Comedy

Beehive

27 Nov 2008

COMEDY The phrase ‘all-female sketch show’ shouldn’t necessarily send a shiver down the spine, but it just does. And before anyone says Smack the Pony I’ll trump you with Tittybangbang. But maybe things are changing. After a good Fringe for female…

Hancock

3 Jul 2008

SUPERHERO/COMEDY (12A) 91min The writers and director of Hancock take a hyper-powered leaf out of the Mystery Men and Return of Captain Invincible school of heroism with Hancock. Will Smith plays a nihilistic superhero who has fallen out of favour…

5 Things you might not know about - Frankie Boyle

2 Oct 2008

1 Boyle had his first big break winning the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award in 1996, beating off five other comics in the final, including one Noel Fielding. 2 He believes that while he was performing on BBC Scotland’s Live Floor Show, the mic he was…

Kung Fu Panda

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION (PG) 91min In the words of Carl Douglas’ 1974 disco hit: ‘Everybody is kung fu fighting.’ Everybody, that is, apart from overweight panda Po (voiced by Jack Black). He dreams about joining his heroes, the Fierce Five, in butt-kicking…

Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger

27 Nov 2008

COMEDY The phrase ‘all-female sketch show’ shouldn’t necessarily send a shiver down the spine, but it just does. And before anyone says Smack the Pony I’ll trump you with Tittybangbang. But maybe things are changing. After a good Fringe for female…

Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa

27 Nov 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION When Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) escaped from their Manhattan zoo in 2005 hit Madagascar, they were leaders of…

Michael McIntyre

23 Aug 2007

Michael McIntyre has the look of someone your mother would like. Unashamedly middle class in his dress, mannerisms and speech, it’s easy to see why he is being heralded as the latest thing in ‘posh comedy’. In terms of demeanour and delivery, McIntyre…

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

The devil plays guitar

13 Nov 2006

Tearing modesty a new asshole, Tenacious D describe themselves as ‘the world’s greatest rock band’. The D’s two members, Jack Black (vocals and rhythm guitar) and Kyle Gass (lead guitar and backing vocals), name check among their inspirations Kiss, Dio…

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

13 Nov 2008

Forget the salacious sounding title, Zack and Miri is a Kevin Smith movie so it was never going to be a Ron Jeremy skin flick. Indeed, it’s an archetypical Smith movie – an over-sentimental tale in which boy knows girl, boy and girl have relationship…

Russell Howard

Beat surrender

14 Aug 2008

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…

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

14 Aug 2008

COMEDY (12A) 112min Anyone who tries to understand Middle Eastern politics based on the contents of an Adam Sandler comedy deserves all they get. Despite his good intentions he bites off more than he can possibly chew in this, his new comic opus. For…

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

24 Apr 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 110min The Judd Apatow movie production line shows no signs of abating as Forgetting Sarah Marshall follows the template of Knocked Up to deliver some laughs, banal moralising and side characters that outshine the lead. Writer and…

Russell Howard

18 Oct 2007

A regular panellist on BBC2’s Mock the Week, with a Sunday morning radio show and an if.comeddie nomination to his name, Russell Howard recently played the biggest gig of his life, and at 27, his comedy future seems assured. ‘We just almost crashed on…

Wild Child

14 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (12A) 98min ‘What is this, Hogwarts?’ exclaims bratty Californian kid Poppy (Emma Roberts, niece of Julia) on her arrival at a genteel girls boarding school in England, ruled over by tough-but-fair headmistress (Natasha Richardson).

Woodlands Bumper Value Comedy Club

27 Nov 2008

NEW CLUB With parts of the Jongleurs’ chain under threat of sell-off, these are interesting times for comedy in Scotland. Even more so now with the growing number of smaller nights emerging to challenge the Stand-Jongleurs hegemony and spread the…

Harry Hill

Horsing around

28 Sep 2006

Ricky Gervais, Charlie Higson, Nigel Planer: many a British comedian has deviated into the world of children’s literature. Yet none of them seemed quite so born to it as Harry Hill. The question wasn’t so much if the man who created the ‘Badger Parade…

5 Things you might not know about - Steve Coogan

27 Nov 2008

1 In 1992 Steve Coogan won the Perrier as Alan Partridge alongside his buddy John Thomson. That gong didn’t stop him speaking out in later times against the award’s parent company Nestlé for the whole baby milk scandal. 2 In 1999 Coogan formed TV…

Summer scoops top prize at Bafta Scotland awards

10 Nov 2008

Summer, Grand Theft Auto, Gary’s Wrr and Lorraine Kelly were amongst the winners last night at the Lloyds TSB BAFTA Scotland Awards. The ceremony, at Glasgow’s City Halls with an audience of over 800, was broadcast live online worldwide.

