favourite games from the radio including Sound Charades, New Definitions (aka entries for the Uxbridge English Dictionary), One Song to the Tune of the Other, and Mornington Crescent. And while the show is primarily based around the spoken, actually seeing the show gives it a whole extra dimension, especially in the sound effects rounds.

The show is currently in the second leg of its first UK tour and getting tickets to any of the remaining shows is likely to prove difficult, but the show is a gem and likely to tour again, given the reception it has received. Keep your eyes peeled!

Jason Cook, Stu and Garry, Vladimir McTavish, Antony Murray, compere Ro Campbell - The Stand, Edinburgh, 12/03/2008

2008-03-21T12:54:00.005Z

A charity show is always a difficult one to review, because you are aware that the acts on the bill are all giving their time for free to raise money for a good cause. Obviously this is a laudable act, and thus any criticism of them makes you feel like you are kicking a puppy just a little bit. However, like any comedy night, this benefit on behalf of the First Step Community Project, a group who provide support to children growing up in difficult circumstances, had its good moments and some not so good.

Compere Ro Campbell is an excitable and slightly brash Australian for whom, it has to be said, the role doesn’t show him in his best light. He does the job sufficiently, but doesn’t show the spark that the best MC’s display. He runs through the usual “where are you from, what do you do” routine, but never manages to extract the comedy gold. On the other hand, when he moves on to parts of his set material, he begins to shine, and there are a few moments of brilliance, especially while recounting tales of his days as “the man who holds the Golf Sale sign.”

First up for the night was Antony Murray, a tall and slightly geeky Scotsman whose set is mostly based around perceived social inadequacy and intellectual unhipness. He does a decent job, but is something of a slow burn comic and as such probably isn’t right for the opening spot which really needs someone who is going to hit the stage and make an impact.

Vladimir McTavish follows him, and it is interesting to see someone who would normally be the headline act performing in a short early bill spot. Much of his set was familiar from seeing him only a few weeks before, but there was a bit of new stuff thrown in, suggesting he is starting to road test new material ready for the summer. Either way, he is always a solid and popular performer and he set up the rest of the night well.

Stu and Garry are the Stand’s resident improvisational double act, and have been working together so long that they are totally comfortable with each other and the situation. Complementing each other well, the tall skinny Garry Dobson with long hair and improbably long chin beard is the flighty, slightly weird one, while short and stocky Stuart Murphy is the cheeky overgrown schoolboy. They run through a series of familiar “Whose Line Is It Anyway” type games, creating bizarre situations from audience suggestions, which results in such unlikely situations as a row in a gay partnership performed as an opera.

Top of the bill, Jason Cook until recently would have been better known as one half of the novelty German Electronic Industrial Rock send-up act Die Clattershenkenfietermaus. But in the past year he has been making a name for himself with his excellent “My Confessions” show, which he had actually been performing in the Glasgow Comedy Festival earlier that evening before rushing over to the capital to put in his appearance. His set was a mixture of material from that show, which I saw last summer, together with some new observations, mostly based around the idea that he is his own worst enemy and the inner voices that most of us try not to listen to usually get the better of him. With the more poignant moments removed, the material doesn’t have the same emotional impact as the full Confessions show, but Cook still retains the Geordie charm that allows him to get away with telling horrible stories about himself and yet remaining somehow loveable.

Dara O'Briain - Edinburgh Playhouse - 09/03/2008

2008-03-18T15:30:00.001Z

Comedy, I’ve always felt, works best in small packed clubs, with a low ceiling and a busy bar and a general buzz about the atmosphere. Move it to the wide open expanses of a three tiered theatre with the audience sitting in uniform rows, and it’s a rare comedian who can make the experience seem as intimate and personal. Dara O’Briain is one of that rare breed.

His is a rise to the top that took me rather by surprise. Living in Ireland, as I did, for four years, I first encountered him as the presenter of the RTE topical entertainment show The Panel, at which time his name would have meant nothing to most people on this side of the Irish Sea. But a couple of appearances guest-presenting HIGNFY changed all that, and suddenly he was a household name with his own BBC panel show and a thriving career, and now, just a few years later, not only is he selling out huge theatre tours, but people are even starting to learn how to pronounce his surname properly.

What makes O’Briain a great stand-up is the same quality that makes him a great topical TV show presenter, it’s his quickness of brain which allows him to probe any topic thrown at him and quickly find the funny within. He has also been blessed with a physical form which might be a disadvantage in any other line of work, but part of what makes him so funny is that his material consists of the last things you would expect to emerge from a prematurely balding six feet four walking giant with the grace and stylish appearance of an assistant bank manager.

Of course, he has also been blessed with that other great comedy attribute of his race, the lilting east-coast Irish accent that can take even the foulest obscenity and make it sound like poetry in your ears. Ireland has always punched above its weight in comedy terms, and Dara makes a fine continuation of that tradition.

He tells the audience that he considered naming the show “You Had To Be There,” as a reference to those moments of hilarity in life that suffer in the re-telling. The idea being that unlike going to see a movie, every night of a comedy show is unique and, if the comedian is good enough and allows it to progress naturally, will go off in its own never-to-be-repeated directions.

And that’s exactly what happens. There is a clear structure to the show, and a number of obviously well-rehearsed routines, laying into homeopaths and nutritionists as being no better than witch doctors, or discussing why obviously one-sided issues on news programmes are forced to show the other side for “balance.” A lengthy routine about boat tours visiting the homes of the rich and famous in Florida, and the excitement of the famous being counteracted by the disappointment at the merely rich, ends in a gloriously surreal moment after which you will never be able to hear “The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” and think of Gloria Estefan in quite the same way again.

But these are enhanced by the often inspired rants prompted by his randomly chosen audience victims, on this night a hospitality management teacher, a have-a-go anti bicycle-theft warrior and a man who manages the electrical and entertainment department at Tesco. All are deftly dealt with in a manner which is mocking but never crosses the line into causing offence.

O’Briain’s rise to the top of the tree may have been comparatively swift, but one cannot imagine him taking the Russell Brand, Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans route of Hollywood glitz and glamour. He is too much of a down-to-earth guy, his feet are too firmly fixed on the ground. And that’s good news for us, because it means we can look forward to seeing him making these same packed houses laugh like eejits for many years to come.

Toby Hadoke - Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf

2008-03-15T15:31:00.006Z

Toby Hadoke's stand up show based around his love of Doctor Who is something that I have been meaning to see since I was in Edinburgh two years ago, and caught a few glimpses of him as he took part in an afternoon sketch show called "Soup" upstairs in the Café Royal. At the time he was performing Moths in the evenings, but had revealed his astonishing memory and passion for the doctor briefly during one performance of Soup. Toby is an accomplished comedian, has appeared on various things of stage and screen that may explain why you think he's slightly familiar, and also manages and compères XS Malarkey, the Manchester comedy club.

The show Moths Ate My "Doctor Who" Scarf, which has also been recorded for radio, is perfect for those who love the Doctor as well as for those who barely know the show. Toby tells the story of the Doctor, but also tells the story of a kid who was a bit of an outsider finding something special, of a man becoming a father, of politics past and present...the stories are both touching and funny.
Mostly though, the show is a chance for Doctor Who fans to relive a lot of memories and for fans and non fans alike to laugh a lot and have a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

(The fact that this particular show was in Cardiff, and the theatre right next to Torchwood, added an extra geeky joy to the evening.)

Laughing Horse New Act Competition – Edinburgh Quarter Final – Meadows Bar, 07/03/2008

2008-03-13T17:53:00.009Z

The New Act of the Year contest organised by Laughing Horse has become something of a fixture on the comedy calendar, and in previous years has produced winners who have gone on to much bigger and better things, including Greg Davies, Marek Larwood, Russell Kane and Carl Donnelly. This year’s competition started all the way back at the beginning of January, and culminates in a final in Wimbledon on May 18th.

Whether the name that joins the list of winners this year will have emerged from this, the only quarter final being held outside the London area, is debatable. There were, to my mind, three acts who might be in contention, but only two of them were selected among the four to continue to the semi finals in London, so that shows how much I know.

The acts, it must be said, had a few things to contend with on the night. Firstly there is the shape of the room, being sort of L-shaped with the stage located at the corner meant that there were two distinct audience sections parts of which were not visible to each other. More important, however, were the three Englishmen up for the rugby who sat in the front row and spent the entire evening trying to make the night all about them.

This was a problem, because the acts ranged from obvious beginners to those who clearly had a few years of experience behind them, and it handed an advantage to this latter group in that they were more well versed in dealing with these kinds of situation. Although for the most part the night was well MC’d by Jojo Sutherland, I felt she was a little at fault here for not cracking down hard on the trio and making them scared to open their mouths. On an open mike night it would be fine, a bit of audience heckling sorts out the men from the boys, but in competition I thought the performers needed a bit more protection.

