Comedy, Profile

Profile: Ben Lewin, director of The Sessions

The film is inspired by poet and journalist Mark O'Brien's experiences with a sex surrogate

Born Poland, 1946. Raised in Melbourne, Australia. Background In 1971 Lewin quit his job as a barrister to study filmmaking at the National Film and Television School in England. Lewin’s work to date includes Ally McBeal and the films Georgia and…

Paul Foot & Noel Fielding

The comedian answers questions asked by his director.

The List asked the surreal and brilliant Paul Foot to complete our First Word interview. Of course, he couldn’t do it normally, and invited Noel Fielding (who directed his Fringe show) to set the questions. Here are the mind-bending results How long…

Danny Bhoy - Five things you might not know

Scottish-born comedian returns home from Australia for Glasgow show

1: The b(h)oy from Moffat is a fully-fledged Aussie now, though he had a nervous wait to find out if the immigration panel would give his application for permanent residency the thumbs-up after they requested tickets to see his show in Canberra. Despite…

Five interesting things about... Dylan Moran

Irish comedian shares hometown with Tommy Tiernan and Pierce Brosnan

1 Irishman Moran has been living in Edinburgh for some years now, but is originally from Navan, a small, five-lettered palindromic town, like Kivik in Sweden or Catac in Peru. Tiny it may be (according to the 2006 census, 3710 people resided there) but…

Jeremy Lion answers questions from kids

The children's entertainer answers the questions that popped into our mailbox

Bumbling children’s entertainer Jeremy Lion has taken time out from being near-permanently soused to explore some pressing environmental issues in his new show. He’s still got time for the kids, however, and was more than happy to answer the questions…

Interview: Isy Suttie on tea, Technotronic and Ice, Ice, Baby

Stand up comedian, actress, writer and musician

First record you ever bought. ‘This Beat is Technotronic’ by Technotronic. Last extravagant purchase you made My Martin three-quarter-size guitar. First film you saw that really moved you Manhattan. Last lie you told I told the postman…

Interview - Joe Bone from Bane

The noir shows that have stalked the Edinburgh Fringe for three years

Joe Bone is a busy man. A few years back, he created the hard-boiled character Bruce Bane in the wake of a spate of old detective movies he'd been watching. Fast forward to 2011, and Bane has taken on a life of his own, spawning three stage shows, a…

5 Questions - Patrick Monahan

Comedian Patrick Monahan (winner of the longest kids show title award) takes a break from Stories and Tales for Kids Who Can Run Faster Than Snails to answer our 5 Questions.

5 things you might not know about Joan Rivers

The groundbreaking female comedian is back on tour

1 Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky, she worked as a tour guide, wrote for an ad agency and had a stint as a fashion consultant before entering showbiz. Having changed her name to Rivers (on the advice of agent Tony Rivers), her first break was playing…

My Edinburgh: Lucy Porter

Festival veteran comes back to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe 2012

First time I came to Edinburgh was... 1992. I’d won a competition in Time Out magazine, which is like a London-based, inferior version of The List, to be on the Perrier Comedy Award Panel. I was a bit of a comedy fangirl anyway, and seeing hundreds of…

My Edinburgh: Henry Rollins

Former Black Flag frontman brings comedy show to Edinburgh Fringe 2012

First time I came to Edinburgh was... As far as I can tell, 1999. I come back because... I come back for shows. It's why...

5 things you might not know about Nick Helm

The former 'dinner lady' and 2011 Best Joke of the Fringe winner doesn't get on with Alice Cooper

1 Among Nick Helm’s pre-showbiz jobs have been as a ‘dinner lady’ at a secondary school for boys, counting traffic and working in the café of a garden centre. 2 In 2001, he formed a theatre company called Bad Ash Productions whose oeuvre includes I…

Interview - Rob Brydon

The comic actor answers our questions ahead of the release of his autobiography, Small Man in a Book

First record you ever bought Apart from Rupert Bear, Propaganda by Sparks. Last extravagant purchase you made A cashmere scarf. First film you saw that really moved you Barney’s Version. Last lie you told I never lie. First movie you…