WALL-E

17 Jul 2008

ANIMATION (U) 103min Can Pixar do no wrong? On the evidence of the CG animation studio’s ninth feature film, the answer is a resounding no. Once again Pixar pushes the envelope in the field it’s been trailblazing since the early 1980s, delivering…

Edinburgh Festivals Forum appoints Susan Rice as Chair

24 Apr 2008

The Edinburgh Festivals Forum, the commission set up to oversee the strategic development of Edinburgh's Festivals and to maintain the city's position as the pre-eminent festival city, has announced the appointment of Susan Rice as Chair. Rice, who…

Ratatouille

4 Oct 2007

(U) 110min COMEDY/ANIMATION Writer/director Brad Bird’s animated version of The Iron Giant made him the obvious candidate to follow on from John Lasseter’s innovative groundwork at Pixar, where he scored an immediate hit with The Incredibles. So even…

Top comedy gigs to look out for

10 Sep 2007

Tom Stade It takes years of hard, dedicated gigging to appear as relaxed as Tom Stade does on stage. Charming, handsome and unflappable he may be, but the Canadian émigré also possesses that indefinable knack of drawing you completely into his offbeat…

Steve Coogan comes back to do stand up in Scotland

14 Mar 2008

Steve Coogan, the British comedy actor behind such characters as Alan Partidge, Paul Calf and Saxondale will play a pair of live shows at Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow on 3 and 4 December. The show entitled: Steve Coogan is Alan Partidge and other Less…

Step Brothers

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY ‘Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream’ is the George W Bush quotation which opens new Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers. Such crude expression sets the tone for a sporadically funny but generally gross comedy in…

Stephen K Amos

31 Jul 2008

Who’s he then? Stephen K Amos is a 30-something actor, comedian and documentary-maker whose Batty Boy involved him going on a journey from his south London backyard to Jamaica in an attempt to discover why homophobia is so prevalent among black…

Glasgow Comedy Festival - Lesbian comedians

28 Feb 2008

Stand-up comedy has always provided a platform for historically oppressed minorities. From the self-deprecatory Borscht belt humour of Mel Brooks and Rodney Dangerfield through Richard Pryor’s fearless exploration of racism to the feminist material of…

Frankie Boyle

9 Aug 2007

In some ways it would be difficult to imagine an encounter between Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr, what with them being, arguably, the two finest gag tellers in contemporary British stand-up comedy. How, you wonder, can they have a chat when they must be…

Ricky Gervais Show, The

The Ricky Gervais Show

27 Nov 2006

CD The massive success of Ricky Gervais has occasionally been a bemusing thing. For every single episode of sheer genius that was The Office, there remains the dank memory of his ‘stand-up’ ‘career’. As excellent as the majority of Extras has been…

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

13 Nov 2008

One grotesquely amusing aspect of the current economic crisis has been the sight of our beloved PM desperately trying to hammer home the notion that the predicament should be blamed on ‘global’ factors and is absolutely nothing to do with him, mate. You…

PS I Love You

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 126min As the well-connected daughter of the current Taoiseach, author Cecilia Ahern could surely have pulled a few strings to ensure her novel PS I Love You avoided the abhorrent adaptation offered here by…

Profile - Matt Berry

15 Nov 2007

Who’s he then? You may recognise Matt Berry from his role as aristo explorer type Dixon Bainbridge in The Mighty Boosh or for his parts in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and the recent second series of The IT Crowd. No, there’s somewhere else . . . Then…

Michelle Monaghan

4 Oct 2007

Background Monaghan studied journalism for three years at Columbia College in Chicago. To earn pocket money she worked as a model and ditched the typewriter to work as a fashion model when she quit her studies. What’s she up to now? Having…

Different strokes

1 Aug 2007

Having written one of the UK’s finest ever sitcoms, Sean Lock is back pounding the beat on the stand-up stage. Brian Donaldson talks to the man who has finally left bitterness behind

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

Simon Amstell

21 Aug 2006

Too many comedians blame their audience when gigs don’t dazzle and, while I genuinely sympathise, that doesn’t strike me as laudable professional conduct. But Simon Amstell really seems to have a problem with his punters. Because there’s quite a young…