First act up was Gus Tawse, whose act was rather too hesitant for my liking. His gags seemed to suffer from too much set-up with not enough pay-off. The Wee Man followed, a novelty act based around the Ned persona, a kind of Scottish Chav. He dealt well with the audience and had some inventive moments, but I can’t help feeling that his exaggerated thick nasal accent would grate on the nerves after a while.

Jill Baxter was an act I came away feeling sorry for. She seemed to have half the audience there to cheer for her, and I think it was a serious mistake. She looked nervous and hesitant from the word go, continually lost her thread, and for the most part her set was met by a stony silence and just a few chuckles.

Graham Mackie followed on after, and here one has to ask what constitutes a new act. Mackie is a veteran of the Scottish circuit, but qualified as he was doing a ventriloquist routine rather than his usual straight stand-up. The other problem I had with the act was that I never quite worked out whether it was supposed to be intentionally dreadful. I hope so, because otherwise it was unintentionally so. But even taking the former option, I think that like Les Dawson’s piano playing or Tommy Cooper’s magic, you need to be exceptionally good at something before you can make a success of doing it badly. This just came off as being a bit of a shambles, and I think Mackie should probably stick to what he does best in future.

Daniel Webster was the final act of the first section. Clearly heavily influenced by Steven Wright, his act consisted of surreal non-sequiters performed in a slow dream-like way, and here was one occasion that the heckling Englishmen did some serious damage to what could otherwise have been a very funny performance.

Barry McDonald opened the second section and for my money gave the best performance of the night. His act was polished, confident and flowed well, and although I had only seen him performing the same material the previous weekend, with the five minute time limitation for the contest he tightened it up and it worked much better than before.

Martin McAllister has a very slow style to his comedy that probably doesn’t suit a competition format. During his allotted five minutes he only managed to work his way through three gags, and perhaps if he had some quicker fire material this would have been a more sensible option. He was followed on by Geordie comic Chris Ramsay who was probably the first of the night to really take a firm control of the audience. His material was good and performed with enthusiasm and he quickly had the room on his side.

Such could not be said about Gareth Johnson. With a geeky haircut and bumfluff that could be licked off by a cat, he opened with an attempt at highbrow material by deconstructing a line of Shakespeare, before moving to the other end of the spectrum with sick humour and filth. Both committed the ultimate sin of being simply unfunny, although they might have killed at the chess club. By the end of his set the audience was left wondering that if this was a quarter final, how bad were the other acts in his heat?

Sean McLaughlin then had the difficult job of picking the room back up, and he did okay, although I think again he probably chose the wrong material, doing a lengthy routine about the fact that he has a medical condition which makes sex painful. But I got the impression that he was quite new to the stage, and has the potential to get better.

The third section of the night began with Carly Baker, a tall skinny American with flame red hair. Hers was another assured and confident performance, she made short work of the English hecklers, and performed a clever, slightly filthy set that belied her “cute soccer mom” appearance. Andy Learmonth was also good, his set appearing to be a series of one digression after another which somehow all hung together very well.

Tommy McKay is a musical comedy act who performed two songs with a guitar. The first, about things he had bought on ebay, appeared to consist just of stupid things he could think of that rhymed, while the second, about Jeremy Paxman farting on Newsnight, just seemed a bit pointless. Neither was particularly funny. Finally Jeff O’Boyle was a decent enough closing act, but some of his material seemed slightly forced, and he should probably have dropped his closing “M&S” gag for being too similar to a routine performed by one of the other comics earlier in the night.

So overall it was a bit of a night of ups and downs, and it seemed to go on forever, the results not being announced until well after midnight. But for all that, there were some very good moments, and one or two acts to keep an eye out for in future.

As for the results, Carly Baker was adjudged to have won the night, with Barry McDonald, Andy Learmonth and The Wee Man also going through to the semis. Personally I thought Chris Ramsay deserved a place, probably at the expense of the Wee Man whose appeal I see as being rather limited, but the other three choices I would have to agree with.

Natalie Haynes, Susan Calman - The Stand, Edinburgh, 04/03/2008

2008-03-10T21:59:00.003Z

Officially, this was billed as a “Wicked Wenches Special” to tie in with the club’s monthly night dedicated to female comedians. In reality, however, it was essentially a stop off in Natalie Haynes latest club tour with Susan Calman, billed as MC but actually serving as more of a support act.

The diminutive Ms Calman opened up the evening with a set of around half an hour, starting with the usual MC type “chatting to the front row” duties, served well on this night by the fact that it seemed to be almost entirely occupied by upper middle-class Edinburgh University students, including the impossibly posh “Flick” whose cut-glass vowels led Calman to suggest recreating “The Running Man” by dropping her off in the middle of George Square in Glasgow and seeing how far she could get.

She proves herself an accomplished compere, but if I have a criticism, it is that she probably did a little too much of the audience interaction, on a night that didn’t really need it. On a usual club night it would have been fine, but on this occasion, most people had come specifically to see a “name” comedian and didn’t necessarily need so much warming up. So it might have been nice to see more of her set material, because when it came it was very good, particularly her routine on what a crap superhero she would make.

It seems strange that Natalie Haynes has now been performing comedy for over a decade, because when she started out it was still very much a male dominated field, and the few females able to make it usually had to do so by compromising their femininity. So it can’t have been an easy task for a relatively well-balanced, Cambridge educated and, let’s not beat about the bush, rather easy on the eye woman to try to break into that world. But break into it she did, becoming in the process not only a well respected headline act, but winning herself regular TV and radio work as well as a gig as a columnist for The Times into the bargain.

Haynes charm lies in a slightly warped world view combined with a liberal sprinkling of nerdishness. There are few stand-up shows you can attend, for instance, where it helps to have a comprehensive knowledge of US daytime detective shows Monk, Murder She Wrote and Diagnosis: Murder. Not that it’s essential, you understand, but it does help. These, together with a thorough deconstruction of the plot of Logan’s Run do form a sizeable segment of the show.

We are also treated to a lesson in Latin grammar demonstrating very conclusively why the “C” word is actually far more pleasant than the “V” word when referring to female genitalia, which bizarrely leads to an explanation of why Pythagoras probably got more than his fair share of chicks. And in less random moments she explains to us the etiquette of swimming-pool bullying, the fact that she turned down the opportunity to torture fellow vegetarians in order to entertain us, the moral implications of buying Ikea furniture, and how IQ is related to pram size.

Haynes performance seems effortless, but is often delivered at such breakneck speed that you find yourself marvelling that her mind manages to keep pace with her mouth. Like the best comics she manages to take huge circular digressions without ever losing the thread of the show. And although she fits more material into an hour and a quarter than some manage in an entire career, still the time seems almost too short and you would happily go on listening to her skewed logic all night.

Five Questions: Robin Ince

2008-03-06T19:18:00.005Z

He won the 2006 Time Out Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy, largely for his 'Book Club' nights. A friend of Ricky Gervais, he's appeared in 'The Office' and supported Gervais on the 'Politics' tour. He's written for 'Have I Got News For You', 'Alistair McGowan's Big Impression', 'The 11 O'Clock Show' and 'Dead Ringers'. And he's a thoroughly bloody nice bloke who can take a critical review in good grace. He, ladies and gentlemen, is Robin Ince.

What made you want to be a comedian in the first place?

I was brought up on The Goodies and Laurel and Hardy, then when I was in my very early teens, the alternative comedy explosion began and I was hooked on 'The Comic Strip Presents', Kevin Turvey and 'The Young Ones'. Rik Mayall is a comic genius in his wide-eyed portrayal of manic intensity and social embarrassment. Rather than scribbling the names of bands on my exercise books, I would scrawl the names of 'Comic Strip' episodes, attempting to perfectly match each individual font. By my mid teens I started to visit the Comedy Store and The Chuckle Club, delighting in acts such as Freddie Benson (aka Andrew Bailey), Tony Allen and The Joan Collins Fan Club (later Julian Clary). So I started shouting into microphones in my early twenties and now, at 39, I still do.

What's been your best gig to date?

I thoroughly enjoyed the gig I did last night at the Clockwork Comedy Club, a reasonably formless and unplanned 30 minutes of rage and ridiculousness. I also usually love doing benefit gigs at the Hammersmith Apollo, a 3500 seater that seems strangely intimate. I performed predominantly new material at the Stand Up For Animals gig and then ended the night dressed as a bear being kicked by Bill Bailey’s son while Bill and Tim Minchin played a wonderful song.

