Comedy, Profile, Jay Richardson

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…

Jazz Hans

The highly strung Dutch star Hans Teeuwen has quit comedy back home to bamboozle UK audiences

In Holland, Hans Teeuwen is such a legendary entertainment figure that grown men imitate his comedy routines to the point of driving their daughters mad. Or at least that’s the plot of Just Hans, a forthcoming Dutch film in which Teeuwen appears as a…

Clever Peter

Rude sketch troupe sticking eggs into the appropriate baskets

Despite a widely praised debut, the thrusting chaps of sketch troupe Clever Peter are back at the Fringe with greater ambition, tighter writing and less sexual gratuity, if not crudity. Dental torture and primate anal rape are the abiding memories of…

Edward Aczel

Solving the world’s woes in a pleasingly shambolic way

Having performed essentially the same critically-acclaimed non-show for the last two years, anti-comic Edward Aczel is planning something a little different for this Fringe, as he ambitiously Explains All the World’s Problems … And Then Solves Them.

Glasgow Comedy Festival - The Penny Dreadfuls

Conspiring in the darkest bowels of BBC’s Henry Wood House in London, three earnest young men, exemplars of aggressive Victorian ambition, are hatching a dastardly, somewhat far-fetched plot to conquer Edinburgh this August. Beginning with sorties into…

Dylan Moran

Good stock

Despite the current economic doom and gloom, or more likely because of it, live comedy is booming, with a host of big names currently touring the UK. And while luminaries like the Mighty Boosh, Sarah Silverman, Steve Coogan and Lee Evans have recently…

Russell Howard

Beat surrender

Russell Howard can't resist a spot of testicular tomfoolery but, he tells Jay Richardson, his new act is less Buster Gonad than Jack Kerouac With his infectious, wide-eyed optimism currently offering a counterbalance to Frankie Boyle's unflinching…

'It’s a comedy colonic!' - David O’Doherty

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Jay Richardson meets David O’Doherty, the mild-mannered comic whose musical musings and offbeat observations have won him a legion of indie followers. This year he’ll be feeding his insomnia by entertaining kids and adults alike As an award-winning…

Owen O'Neill

STAND-UP The Stand, Edinburgh, Thu 17 Jul An award-winning playwright, poet and subscriber to the theory that redheads are genetic ‘mutants’ (having conducted the required research for a BBC documentary), Owen O’Neill was one of the first Irishmen…