Comedy, Issue 584

Knocked Up

(15) 128min

23 Aug 2007

Production assistant Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she is given the chance to present on an entertainment TV channel. One day her producer tells her that her body could do with being a little ‘tighter’. But no…

Ricky Gervais

23 Aug 2007

There really can’t be too many comic names who would get away with performing a one-off gig at the Fringe for an International Festival ticket price, but Sir Richard of Gervais is one such man. With Fame, his obedient fans will be entertained with tales…

Alex Horne

23 Aug 2007

Alex Horne revels in trying to find comedy in the most unlikely of corners. It’s one thing to make fun out of ancient languages (the absurdities of Latin was the topic of his last full Fringe run) but he’s now moved on to the inherently unfunny pursuit…

Alyssa Kyria

23 Aug 2007

Kyria’s talents as a comic actor are evident in this patchy but entertaining character act. Compered by Ariadne the Greek socialite, the show also features an Australian New Age dimwit, a snooty tennis-playing nymphomaniac and plenty more grotesques.

Amsterdam Underground Comedy Collective

23 Aug 2007

If this is Dutch humour at its finest, I’m off to Germany for my laughs. The AUCC may have a cult following back home but there’s little reason to believe that their comedy travels at all well in this lame, tame hour. The supposed heavyweight talents of…

Andrew Maxwell

23 Aug 2007

5 words to describe this year’s show, Waxin’? Beautiful, real life, white lies. 4 stand-ups/comedy acts who you think should be more famous in September than they are now? Rhod Gilbert, Jim Jeffries, Steve Hughes, Stephen K Amos. 3…

Andrew McClelland

23 Aug 2007

In one of the hottest rooms on the Fringe, this madcap Australian sweats buckets trying to get laughs from his show which is about nothing more or less ambitious than his favourite songs. You’ll either adore his mugging immediately or sit open-mouthed…

Andrew O'Neill

23 Aug 2007

Is Andrew O’Neill rock or folk? He has the heavy metal chains but he also has long hair and black framed glasses. He has a V-shaped guitar, but it’s acoustic instead of electric. More importantly, is this a comedy show or surrealist theatre? The answer…

As You Were

23 Aug 2007

Packing them in for their observational stand-up, tag-team Roger Hailes and Todd Womack and have caused quite a stir with a simple comedy club format, welcoming an alternative Fringe guest each night (on this occasion the sublimely smutty guitar duo…

Austin Low

23 Aug 2007

This jovial Aberdonian admits to gulping a couple of litres of fizzy pop every single day. Which perhaps explains his inability to stand still or focus on his material for any given amount of time. There’s a fine show in the caffeine-happy head of Mr…

Brendon Burns

23 Aug 2007

There’s a lot to get annoyed about with Brendon Burns. He’s a bit squealy, a bit shouty, a bit prone to flights of squealy, shouty pseudo-philosophical ramblings. A bit like an Aussie Bill Hicks. A bit 1993. Yet with Brendon Burns, what you are seeing…

Butch

23 Aug 2007

Skinny, effeminate Menno Kuijper has many things, including his wit, style and falsetto vocal cords, but what he really wants is to grow muscles and date army captain ‘Stud’, reasoning that: ‘if Harry Potter can do it, why can’t I?’ In a theatrical…

Chopper

23 Aug 2007

Chopper is the ‘international ambassador of hard’. So claims Heath Franklin as he brings us his successful sketch show character, based on real-life jailbird psycho Mark Brandon Read. The premise is simple: Chopper pops up wherever you least expect him…

Chris McCausland

23 Aug 2007

There are laughs and truths universally acknowledged aplenty in the company of blind comedian Chris McCausland with his tales of planes, trains and shameful ordeals. He takes a pop at bargain airlines and cryptic crosswords, and jollies his way through…

Christina Davis

23 Aug 2007

It would be unforgivable if a show called Sex failed to be funny, given the range of available material. Davis’ set avoids well-worn jokes, managing to be both surprising and intelligent. But Sex ultimately suffers from a somewhat disjointed delivery…

Dan Atkinson

23 Aug 2007

With shambolic hair and stately intonations, Atkinson looks and sounds like an endearingly mad university professor. He uses his amiable and rambling persona to enlighten the audience with talk of Greek philosophy and nicely worked illogical theories.

Dan Willis

23 Aug 2007

Very few things that are this good are offered for nothing. Willis turns a potentially difficult venue to his advantage, ad-libbing off his audience and displaying obvious ease behind the microphone as people from the pub downstairs wander in and out.

David O'Doherty

23 Aug 2007

Due to his distinctive, idiosyncratic style (plus, possibly, last year’s Eddies nomination) David O’Doherty has a strong following and has nothing to prove. Yet, for the sixth year, he serves up the goods. In sharp contrast to O’Doherty’s endearingly…

David Ward

23 Aug 2007

David Ward has certainly had a busy old life, mainly revolving around the gambling addictions which led to him doing time. With a title such as The Whole Truth and Nothing But, all we can do is follow him down his own personal lane of memories as his…

Footlights

23 Aug 2007

Judging by the comedy graduation success of the Cambridge sect, the next Mark Watson or Stephen Fry may well be among the folk on stage, but they’re as difficult to spot as a funny sketch. Still, the cast’s occasional efforts to swallow their own…

Frank Skinner

23 Aug 2007

After a decade away from the stand-up circuit, you’d think that quite a fuss would have been made of Frank Skinner’s Edinburgh return, back in the exact same room where it all started for him with his Perrier-winning year of 1991. Yet when the lights go…

Gently Progressive Behemoth

23 Aug 2007

While the sketch show may have fared rather poorly at this year’s Fringe, the oddball double act might well be having its salad days. Certainly, if the Gently Progressive Behemoth (in the shape of comically theatrical young Cambridge guns Nadia Kamil…

Glenn Wool

23 Aug 2007

If ever a comic had an appropriate surname, then it’s this surrealistic Canadian. You could knit a jumper with the majority of this set, but while it may be overflowing with material, give one of its many loose ends a tug and all the threads would come…

Greg Fleet with Mick Moriarty

23 Aug 2007

Fleet has survived drug addiction and a guest part in Neighbours. Now, with the aid of a double bass and guitar-playing sidekick, he successfully battles tree frogs, a tiny but disproportionately vocal audience and being a punning private dick straight…

Hamell on Trial

23 Aug 2007

Can there be anything worse than someone banging on about how wild life was in the 60s/early 70s? Possibly not, and in The Terrorism of Everyday Life cult hero Hamell tortures the uninitiated with a string of shouty punkish anthems and marginally…