And your worst?

I am a reasonably harsh critic, so there are many gigs I haven’t enjoyed or have damned in hindsight. My first proper death was at a club in Croydon and that was an eye-opener. While supporting Ricky Gervais on his 'Politics' tour I had a particularly hateful gig at the Palace Theatre, with drunk men in suits mumbling and no one really paying attention, I hated that one as it put me in such a bad mood that The Pixies gig I went to afterwards was ruined.

What's the best heckle you've ever received? And how did you respond?

I have no real memory for heckles, I was booed on at the Belfast Empire, so I responded by staying on stage for twice as long as I was meant to.

Which other comedians do you most admire?

Billy Connolly, Laurel and Hardy, Simon Munnery, and Steve Merchant’s stand up makes me weep. The list is long.

What are you working on at the moment, and what does the future hold?

I am currently working on series 3 of 'Skins' and writing a macabre screenplay. I am also touring around art centres with a work in progress, promising a new hour every month as I slowly put together my next tour which won’t be until 2009. I am also writing and recording a documentary for Radio 4 about the time my record collection was destroyed by sewage. I have a replacement for the 'Book Club' night, called 'The School for Gifted Children' which mixes bluegrass with mini lectures and songs. Last week I ended up performing a double act with Alexei Sayle - beware Cannon and Ball.

A national joke

2008-03-05T01:47:00.003Z

What made BBC4's 'Rob Brydon's Identity Crisis' watchable wasn't just the way in which the comedian exiled in London for 20 years came to feel his roots so much more strongly for spending some time in the land of his fathers - by the end, any ambivalence about personal identity had been resolved, with Brydon once more a proudly self-confessed Welshman, much to his own surprise.

No, the interest also lay in the programme's exposure of the stand-up's art. Brydon was shown trying to construct a set of material about his home country, "borrowing" the comments of those he encountered where he could and then puzzling over how to pitch it right. At the first of his Welsh gigs, at the Glee Club in Cardiff, he suffered the indignity of a seriously lukewarm reception, but, led to reflect on his generally critical and sneering tone, subsequently modified his approach so as to be warmer, more inclusive and less superior - and in Pontardawe and particularly Aberdare it paid huge dividends.

What's more, in showing Brydon backstage, pacing backwards and forwards uncomfortably and impatiently, the programme also served as a reminder that even well-established and experienced stand-ups can suffer from pre-show nerves. It's a odd compulsion, to willingly choose to put yourself on a pedestal to be judged by a bunch of complete strangers (to paraphrase Stewart Lee), but thankfully there are plenty of people prepared to do it.

(The programme's still available to watch on iPlayer for the next couple of days.)

PBH at 60 (part two)

2008-03-03T12:20:00.006Z

What a difference a day makes, as the old song goes. And never more appropriately, as the second night of the Edinburgh leg of Peter Buckley Hill’s 60^th birthday celebrations could not have been more different from the first if it had tried. In one way this was a good thing, as there was certainly a larger audience making the room look rather less threadbare. But unfortunately it was not all good news.

PBH started the night off again with a mix of banter and comedy songs, a much longer set than the previous night and this, I suspect, had a lot to do with the gentleman sitting front and centre who unfortunately seemed unfamiliar with the concept of a comedy show and spent the entire performance trying to join in. The result was that every time PBH had started to build momentum and get the mood of the room rising, a wholly inappropriate interruption at exactly the wrong moment would ruin whatever payoff he was building to, and he would have to start all over again.

The problem, of course, is that when you are trying to run a friendly gig in a small room, a harsh put-down could have killed the mood altogether, and the result was that he just had to try to work around the problem, throwing out an admonition to “heckle in the gaps” and leaving it at that.

Matters were not improved by the appearance of David Heffron. An experienced club circuit comedian, I can only imagine he had chosen the night to try out some new material, because he looked hesitant and unsure of himself from the very beginning. Whatever the reason, his set simply didn’t work, and he was obviously aware of this himself and began casting around for something that would bring the laughs, causing his performance to become jumpy and slightly incoherent. A big closing laugh, however, just about managed to rescue things for him.

Being fair to the two comics who followed, both were members of the Edinburgh University sketch comedy team Comedy and That, and as such I assume neither have any particular club experience. Mike Walsh, first up, was a young Irishman who was clearly heavily influenced by Dylan Moran, to the extent that he had appropriated many of his mannerisms, right down to the red wine glass that he splashed around in his hand throughout his performance. This is not necessarily a bad thing, most comedians start out aping the people who inspired them, and Walsh had some good moments, albeit using the old comedy standby of comparing Irish and British culture, and he showed enough promise that, once he begins to develop into a style of his own, I imagine he may do well.

Ben Kerth, who followed, was equally promising. Again, a lack of stage experience showed, but he started out strongly, and for the first half of his act, at least, brought the audience fully to life, something that had been lacking up until that point. His material listing different ways his rather hirsute appearance had been described was very good, (particularly “the fat girl from the Magic Numbers,) and although he began to fade towards the end of his set, he gave easily the best performance of the first half of the night.

Now I’m going to start my description of Mickey Anderson with a caveat. In preparing to write this review I watched a couple of clips of him in action on YouTube, and in both he was very good. But a comedian needs to know what is going to work for him, and in neither clip was he performing the bizarre choice of material he presented us with on Saturday night. Because for some unfathomable reason, perhaps it was supposed to be post-modern irony but if so I didn’t get it, after a good opening minute or two, he launched into a set of material about how old he was getting. And it wasn’t that the material was bad, it might very well have worked if the audience hadn’t had their eyes open and were thus fully aware that he appeared to have barely passed the age of puberty. He even commented himself at one point that he was possibly the youngest person in the room, which should probably have given him a clue that this material quite simply was never going to work. I’d be interested in seeing him again, performing a different set, because he did look promising, but I’d have to advise him to dump this particular set of material in the nearest wastebin as soon as humanly possible, and don’t revisit it for at least another twenty years.

As for Peter Aitchison, given the feel of the room at this point, an attempt at topical political comedy was probably not the best idea. Aitchison spent the majority of his set working his way through the news of the day making witty remarks about each story, but to be honest what was really needed at this point was tried and tested material. An attempt to liven things up by creating a lonely-hearts ad for himself using audience suggestions worked slightly better and gave him a decent ending to his set, and managed to give the first half of the night a reasonable round-off.

The second half kicked off with Gordon Brunton, and I can’t help wishing he had been introduced a lot earlier. I think the reason he was kept to this point was from the experience of the previous night and realising that there might be a need for someone with the ability to fill. But the fact is that from the moment he took to the stage he breathed energy into the whole night. Clearly a seasoned and experienced performer, he worked the audience superbly well and brought the room fully to life. Being a cohort of PBH from way back, he told stories of the early days of the Free Fringe which gave his set a topical feel, and despite performing the longest set of the evening, you felt he could have kept going all night if he had been asked to.

Graham Thomas closed the night, having rushed straight down from performing at The Stand, and, building on the good start, kept the momentum going with a motormouth performance. Like his predecessor he got in among the audience and managed to connect with a set that felt less like a well rehearsed monologue and more like an over-excitable mate whose mouth was running away with him.

So overall, fifteen acts, or sixteen including the man himself, performing over two night free of charge was nothing to be sneezed at, and the good moments certainly outweighed those less so. And with a free CD on the way out, how could you possibly complain. PBH has been organising nights like these for long enough now to know that there are always going to be ups and downs in any hastily thrown together show, and the main thing is that as long as everyone has fun then you can call it a success, and that was certainly the case here.

And so it only remains to say Happy Birthday Sir, I hope it’s a good one for you certainly deserve it. And here’s to many more years of bringing comedy to the people, and keeping it real.

PBH at 60 (part one)

2008-03-01T16:30:00.007Z

Peter Buckley Hill is a name that would be recognised by few outside of the world of stand-up, and by almost everyone within it. A little over a decade ago, PBH recognised that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival had lost its way. What had started out as a way for smaller companies without funds or state backing to become part of the Edinburgh experience, had now become as much a commercial venture as the main festival itself. Consequently the ticket prices were rising, the venue charges were rising, and the situation was becoming that only those who had already established themselves could afford to play.

So he had the idea of putting on a show for free. The first year he made a huge loss, but establishing the precedent, he was able from there to persuade more and more people to give him a performing space, mostly events rooms in pubs around the city, free of charge in return for increased bar sales. These venues he then lets for free to performers, on the condition that they in turn charge no ticket price, but take only what is given to them in an open collection at the end of the performance. And so, the Free Fringe was born, and the list of performers who have benefitted from it is endless.