Five fun facts about Ed Byrne

Some little known facts about the Irish comic's altercations with popes, Perriers and Piers Morgan

Born in the Dublin suburb of Swords, Byrne first got involved in stand-up comedy as a horticulture student at Strathclyde University. As part of the student union, Byrne hosted pub quizzes and karaoke nights which provided him with a taste for showing…

5 Things you might not know about Alan Carr

1 Carr’s distinctive toothy look was due to a childhood accident when he fell and banged his chin on the caravan-towing bar on a family holiday. 2 Before he got proper famous, Carr had a litany of awful-sounding temp jobs: putting shampoo in boxes…

Profile - Sebastian Koch

German star of coming-of-age Brit comedy Albatross

Name Sebastian Koch Born Karlsruhe, Germany, May 31 1962 Background Koch has worked solidly in European films and TV for over 25 years, but it was his terrific performance in The Lives of Others (2006) that made him recognisable to cinema…

Profile: Philip Seymour Hoffman, director and star of Jack Goes Boating

The much-respected actor screens his directorial debut at the EIFF

Born Fairport, New York, 23 July 1967. Background Known as the ‘character actor’s character actor’, Hoffman has been a jobbing actor since the early 1990s. After playing bit parts in television shows, shorts and features, Hoffman got his breakthrough…

5 things you might not know about... Shappi Khorsandi

Some lesser-known snippets about the British-Iranian comedian

1 Khorsandi grew up in west London in the 1980s after her Iranian family fled in exile to the UK. At the age of 11, she wrote to the Ayatollah Khomeini to ask him not to kill her father, a journalist and comedian whose stock-in-trade was political…

Profile: Richard Ayoade

Boosh, IT Crowd and Darkplace star directs Joe Dunthorne adap Submarine

Name Richard Ayoade Born 12 June 1977, Whipp’s Cross, London Background Best known for playing Moss in Graham Linehan ’s hit TV comedy The IT Crowd, Ayoade first came to the notice of cult comedy fans as writer, director and co-star of spoof…

Moira's five ways to ensure you survive the festival

'Falkirk's hardest woman' hands out tips on surviving the Fringe

Being on tour can be a stressful business, what with staying away from home, forgetting your lines onstage and, erm, setting off the fire alarm in the venue. Scotland’s newest stage superstar, Moira, shares her tips on how to survive a fortnight at the…

Fringe 2010 cabaret offerings are as colourful as ever

Smoke & Mirrors, Alan Cumming and The Crack

From pared down to jazz-hands up, this year’s variety and cabaret offerings are as colourful as ever. Anna Millar meets the makers to find out why we just can’t get enough It’s a certain man who can shimmy from club door whore to straight-talking…

Lady Carol - Malady

We asked the singing, ukelele playing, dark-humorist five questions

This ukelele lady has an inky-black sense of humour, and can turn the sweetest of love songs into a creepy stalker anthem. Just, please, keep her away from bright light and cakes. Five words you’d use to describe your show Sad songs, silly…

Abandoman - Pic ‘n’ Mixtape

Destined to be among the Fringe’s most popular draws, rapping improvisers Abandoman have to be seen

‘It’s lovely when a hip hop audience sees us,’ says genial frontman Rob Broderick. ‘Two lads wander out, one with a guitar, the other with an Irish accent, and you can tell they’re thinking, “this is going to be a disaster”. But then we start and they…

Radio Hoohah preview

Double act go on a twisted adventure around the airwaves

Dubbed a ‘French and Saunders for the Facebook generation’, Octavia Mackenzie and Ashley McGuire are known in Fringe circles for their surreal spin on the everyday, from death to ‘the absurdity of Britain’s class system’ (find ‘Kensington Rhyming Slang…

Asher Treleaven - Secret Door

A comically theatrical romp against blokishness

Via ‘the sweet filth of John Waters, the dark, strange wrongness of David Lynch’, and a near-encounter with the secret theatre for madmen, Asher Treleaven grapples with the question, ‘what maketh the man?’ This is the core of his ‘anarchic romp through…