Appeal after Virgin Trains ban comedy club ads

27 Nov 2008

The List is perplexed to hear that Richard Branson has banned adverts for Scotland’s largest comedy club the Stand from his Virgin Trains onboard magazine, deeming their logo of a child in a cowboy outfit pointing a toy gun at his own head while…

Festival Books - Mark Watson

Eco-friendly, my dear Watson

21 Aug 2008

According to Mark Watson, saving the planet would, at the very least, ‘look pretty smart on all our CVs’. With an already sterling comedy résumé, Watson takes on environmentalism in his latest book, Crap at the Environment, which through the author’s…

Will & Greg

A lesson in chemistry from ex-Ugly Kids

14 Aug 2008

As the audience enters the sweaty room, Will and Greg are enthusiastically cycling on exercise bikes. It sets the pace for a fast and furious sketch show which is clever, bizarre and, like its title, deceptively simple. Will Andrews and Greg McHugh are…

Superhero Movie

5 Jun 2008

SPOOF/COMEDY (12A) 85min The presence of Airplane’s David Zucker amongst the executive producers and Leslie Nielsen amongst the cast raises hopes that Superhero Movie might offer a classier strain of parody than Date Movie or Meet the Spartans. Alas…

The Brothers Solomon

1 Nov 2007

COMEDY (15) 92min Comedians Will Forte and Will Arnet dumb down their already dumb strain of Saturday Night Live humour to exhausting effect in this lowbrow comedy. When their father (Lee Majors) lapses into a coma, the understandably single Solomon…

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…

5 Questions - Lucy Porter

1 Aug 2007

Fast becoming a Fringe staple, Lucy Porter will this year invite us into her Love-In. Here, she gets all intimate with our limp Q&A.

Lucy Porter

A set down to its bare bones

14 Aug 2008

While it may have been slightly dispiriting for Lucy Porter to hop out on stage to a less than packed auditorium, there's little in her jovial demeanour to suggest crushed hopes. To spend an hour in Porter's company is akin to having a litre of Jelly…

Space Chimps

31 Jul 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY (U) 80min Crowded out in the summer schedules by WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda, Space Chimps is the latest effort from Vanguard Animations destined to suffer the also-ran status of Valiant and Happily N’Ever After. On the whim of a…

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging

17 Jul 2008

TEEN COMEDY (cert tbc) tbcmin After successfully tackling teenage tomboys in Bend it Like Beckham, Gurinder Chadha takes a step into younger territory with this adaptation of two of Louise Rennison’s bestselling books for girls. Looking at life…

Profile - The Wee Man

29 Nov 2007

Who’s he then? Creation of Neil Bratchpiece, smallest comedy member of the not very tall Bratchpiece Family, The Wee Man is a pure wee basturt Burberry fiend whose stage demeanour ranges wildly from quite threatening to really very threatening…

Bill Bailey interview

10 Sep 2007

Audiences filing into the ‘humungoid shed’ of the Clyde Auditorium for the opening nights of Tinselworm, Bill Bailey’s new national tour, will be fighting for nothing less than the UK’s standing in Europe and democracy itself. Following year on year…

Punch Lines

1 Aug 2007

Jim Jeffries isn’t the only comic on the receiving end of trouble from their audience. Brian Donaldson compiles some tales of terror. At a late-night Spank! show, Andrew Lawrence (pictured) foolishly challenged a heckler to a duel. As Lawrence unpopped…

Ross Noble

ROSS NOBLE ON

23 Apr 2007

CD Ross Noble is a comic who, like the best of them, splits the crowd straight down the middle. To some he is a rambling muppet with an array of silly voices whose seeming lack of script results in him endlessly stumbling up comedic cul de sacs. The…

Burn After Reading

16 Oct 2008

THRILLER/COMEDY Modern idiocy and bleak humour are the order of the day in the Coen’s latest – a reworking (conscious or otherwise) of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of An Author. Foul-mouthed CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich…

Igor

16 Oct 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY It’s a tough life for hunchbacked assistants of mad scientists. Igor (voiced by John Cusack) ekes out his precarious existence as humble servant to the sinister Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese), an evil genius set on winning the annual…

David O'Doherty

Finding gold in the everyday dirt

14 Aug 2008

By the end of his self-introduction, before he's even reached the stage, David O'Doherty has his audience braying like donkeys. The Dublin comic has done so many consistently enjoyable Fringe shows that getting laughs must be like shooting fish in a…

The Kevin Bishop Show

31 Jul 2008

COMEDY Channel 4, Fri 1 Aug, 10pm Like the mighty Bobby Davro, Kevin Bishop can do a fair old impersonation or two (his Jonathan Ross and Gary Lineker are awesome) but can’t get any material around them to save his life. There have been boasts made…

Rab C Nesbitt to return for Christmas?