On Monday March 3rd, PBH turns 60, and having another mad idea he decided to put on a series of six free shows, four in London, two in Edinburgh, featuring a total of 60 comedians with himself as MC, all giving their time for free in aid of the Free Fringe running costs. This was the first of the Edinburgh shows, and the fourth overall.

It’s a shame, then, that as so often happens in the comedy business, those who are a regular part of it forget that those outside have no idea what is going on. The fact that a free show in the centre of a major city on a Friday night could be so sparsely attended can only be down to the lack of publicity the event received in advance. But take nothing away from PBH, there may not have been a huge attendance, but those who did turn up got a great little show.

PBH himself makes a warm and welcoming host. With a slightly ramshackle approach to performing, he genuinely appears as if he is making it all up on the spot, and probably half the time he is. In fact his performance starts even before he takes the stage, as he wanders around the room talking to folk as if they are old friends, even if he’s never met them before.

Keara Murphy started off the night. With a set based mostly around her middle-class Glasgow upbringing and her Irish mother who refuses to believe anything good can come from anywhere but Ireland, it was a good opening. Murphy is clearly experienced and looked comfortable on the stage, letting her set build by itself rather than trying to force laughs from the small audience.

Barry McDonald was next up, wandering on stage with a gag about his black stripy shirt making him look like a human bar-code. It was good to get an early laugh in, because for the opening of his set he looked hesitant and less relaxed, but he began to win the audience over about half way through. Clearly less experienced, he nonetheless had some good lines and by the time he finished he had made a good account of himself.

It was my second time of seeing Elaine Malcolmson, and she is an act I continue to be impressed by. Very quietly spoken, her comedy is low key, her act stylised and her lines clearly well rehearsed. But last night something happened about half way through. Distracted from her train of thought she launched into an obviously impromptu anecdote about a bomb scare in Katowice Airport which was superbly funny and showed a side to her personality I hadn’t seen on the last occasion, and only went to confirm my impression that she is one to watch for in the future.

Viv Gee, on the other hand, didn’t really look comfortable at all, and never seemed to get the mood of the audience. An almost interminable routine about subliminal suggestions never seemed to go anywhere and probably needed a bigger and drunker audience to really work. Despite a few good lines, she didn’t seem able to get into her stride at all, and to be fair it looked like she was well aware of the fact and couldn’t wait to get to the end.

The last act of the first half was then slightly odd. Ruby Summers is not a comedian, but a blues singer. Which would have been fine, if some warning had been given that this was what she was, but instead the audience was expecting more comedy and was thus left slightly confused as she sang a couple of numbers in a spangly red Jessica Rabbit dress which kept threatening to slip down and expose her voluminous bosom, against a pre-recorded backing tape on which the volume was turned up so high it frequently drowned out her voice. Being fair, she’s a decent enough singer, but the act just seemed slightly out of place on the night.

The second half began with Jeff O’Boyle, a personable Ulsterman who performed a self-deprecating act mostly based around relationships and internet dating. He has some good lines despite the rather well-worn subject matter, and being another relative newcomer, he might be one to keep an eye on if he can develop his material a bit more and step out of the comfort zone.

With one of the remaining four scheduled acts having already apparently dropped out, and two more not having shown up yet, Neil McFarlane was now placed in the position of having to fill wildly rather than performing the ten minute set that had been the standard up until this point. Having already been outed as coming from the posh part of Glasgow, the existence of which was hitherto unsuspected, he has a confident and unassuming laid-back approach which takes a little while to warm to. But while the early part of his set was a little bland, he got into his stride with material about working in the BBC complaints department, and managed to pull things around so that by the end of his set he had the audience well on his side.

With another act failing to turn up, Keir McAllister turned out to be the final performer of the night. Having now seen him perform three times in less than two months, it’s a little difficult to know what there is new to say about him. But the first few minutes consisted of material I hadn’t heard before, and he worked the room well, being the only performer of the night to get down off the platform stage and get in and amongst the audience.

So overall it was an entertaining night, and I’ll be heading back for the second round in a few scant hours after I finish writing this. I can only hope that a larger audience can be rounded up, because nice though it is to sometimes feel like one of the “in-the-know crowd,” nights like this deserve something more.

Vladimir McTavish, Joe Heenan, Padraig Hyland, Jack Whitehall, compere Susan Morrison – The Stand, Edinburgh, 22/02/2008

2008-02-25T12:13:00.004Z

One of the impressive things about The Stand is that they don’t merely put on good comedy nights, they also work hard to develop the local comedy scene. It’s an important service in an industry which is so focussed on London that comics in other parts of the country can often be isolated and find it difficult to get exposure. This night featured three comics who had come through the ranks to become regulars at the club, and have been able to use that as a springboard to bookings nationwide.

Fast talking Glaswegian Susan Morrison is a regular MC at the club, and it’s a role she has learned to fill superbly well. On this night, with the entire front row occupied by a stag party, she had plenty of material to work with, and unlike some comperes she doesn’t pussyfoot around but jumps straight in with both feet. Brash, brassy and bottle-blonde may just be the perfect combination for a female host, her patter is bold and innuendo-laden but she never loses control of her audience.

The importance of a good MC is highlighted when one of the acts is below par, and I’m going to give Padraig Hyland the benefit of the doubt here, he has a good reputation and has reached a certain level of success but he would probably be the first to admit that his performance on this night was not good. It didn’t help that a heckle within the first minute provided a punchline to a joke that was funnier than the one Hyland himself eventually produced. He never seemed to recover from that moment and, despite a good line here or there, for most of his set he seemed to be struggling to remember his lines and frequently losing his thread, and some parts of his set were notable only for an embarrassed silence.

No such problems for Jack Whitehall however. The standard setup for a weekend night at The Stand sees a headliner, two established comics and someone new, young and fairly unknown in the ten minute try out spot. It is rare that the occupant of that ten minute spot turns out to be the best act of the night. I don’t think I’d be sticking my neck out very far in predicting that within a few years Whitehall will be coming back to headline nights like these. His opening disclaimer about his middle-class upbringing worried me for a moment, when a comic opens with an apology it is often a sign he isn’t confident in his own material. But within a minute all such worries had fallen away as he demonstrated a superb command of the English Language and a talent for brilliant social mimicry.

Joe Heenan has become very much a Stand regular, and the probably the most apt word to apply to him is “dependable.” Very much a blokish comic, he looks and sounds like someone you could enjoy a pint with, and he is adept at very quickly bringing an audience onto his side. Moreover, you get the impression from watching him that his act is not meticulously planned in advance, rather that he has a wealth of material to draw on and an ability to think fast on his feet and tailor the set to the particular audience he is faced with. Whether the case or not, his was a safe pair of hands to keep the momentum of the night going.

Vladimir McTavish is a brash, straight-talking Glaswegian schemie who is the comic invention of Paul Sneddon, a comedian also responsible for the drunken football pundit Bob Doolally. Originally created to present an alternative Scottish history lesson, McTavish has now become pretty much Sneddon’s main business and he tours extensively under the name. His humour is from the streets, often coarse and presented in an aggressive style. Most of his set is based around the Scottish experience, from Burns suppers to the smoking ban and hatred of the English, and in truth he mainly picks easy targets. It was an entertaining enough end to the night, but maybe slightly disappointing as a headline act having failed to surpass the two acts which preceded him.

Five Questions: Janey Godley

2008-02-21T14:25:00.004Z

Welcome to the first in what we hope will become a comprehensive series of posts in which we ask some of the country's top stand-ups about themselves. And our first interviewee in the chair is Janey Godley.

Sometimes described as the female Billy Connolly, Janey is a down-to-earth Glaswegian whose comedy often derives from the streets of her home city. She is also renowned as one of the hardest working people in comedy, two years ago during the Edinburgh Fringe she was performing three full length shows every day. As well as headlining the top comedy clubs up and down the country she is also a bestselling author and a successful playwright and actress. Here's what she had to say in answer to our little quiz.

What made you decide you wanted to be a comedian (and when did you first decide)?

I owned a bar for 15 years and left it in 1994. I only wanted to become a comic to get my Equity card so I could act, but I liked comedy more eventually.

Which other comedians do you most admire/most inspire you?

Jerry Sadowitz performed comedy in my bar , so he was the biggest inspiration to me.

What's been your best gig to date? And your worst?

The best was performing at Glastonbury. The worst was in front of seventeen nuns!

What's the best heckle you've ever received? And how did you respond?

The best heckle was in Oxford when a wee obviously lesbian chick was sitting with 20 male squaddies. I was doing stuff about porn and asked 'Is it just me....or do other women flinch when they watch hard core porn and clench and worry about the pain? She shouted "NO, I love it" and all the men laughed.

I added "Well you weren't really in that demographic as you look like the kind of woman who likes to bang a hammer off her vagina, or lets another woman bang it for her"

She shouted "I am not a lesbian"

I replied " Really? Well you need to know someone has seriously fucked up your hair"

What are you working on at the moment and what does the future hold?

I am on tour at the moment and I also write a weekly column for The Scotsman newspaper. I'm about to go to New Zealand for the comedy festival. Then in April I have a run at the Soho Theatre.

Lemon Custard Comedy Club - Edinburgh, 16/02/2008

2008-02-18T11:33:00.010Z

Like most artistic media, the world of stand-up is a ladder for the aspiring to climb. At the top there are the theatre tours, and below that the club circuit, chain clubs featuring established acts, independent clubs with a mix and giving opportunities to the up and coming. Then there are the open mic nights for the newcomers. And somewhere in there, there are the underground clubs.

Often run by a comic who acts as host themselves, and featuring their friends or anyone they could talk into coming along to do a set, shoved into whatever venue they could blag for free and run on a budget of tuppence-ha’penny and a packet of juicy fruit, they tend to be informal, sometimes chaotic, and often a lot of fun.

Lemon Custard is the brainchild of Dee Custance, who co-hosts along with Sian Bevan. They make a good pairing. Custance does the “excitable girly-girl” thing, a style that has become popular of late thanks to the success of Josie Long, while Bevan has a more straightforward and grounded style and is the more natural MC of the two and whose "New Year on Calton Hill" story is a highlight of the night. They make their guests feel welcome by handing out lollipops and liquorish allsorts and going round the audience finding out a bit about everyone. This doesn’t take long, the paying public initially numbering ten, although more arrived as the night went on.

Held in the Harlequin Cafe, a little basement organic food eaterie below a bookshop off Buccleugh Street, it was a bizarre location for a comedy night, the room having no real focal point at which to perform, but this helped to create an informal atmosphere where the comics seemed to be more talking with the audience rather than performing for them, and all three of the main acts seemed to cope with the circumstances well.

First up was Austin Low, a spiky haired youngster who has been performing since he was 15. And a very good start it was, Low was a bundle of nervous energy and threw himself into his performance with gusto. Introducing himself as the “Urban Joker,” much of his set was taken up with his campaign to end false advertising, including questioning what exactly is mega about the Megabus, and whether there is any scientifically proven basis for claiming the existence of a Lynx Effect. It was an excellent opening set and left me wanting more, which is always the sign of a good comic.

Following this, the night veered off into the slightly surreal as the audience were invited to participate in a giant game of scrabble, with the slightly altered rule that any word was acceptable, real or not, as long as you could use it in a sentence. As such, between us we managed to enhance the English language with such gems as triangley, zebravem and wankmap, along with my own submission, antifloaty.

Next we had Jim Park, who I had previously seen less than a month ago and was less than impressed with on that occasion. Although understandable, it didn’t really help that his set on this occasion was not merely word for word but pause for pause identical to the previous one. It reinforced my opinion of his set being too calculated, even while he tries to give the impression of a stream of consciousness. It isn’t that I disliked it, just that I found it a little too rigid and structured. That said, however, for the second time I seemed to be in the minority and he went down very well.

Last up was Keir McAllister, who I had also seen recently, and who again performed much of the same material. However, he is a much less rigid, more fluid performer and easily capable of thinking on his feet and adapting his set to the circumstances. As such, although the punchlines were familiar, the setups were often fresh and interesting. And with a headlining spot giving him more time to build his gags rather than rushing from laugh to laugh, and there was also plenty of material I hadn’t heard before including a good routine involving having fun with religious bigots.

Overall it was a strange but fun night, the kind of night that makes you feel a part of, rather than a spectator of, the action. It isn’t a night for the shrinking violet comedy goer, there is no possibility of hiding at the back here, but equally there is no possibility for the performer of hiding behind the stage lights and keeping the audience at a distance. Audience and comic thrust together at close quarters, it makes an interesting dynamic, and a very enjoyable night.

Mark Olver, Lloyd Langford - Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh, 12/02/2008

2008-02-14T11:42:00.005Z

There are times, standing in front of a packed room when you are taking the audience with you every step of the way, when comedy must surely be one of the best jobs in the world. But there are other times when it must be bloody hard work. Trying to entertain twenty-nine people (I counted) in a room that can hold nearly two hundred would be one of those times.

I couldn’t say for sure why this gig was so poorly attended. It was organised by the Edinburgh University student’s union, but open to outsiders if they knew it was on. That was probably part of the reason, though, because it doesn’t seem to have been advertised outside the university campus at all. I only found it by accident, and on arriving found a poster showing it was somewhere in the middle of a whole series of Tuesday night gigs, many of the earlier ones of which I would have gone to if I had known they were on.

But why more students didn’t attend, I don’t know. It’s a shame, because both of these comics deserved a better audience. They both worked hard, with mixed results, to win over the meagre group that had made the effort to come and see them. And having both travelled a long distance for a couple of midweek shows, they will both probably think long and hard before accepting a similar booking in the future.

Lloyd Langford was affected worst by the lack of attendance. A young Welshman in his early twenties, he’s clearly a talented lad and probably has a decent future ahead of him in the stand-up game. But he doesn’t yet have the experience and stagecraft to be able to cope with a night like this one, and there were times he was very visibly floundering. His performance was very stop-start, and he seemed unable to build up any momentum, and often it seemed more like a free-for-all down the pub chat with a large group of people rather than a comedy show. But for all that, I would like to see him on a proper club night some time, because I think with a decent audience in front of him he has the potential to be very funny indeed.

Mark Olver, on the other hand, while not exactly a “star name” on the circuit, can at least be described as a seasoned pro. His day job, as warm-up man for Deal or No Deal, has taught him how to handle any kind of audience, and he quite quickly adapted his set to the environment rather than trying to force things.

He started the show by making me, personally, feel guilty. This was not his fault, I hasten to add, and he couldn’t have known. But having ascertained that I was not a student, he asked if I had come specifically to see him. I had, as it happened, as it had been recognising his name on the internet listing that made me say, hey, let’s go along. However, he had a show on in the Fringe last year, and I hadn’t gone to that because I had been put off by the rather simpering expression he was wearing on the poster. So when he replied that he was pleased, because hardly anyone ever came specifically to see him, and then explained that it was because of the posters, and because “they have this face on them,” it was a little close to the bone.

This led into a routine about how few people came to see his Fringe show, and how he had given away chocolate biscuits to the audience in the hope that people would tell their friends and it might encourage them to come. “One show I had one of those king size rolls of jaffa cakes,” he said. “It was over-optimistic. A packet of club was more than sufficient.”

This set was also extremely informal, but it was born of experience rather than desperation. His warm-up gig has clearly taught him how to feed off the audience, and he made it feel as if he was confiding his secrets in a small group of close friends rather than playing a show, which worked very well in the circumstances. Furthermore, while many solo Fringe show comics are currently milking the last drops from last year’s shows, Olver is clearly already in the transitional stage, working on new material for the coming year, which led to him frequently referring to a notebook of ideas and asking people what they thought he should do, again working with rather than against the small numbers in the room.

A large part of the set consisted of confiding his ideas for this year’s Fringe show, and if nothing else he has probably ensured that many of those in the room, myself included, will surely attend to see how it worked out. Overall, I came away wishing I had made the effort to see him before. Olver is probably never going to hit the big time, or be anything more than a working comic, but he is highly professional, experienced, and most importantly, he makes you laugh. And what else are you going to be doing on a Tuesday night?

A Tart at Vicar's (DVD review)

2008-02-11T00:46:00.000Z

During the four years I spent living in Dublin, one of the really great things was that, my flat being just behind the Guinness Brewery, I could leave my front door and within ten minutes stroll I could be at Vicar Street. And the reason that was so great was that Vicar Street was where all the cool kids came to play. The big names, the international megastars, may have stuck to The Point, or the Gaiety, or the Olympia, but if you wanted the proper raw atmosphere of a real gig, Vicar Street was the place to go.

I saw some great acts there over those years. From Tommy Tiernan and Ardal O’Hanlon, to Rich Hall performing as support act for his own Otis Lee Crenshaw, to the brilliant, yet totally unknown outside Ireland, sketch comedy troupe Apres Match. (Twice.) The atmosphere of the place was always fantastic, and as such it is no surprise to me that virtually every live DVD that comes out of the Emerald Isle is filmed there. Andrew Maxwell Live In Dublin is merely the latest in a long and illustrious tradition.