15 Apr 2008

Ian Pattison, creator of television's Glaswegian street philosopher Rab C Nesbitt, has written a new script for a Christmas special of the show. The show's original producer and director Colin Gilbert said, 'The likelihood is, that, unless they…

Miles Jupp

16 Aug 2007

There are few things in life quite so satisfying than seeing a posh person throwing a bit of a wobbler. And so it’s with great pleasure that Miles Jupp brings us Everyday Rage and Dinner Party Chit Chat, a perusal of the moments in life when Jupp…

Dylan Moran

Good stock

30 Oct 2008

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…

Kristen Schaal & Kurt Braunohler

Schaal and pal delve into surreal corners

21 Aug 2008

A warning is gently dispatched: Double Down Hearts will break our minds. Co-written in reverse chronological order by Kristen Schaal, of Flight of the Conchords fame, and Kurt Braunohler, her ‘gift’ of a comedy partner, the play pastiches the melodrama…

Tim Minchin - Looney tunes

31 Jul 2008

Not one for being stuck in a pigeonhole, Tim Minchin is a musician, actor, comic and father. Anna Millar meets the man who looks like a scarecrow and is terrifying the world of traditional stand-up comedy

Fears eased over Festival performer visa crisis

8 May 2008

Fears that thousands of performers at the Edinburgh Festival would be prevented from entering the UK due to new immigration legislation have been eased with the introduction of a new type of visa. The Home Office has announced that visiting…

Mark Watson

16 Aug 2007

Mark Watson deserves his moment. Having proved to be one of the true innovators on the Fringe with his marathon comedy sessions, off-the-cuff novel writing and participation in daft quizzes, his solo hour of stand-up has grown in stature and scope in…

Lovespring International

Sky One, Sun 12 Aug, 10.30pm

9 Aug 2007

COMEDY Ricky Gervais can be criticised for many things, such as his mad cackle and the popularity of Karl Pilkington. And here’s a third thing. Lovespring International would most likely never have been made had the US not fallen in love with The…

Jason Cook

13 Nov 2008

Jason Cook is a happy man. Today, he cheerfully tells me, he has purchased a new Xbox game. But Cook has other reasons to feel upbeat; his 2007 début fringe show My Confessions was a critical hit and was successfully followed by a show about happiness…

5 Things you might not know about - Tina C

30 Oct 2008

Despite appearances to the contrary, Tina C is not a genteel C&W dame from Tennessee but is in fact a strapping gentleman by the name of Christopher Green, a bloke from Derbyshire. To be more map-specific, Green hails from Matlock, a true hotbed of…

Let's Talk About the Rain (Parlez-moi de la pluie)

30 Oct 2008

In an interview to promote their 2004 feature Look at Me, the French actors/filmmakers Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri felt that they couldn't pitch their films at Hollywood meetings, and their latest collaboration Let's Talk About the Rain again…

Keir McAllister

16 Oct 2008

The man who came third in the recent Scottish Comedian of the Year tourney returns with a vengeance. And if you’re some kind of celebrity, best not go along, as you’re likely to end up on the wrong end of a slating. The Argyle Bar, Edinburgh, Thu 16…

David Benson

edfest.tv - video

26 Aug 2008

David Benson, who first rose to fame following his debut show about Kenneth Williams, returns to the role of Noel Coward whom he portrayed in the BBC series Goodnight Sweetheart.

Janey Godley

Family tale from straight-talking Glaswegian

21 Aug 2008

The title of this show, Domestic Godley, doesn’t refer to the cooking, cleaning, dinner parties ‘domestic goddess’ stereotype. Janey Godley’s candid stand-up is specific to her east end of Glasgow upbringing and subsequently eventful life. With a…

Michael McIntyre

The accent is on over-familiarity

21 Aug 2008

Last year, Michael McIntyre apparently harangued two judges on the if.comedy panel for doing this nation the great disservice of not handing him the award on a plate. Still, he could at least reassure himself of his genius with all those flattering star…

Hils Barker

Fanciful but flaccid exhibitionism

21 Aug 2008

Sinister social network sites are under precision attack in Hils Barker’s character exposé Exhibitionist! which links four lonely souls to ‘Profile Me’, an invention more Orwellian than Facebook. Barker attempts to draw parallels between billionaire…

The Wrong Door

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY There’s only one thing worse than a really bad sketch show. And that’s a really bad sketch show that has had absolutely loads of money thrown at it. So much dosh has been set aside for the special effects in The Wrong Door that no one seems to…

Sarah Millican

The young Thora Hird gets down and dirty

14 Aug 2008

Judging by her light Geordie tones, you'd never find Sarah Millican staggering around the Toon with skirt hitched up to her neck, tanked up on Breezers and yelling filthy abuse at anyone with a member. Then again, even though she's been dubbed 'a young…

Kristen Schaal - Heart of daftness

7 Aug 2008

Kristen Schaal merges sinister and sweet with terrifying success. Claire Sawers chats to her while hoping she doesn’t do that angry, erotic sheep thing.