Maxwell is rising very quickly to the top of the comedy tree. From the cult following he has gathered around his Fullmooners late night showcases, to his frequent television appearances on RTE’s The Panel and BBC2’s Mock the Week, as well as regular guest spots on various other panel shows. Clearly the man works like a Trojan, and yet he makes it look effortless. Not only that, but I saw him live twice during the same year in which this DVD was recorded, and yet over those three sets, each an hour or more in length, hardly any of the material was repeated.

One difference with this show, of course, is that he is playing to his home town audience, and as such can occasionally speak in a shorthand that outsiders might not understand. So jokes like “I grew up in Kilbarrack, or as my mum would say, Raheny,” may go over non-Dubliners’ heads. And with jokes about people from Tallaght, the Angelus, watching Nuacht, and a final story revolving around speaking in Gaelic in order to get laid, it is clear that this DVD was very much designed for the Irish market, where his Panel appearances have made him a household name.

But there’s also plenty of material that is universal, including excellent routines about playing a black comedy club in New York, or antagonising Rangers supporters at a Hibernians football match, as well as a lot of material about Edinburgh which made me feel right at home!

The thing that Maxwell does so well is to break down the invisible barrier between audience and performer. Not in a slick “hey, where you from,” audience patter kind of way. But by talking in such a natural, rough and ready style that you could almost imagine that he’s chatting to you over a pint in the pub.

Of course, live DVDs can never take the place of the real thing. But they have their place, especially in the case of big stadium shows where the humour can so often get lost in the wide open spaces that sometimes they are actually funnier in the confines of your own living room. But this is the antithesis of that kind of show. It’s very much a club gig, with no impressive stage set or flashy effects, just a guy with a stool, a microphone and a pint of Guinness.

But then again, so many of the great early comics are lost to us because their best shows were never committed to film. Today’s acts are luckier, their careers are being documented in this way. If you can catch Maxwell live, do so, because he really is one of the best performers still regularly playing the club circuit. But if you can’t, this DVD is pretty good as a “second best” option.

Hello

2008-02-06T02:16:00.000Z

High time someone stepped in to lend Alan a hand - he's been running the site single-handedly since setting it up.

So - introductions.

I'm Ben, and you may or (more likely) may not know me from Silent Words Speak Loudest and collaborative blog The Art Of Noise. (I also co-write a football blog, but I'm loathe to direct you there as there's precious little of any amusement there - if you don't count opposition fans laughing at my team's plight, that is...)

As a fan of stand-up who doesn't go to nearly enough gigs, I'm hopeful that my involvement with The Laughter Track might help change things. Nothing on the horizon at the moment, though, sadly, so in the meantime you'll have to put up with other things from me, at least - interviews and reviews from the Silent Words Speak Loudest archives, perhaps the odd DVD review, and, first of all, a long-overdue review of Cynthia True's 'American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story'...

"'Noam Chomsky with dick jokes'"

2008-02-06T02:15:00.000Z

"Bill Hicks is most known, particularly in America, for being unknown". Thus begins Cynthia True's note at the beginning of her biography of Hicks, 'American Scream'. Not strictly true - at the time of his death, in February 1994, he was a veteran of 'The Late Show With David Letterman' and had been nominated for the American Comedy Award for the third time. But, yes, he certainly wasn't as well known as he might have been, or as he was in the UK.

What DO we come to know about Hicks from True's book?

* That he was a bookish, serious child who secreted himself away in his bedroom writing razor-sharp, Woody Allen influenced one-liners and who then graduated to performing as part of a double act taking parents and teachers for comic fodder.

* That one of the key formative events of the young comic's life was seeing Sam Kinison live. He shared a similar background to the former preacher: "They were operating out of the same middle-American evangelical Christian universe, both wildly enraged by its literal interpretation of the Bible and deeply imprinted by it". Hicks once said of his family as he was growing up: "'We were Yuppie Baptists. We worried about things like, "If you scratch your neighbour's Subaru should you leave a note?"'". Televangelism and the "prosperity theology" espoused by the likes of Jim Bakker subsequently became one of his key targets - an obvious one, you might think, but certainly not an easy subject to get away with in 1980s Texas.

* That Hicks's world-view may have often come across as bleak and cynical, but that he also had a positive, spiritual side to his character that led to a fascination with meditation, mysticism and metaphysical philosophy. For someone who spent so much time satirising and savaging the beliefs of others, he was in some respects a remarkably credulous and open person.

* That, after years living a fastidiously clean life, he suddenly threw himself off the wagon with equal enthusiasm: "Sure you could sit cross-legged and pray for ten hours, but drugs, Bill now realised, were an express lane to transcendence". Cigarettes, booze, mushrooms, ectasy, coke - he embraced the whole smorgasbord of stimulants available to him. Labelling non-smokers "obnoxious self-righteous slugs", he became self-righteous in his pursuit of the classically escapist but ultimately self-destructive lifestyle of the rock 'n' roll star, adopting a new motto: "'Every time I party too hard I remember Keith Richards is still alive'". (I like the image of Hicks faced with a mound of illicit substances and looking at his 'What Would Keith Do?' bracelet...)

* That this had an inevitable impact on his performances, bringing out a side that increasingly set him apart from the pack - he became angrier, less unpredictable, more confrontational, often ironically in the cause of pacifism. Kinison had shown him that the conventional relation between comedian and audience could be warped, bent, shattered. True comments of his interest in Elvis (whom he regularly dressed as): "It was the inexorable thirst for acolytes and fans that fascinated Bill - an interesting fixation for a performer who had no compunction about offending his own audiences".

* That, aside from religion, his most revisted subjects were the Right, government, the media and corporate America, but that he also had a finely honed appreciation of absurdities, such as the Flag Burning Protection Act of 1989: "It wasn't that he personally believed in burning the flag, it was that he couldn't believe the absurdity of putting people in jail for burning the very symbol of freedom that gave them right to burn the flag".

* That people either genuinely didn't know what to do with him, or recognised his genius but then mistakenly believed he might be moulded or pushed in a certain direction. Hicks, though, refused to conform to expectations, eager to pursue his own big ideas and with an unshakeable moral view of his own role and responsibilities: "'To me, the comic is the guy who says "Wait a minute" as the consensus forms. He's the antithesis of the mob mentality'".

* That the infamous canning of his final performance on 'David Letterman', when the pancreatic cancer that was to kill him had already been discovered, was initially a bitter blow but subsequently garnered him even more attention. Even as his body waned, his star was waxing.

So, what of True's book? Well, it suffers from three faults.

Firstly, her reasoning is often facile and glib - see, for instance, passages like this: "Nirvana had just blown up the airwaves with Nevermind, knocking Michael Jackson off 'Billboard's Number One spot the week of 11 January 1992. If Bill's aesthetic wasn't punk, his sensibility was, and if there were a moment for America to embrace his anti-corporate message, it was then".

Secondly, and perhaps inevitably as a book about a near-mythical subject who suffered an untimely death at a young age, it glosses over some of Hicks's less likeable qualities and personal contradictions, even if not really sliding into full-fledged hagiography. Thus his frequently selfish relations with women are only alluded to in passing, while incidents such as his barracking of one heckler with repeated screams of "You fucking cunt!" are narrated without comment. It's hardly the most articulate or quick-witted of responses - just as not all the quoted material radiates with the keen intelligence by which True claims it was informed.

She admits that Hicks wasn't always above playing up to his bad-boy image, but could have made more of the fact that he came to hate being seen in some quarters simply as a foul-mouthed X-rated stand-up. It clearly rankled that he could be regarded in the same terms as someone like Andrew Dice Clay, who had no more noble goal than making people laugh by being as offensive as possible. Hicks didn't want audiences of Clay-loving frat boys baying their appreciation of every swear word (though he did, cynically, appreciate that the PRMC parental advisory sticker slapped on his albums automatically guaranteed more sales) - but at the same time he didn't want to be preaching to the converted, those already aware of his political views, either.

Thirdly, and probably most damagingly, 'American Scream' never seems to go more than skin-deep, reading like what it is - a book written by someone with little or no personal experience of meeting its subject, and pieced together from the reminiscences of those who have. With its subtitle 'The Bill Hicks Story', True arguably attempts to evade prosecution under the Trades Descriptions Act - it is, as that would suggest, essentially a narrative of his life - but as a "biography" (as it's described on the back cover), it's deficient, giving the reader precious little genuine insight into the thoughts and psychology of the man himself.

Link: My review of the Hicks compendium 'Love All The People'

Tim Minchin - Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 01/02/2008

2008-02-04T11:34:00.000Z

Photo by Linzy

Musical comedy can be a very hit and miss genre. When it is good, it can be very good indeed. But when it is poor, it can seem interminable. It is also one of the oldest types of comedy, but one which seems to get re-invented for each new generation. A staple of the music hall, performers like Arthur Askey and George Formby are now fondly remembered relics whose acts would do nothing to amuse a modern audience.

Flanders and Swann are the link between that era and modern comedy, taking their songs often to surreal and subversive places and setting a template followed by the likes of Hinge and Bracket, Kit and the Widow and even today by Topping and Butch. But today’s musical comedians more often look to Victoria Wood, who combined musical virtuosity with lyrics that perfectly captured the monotony and mundanity of working-class life.

Wood is a good point of comparison for Tim Minchin. Like her, his songs have their roots in everyday experience. But whereas she often created a character as the focus of her songs, Minchin’s are very much more a personal examination of himself. But what really makes him stand out from the crowd is that he is equally adept when it comes to stand-up and physical comedy as he is when sat behind his piano.

Whether consciously or not, in his goth persona, the wild uncontrollable hair, heavily accentuated eyes and the slightly manic grin that frequently splits his face, he has co-opted the characteristics of the clown. And so, when he takes to the stage to perform an opening number in mime, performing the actions of all of the various members of a rock band with perfect precision, it appeals to what, for most of us, was our very earliest appreciation of humour.

Minchin has come a long way in a short time, and this solo tour appears to be a bit of a retrospective of what has come so far, featuring mostly songs from his previous Dark Side and So Rock shows. Many, like Rock and Roll Nerd or Inflatable You are clever, complex and side-splittingly funny. Others, such as Canvas Bag and Peace Anthem for Palestine are simply silly and fun, while Some People Have It Worse Than Me pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in a risky and interesting way.

In between, he links the songs with self-deprecating monologues performed in a nervy and highly-strung tone that show that this man doesn’t need to hide behind his musicianship, he is naturally very funny.

It has to be said that the Queen’s Hall, a converted church more usually used as a classical music venue, is probably not the best location for a comedy show. But Minchin is not a conventional comedy performer, and he manages to fill the room with his bright personality and his obvious sense of glee at being able to do what he loves doing before a paying audience. The fact that, despite not exactly being a household name, he is able to sell out venues of this size on a solo tour bodes well for his future. Hopefully it won’t be long before an all-new show comes along, and when it does, I’m going to be in the queue for tickets.

Steve Hughes, Josh Howie, Nick Davies, Jim Park, compere Joe Heenan - The Stand, Edinburgh, 26/01/2008

2008-01-30T14:44:00.000Z

Most weekends, the line up at the Stand stays fixed from Thursday to Saturday in both the Edinburgh and Glasgow venues. But this week the Glasgow branch was closed for a private function on Saturday, and as Steve Hughes had been headlining there on the previous two nights, they switched him over to Edinburgh presumably rather than let him go elsewhere. As such, he took over top billing, and Joe Heenan, who had been doing a full spot on the other nights, switched over to MC duties.

It was a role he took to well. Very much a blokey type of comic, Heenan joshes good-naturedly with his audience with a big wide grin always fixed to his face. Audience interaction is maybe not his natural element, but he warmed everyone up nicely, and his daft suggestions for how to respond to the announcement of each new act was a winner. (My favourite was, “in the style of Christopher Walken.”)

Tall, curly haired, bespectacled and wearing a very natty suit, Nick Davies performed the opening act looking for all the world like a used car salesman. But appearances can be deceptive, and he quickly proved himself a very capable performer indeed. A Mancunian who has been living in Edinburgh for eight years, much of his material revolved around the differences between English and Scottish culture, and the strange Scots idioms that make it like speaking a foreign language. His routine about directions to Scottish locations was a particular hit.

Jim Park was less of a success, for me at least although he seemed to go down quite well. He performed deadpan humour very much in the style of Norman Lovett, with the same air of someone who had just wandered onto the stage accidentally and felt he might as well do something now he was there. But unlike Norm, who performs this kind of act effortlessly, with Park you could see his mind working the whole time and it just didn’t really come off.

Josh Howie is a Jewish comedian unashamedly inspired by Woody Allen, and it shows. Much of his material consists of the same sort of neurotic intellectual act that Allen made famous, but he has developed his own style around it and it suits him well. One slight problem is that, with his slightly bland looks, unlike say a David Baddiel or an Andy Zaltzman, he needs to announce his Jewishness before he can move on to Jewish based humour, which makes for a slightly awkward moment, but one he manages successfully to integrate into the act. He has good stage presence, and makes some brave choices in material, and I’d expect to see him around the circuit for a long time to come.

Attending one of Steve Hughes’ shows is always part comedy part educational experience. Hughes takes his audience through detailed explanations of the military-economic complex which shores up a world order controlled by a cabal of old money families who control governments and create the world in their own preferred image. But he never forgets to add a punchline. He’s got the look for it as well. With his long straggly hair, wild eyes and big scary grin he looks, for all the world, like he should be an old testament prophet of doom, rather than an Australian former heavy metal drummer.

But Hughes doesn’t do exclusively political material. He casts his eye far and wide over a whole range of subjects, from life in his native Australia, through why straight is the new gay, masturbation in hotel rooms and on to the X Factor, the last two not being all that different come to think of it. The strange thing being that, having seen Hughes several times over the last few years, the majority of the material was not new to me, and yet somehow he has the charisma and the character to make it feel fresh. He has a force of personality that seems to burst off the stage and infect everyone in the venue, and it is this quality that puts him among the most exciting comics working the circuit right now.

Tom Stade, Teddy, Elaine Malcolmson, Keir McAllister, compere Bruce Devlin - The Stand, Edinburgh, 16/01/2008

2008-01-26T15:33:00.000Z

If there’s one unwritten rule of comedy clubs, it’s “don’t sit in the front row.” Especially if, like me, you are the kind of figure the comedian’s eye is always drawn to. And even more especially if you have a pair of pink haired goth-girls sitting alongside you. But unfortunately, on this night, by the time we arrived it was front row or stand, and I’ve never been one to take the chicken’s way out.

Bruce Devlin certainly wasn’t going to resist, but first he had the little issue of the loud Essex “service delivery” woman out entertaining clients to deal with, particularly her apparent reluctance to explain exactly what service she delivered, as if it was a state secret. But Devlin is an equal opportunities offender, he works his way systematically around the room making sure everyone gets a little bit of the sharp end of his tongue. He’s a natural at the compere role, big, camp and bitchy, he is always ready with an appropriate barb no matter what is thrown his way.

Keir McAllister makes for a good opening act. A young, personable and good looking Dundonian, and those are words I never thought all belonged in the same sentence, he works the room well, mixing prepared material about his own life with some good off-the-cuff moments. In fact you could almost forgive him for having written Kate Lawlor’s act for her “reality TV” foray into stand-up.

Elaine Malcolmson is a new name on the circuit. A diminuitive Irishwoman, she has been doing stand-up for about six months and is still feeling her way. Cleverly, she avoids the pitfalls of potential heckling by performing a highly stylised act. Staring off into mid-distance, never making eye contact with the audience, she mumbles non-sequiters into the microphone as if distracted by something else, like a cross between Stephen Wright and Hattie Hayridge. And if she isn’t, yet, in the same league as either, some of her lines hit home and bode well that, with a bit more experience and a bit of personality development, she could be a decent club comic.

Teddy is a name I’ve heard bandied about, but who I’ve never seen before. I’d heard good things of him, so was quite looking forward to his act. But whether this was an off night, or just not my cup of tea, I found him the most disappointing performer on the bill. His opening material, about how his entire act had been ruined by finding happiness, was amusing. But from there he moved on to a series of gross-out stories which he clearly thought were shocking and cutting-edge, but which were in fact mildly dull. Not one I’m going to be rushing to see again.

The same cannot be said for Tom Stade. He’s been on my “B list” for the last two Edinburgh Fringes, the list of shows that I’d like to “get around to.” But somehow, on neither occasion was it got around to. So this was my first time of seeing him, and while it’s difficult to judge just how good he was on the grounds that he spent half of his stage time making me part of his act (front row, remember,) it certainly seemed to me that he was very, very good indeed.

Much of his act revolved around the fact of getting older, settling down, having kids, and how it all takes you by surprise because it was the last thing you were planning on. This was material which struck home with me, possibly one reason I was singled out as his stooge for the evening. But while this is standard comedy fodder, Stade takes the material in unusual directions, with a sharp incisive mind which analyses every minute aspect and finds most of it wanting. Meanwhile his easy smile and laid-back demeanour lull you into a false sense of security, disguising the often savage way he sticks the knife into his topics and twists just that little bit further than you would expect.

With the likes of Phil Nichol, Glenn Wool and Jason John Whitehead, Canada seems to be a fertile breeding ground for comedy right now, and Stade easily belongs on that list, the equal of any of them. One not to be missed.

Chris Rock: No Apologies – Hammersmith Apollo, 11/01/2008

2008-01-24T14:38:00.000Z

A decade and a half ago, I was offered the chance to go and see Bill Hicks live. It was in Birmingham, and the timing wasn’t really very good, so I turned it down figuring I would have another chance to see him the next time he was around. Less than a year later he was dead. There was no other chance. It’s a mistake I wasn’t going to make again. So the minute I saw that Chris Rock was coming over this side of the Atlantic for the first time ever, my ass was on Ticketmaster.

The hype has been tremendous, with many calls that Rock is ready to join the likes of Hicks, Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce in the pantheon of great comedy gods. His problem, of course, is that each of those who came before have won their place, at least partly, by either dying young or, in the case of Pryor, having their career cut short through illness. It is difficult for a comedian to be taken that seriously while they are still active, and suicide seems a rather drastic way to clear up the matter and one I’m sure Rock would sooner not follow.

But whether he is among the greats or not, surely anyone compiling a list of, say, the hundred best stand-up routines of all time, could not fail to include his “Niggas vs Black People” and “$5,000 Bullets” in there somewhere. And if there was nothing of quite that same calibre on show on this night, there were at least a couple of moments when he came close.

But before we get on to the main event, I should say a few words about the support. Mario Joyner is a successful comic in his own right. In America he has had his own TV shows, as well as making several feature film appearances. And he is a funny guy. But the difference is notable when you come to a venue of this size. Joyner just didn’t have the personality to fill it, and he looked lost in the middle of such a giant stage. So material that would probably kill in the close confines of a comedy club was only capable of raising some mild tittering here.

Rock has no such problems. He has personality and charisma to spare, and he has learned his craft well. And it is also clear he has studied hard at the feet of his own heroes, Pryor and Eddie Murphy. He prowls the stage like a predator, with the sudden halt and stare when he wants to emphasise a point that is pure Pryor.

One problem every performer who crosses the Atlantic to do comedy in either direction faces is the cultural shift. Rock acknowledges this straight away, telling the crowd that he had to arrive a few days early to find out what would be funny here. He then goes into a short routine clearly designed just for the UK shows, specific British material about how worthless the dollar is compared to the pound, and whether or not darts is actually a sport. But for the most part he sticks to what has obviously been prepared as his show for the whole tour, and simply trusts that we will be familiar enough with American names and personalities to get the references.

And that is good, because the middle section of the set, where he analyses the current US primary elections is probably the strongest sustained material of the night. The material about what it would be like to have a black first lady (“no, you ain’t president, we is president”) is among his best, and thankfully he doesn’t labour the Bush material which has been done to death by this point, contenting himself with a few choice barbs, the best being pointing out that Bush has been so bad, the electorate are willing to elect anyone now so long as it ain’t another white man.

For the rest of the set he mostly relies on old standard material, relationship humour and riffs on racial differences, which is good stuff but doesn’t really mark him out from what anyone else is doing. Although in the latter he manages to hit his absolute peak, a moment of near comic genius when he explains the one and only occasion on which it is acceptable for a white person to use the word “nigga.”

So perhaps the hype has been a little overpushed, and the press hyperbole has gone a little too far. But Rock, if not necessarily the greatest comedian of his generation, is certainly up there among them, and opportunities to see these guys are all too few and far between. It was a long trip down to the smoke, on a blustery snow-bound night, but I’m glad I made the effort. Let’s hope he doesn’t leave it so long before giving me the chance to do so again.

Glenn Wool, Addy Van Der Borgh, The Wee Man, Liam Mullone, compere Susan Morrison – The Stand, Edinburgh, 05/01/2008

2008-01-20T23:15:00.001Z

The first weekend of the new year saw a strong line up, featuring three well established acts as well as one of the Stand’s most dependable hosts. Susan Morrison may look like somebody’s mum who just wandered in off the street, but her brand of Glasgow gutter humour never fails to warm up even the most hard hearted of crowds. Tonight she had comedy gold on her side as she taunted a youngster from a work party in the front row with threatening to make a man of him, only to inadvertently reveal that one of the others present had got there first.

Liam Mullone was first up, who, despite his Irish sounding name, is a big, shambling, ex public schoolboy type with a delivery somewhat reminiscent of Harry Enfield’s “Tim Nice-But-Dim.” But despite his shambolic appearance and befuddled style, his material is sharp and nicely observed, including a lengthy routine about flight safety procedures and the importance of always leaving an aircraft that has landed on water by the middle emergency exits because they have the longest slide, and if it’s the last thing you’re ever going to do you may as well have fun doing it.

The Wee Man began, apparently, as a YouTube phenomenon, but is now making a go of it in the clubs. His Ned/Chav persona has been done many times before, of course, but giving him his due he managed to get some fresh mileage out of it. With an impenetrable Glaswegian accent he was probably unintelligible to the non-Scots in the audience, a fact that he riffed on during the act. But he managed some good material, particularly on the importance of how you wear your burberry cap making all the difference between being an ordinary person or a “threat to society!” His set was no more than ten minutes, and probably the right length. Any longer would have become annoying, but as it was he left a decent impression.

Addy Van Der Borgh has been around the circuit for a while, long enough to become a slick and polished performer. Blessed with a nose which in any other profession would be a drawback but in stand-up is like gold dust, he only has to walk out onto the stage to get his first laugh of the evening. But his opening was material about his alcoholism which, while strong, I first saw him do over two years ago and which, as such, should probably be retired by now. That said, what followed was more entertaining confessional comedy covering standard relationship type topics, and with his wide eyed expressions he manages to pull a good few guffaws out of the bag.

Headliner for the evening, you can generally take it to the bank that Glenn Wool is going to put on a good show. But I have to admit I think this was an off evening, not helped by a total wanker of an Irishman in the audience who threw all his toys out of the pram just because Wool, in a practiced routine, suggested that Ireland was not the greatest country on earth. First trying to engage the comic in argument and then pointedly turning his seat to face the back of the room before finally storming out, he really just showed himself up as a childish idiot, but nonetheless it seemed to throw Wool off his stride.

But to the rest of the audience he seemed to go down very well, and my own disappointment may just have been because I had heard much of the material before, the set having seemingly been cobbled together from bits of his last two Edinburgh Fringe shows. Nonetheless, with his laid back stoner demeanour and his mightily impressive ‘tache, he’s a hard man not to warm to. Meanwhile, nobody should be deceived by his helium high Canadian drawl and his lethargic delivery, they mask some quite incisive humour, particularly when he gets onto his pet topics of religion and intolerance.

What is The Laughter Track?

2008-01-17T23:54:00.000Z

The Laughter Track is a term used in television for the fake laughter added on to the background of a situation comedy. You know, the really bad ones where they try to convince you that there is a live audience who find absolutely every word that comes out of any character's mouth hysterically funny, whether it was intended to amuse or not.

Good sit-coms tend not to use a laughter track. They either give you the laughter of a live audience, or none at all. That's the way it should be. There should be no need of a laughter track. We should be the laughter track. That's what this site is all about.

All good comedy starts with live comedy. Whether it is a situation comedy, a sketch show, or just someone standing there with a microphone in their hand, that's where it all begins. That's where the best performers and the best writers cut their teeth, and learn how to be funny.

And they say laughter is the best medicine. Good for what ails you. Comedy allows you to laugh through the good times, and more importantly, allows you to laugh through the bad ones as well. Some of the best comedy has come along at times of the worst adversity.

That's why the live comedy scene is so important, and why it needs to be supported. Today comedy is big business, and the top comedians can perform sell-out tours of huge barn-like arenas and charge over-inflated ticket prices. But they all started out somewhere very different. They all started out, an unknown face, standing in a room, with nothing but a microphone, and with the faces of strangers staring at them saying, go on then, make me laugh.

We have started this site as a way of supporting the live comedy circuit of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The contributors are people who have enjoyed live comedy at various levels, from the dingy clubs and back rooms of pubs to the wide open spaces of the arena shows over a number of years, and would like to infect others with their own enthusiasm.

Through reviews of live shows, and news of upcoming events, the aim of his site is to encourage people to get out and experience live comedy more. To look at what is happening on the comedy scene in their own part of the country, and to support it. We would hope, eventually, to have contributors from all parts of the country, and would welcome anyone to join us who shares our enthusiasm.