Idiots of Ants

Messing about with form and content

7 Aug 2008

To the rousing theme of Grandstand, this quartet of white-shirted, black-tied lads (still not sure whether they're more idiotic or antlike?) race into the venue. For the previous few minutes, we've been looking at them on screens prancing around London…

Lucy Porter - Festival veteran

31 Jul 2008

Lucy Porter wanted to be like Kate Adie but ended up being more like Lee Evans. That’s what repeatedly coming to the Fringe does to you. She doesn’t mind though… The Edinburgh Fringe Festival ruined my life. That sounds melodramatic, but it’s absolutely…

Edinburgh Fringe - LGBT Highlights

17 Jul 2008

Allan Radcliffe selects the best the Fringe has to offer in comedy, theatre and music

D.A.M. Fine Comedy

22 May 2008

NEW COMEDY NIGHT Gramofon Bistro, Glasgow, Thu 22 May & 5 Jun New comedy nights emerge and disappear in Scotland every year, but to acknowledge a mea culpa, few are noticed by the media. Regardless, undeterred comics are increasingly becoming comedy…

Sydney White

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 107min Ever since Amy Heckerling’s Clueless loosely adapted Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern High School setting it’s been the done thing to drop classic texts into a contemporary teenage setting. Joe Nussbaum’s Sydney White…

Comedy DVDs

13 Dec 2007

DVD Marcus Brigstocke: Planet Corduroy The Show The erudite satirist rails against the injustices of the world in London’s Shaw Theatre, analysing how tough it must be to live life as a corduroy-loving middle-class white chap. The Extras A stirring…

Daddy Day Camp

18 Oct 2007

COMEDY/FAMILY (PG) 88min The indelible image of Cuba Gooding Jr enthusiastically ejaculating over Roger Moore’s face in 2003’s dismal comedy Boat Trip seemed to signal a new low in the one-time Academy Award-winner’s career trajectory. But somehow…

One Last Dance

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/CRIME/ROMANCE (18) 110min (Tartan DVD retail/rental) Straight-to-DVD premieres no longer herald generally third-rate titles, as this off-beat Asian crime film proves. Written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Max Makowski, and financed and…

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…

School of Comedy

16 Aug 2007

In this age of Asbos, hoodies and teenage gang warfare it’s probably illegal to encourage youngsters to swear and be rude in front of adults, but this is exactly what the grown-ups behind School of Comedy plan to do. The show is billed as ‘an adult…

Henry Rollins

16 Aug 2007

It’s a wonder Henry Rollins has time to sleep. When the Black Flag legend is not writing books, hosting his own television and radio shows, acting in Hollywood and hopping from gig to gig, he is performing his quick-witted spoken word pieces around the…

Jimmy Carr

9 Aug 2007

With his short sharp shocks, Jimmy Carr has outraged and amused audiences around the world. He tells Brian Donaldson why no one has the right to be hurt by a bit of wordplay

John Richardson

Delightful surreal obsessive material

9 Aug 2007

BBC6 radio host Jon Richardson is clearly at home behind a microphone. Charming and self-effacing, he moves through a show that might have been subtitled OCD, Or How Other People Drive Me Insane, segueing effortlessly between the different elements of…

Mitchell and Webb

Face off

14 Nov 2006

They may well be the gentle men of comedy but interviewing David Mitchell and Robert Webb is still an unsettling experience. The whole exchange is not unlike an episode of their glorious Channel 4 success, Peep Show. After all, they do look almost…

Profile - Paul Sinha

2 Oct 2008

1 The doctor is out He is indeed. Sinha might not be the UK’s only gay GP, but he is the world’s only gay Bengali GP who moonlights as a stand-up comic. This situation, as you might imagine, gives him plenty of material to go on. 2 He’s a Fringe…

Kiddy-Fiddler on the Roof

edfest.tv - video

27 Aug 2008

At Townsville Comprehensive, teacher Arnold Finkler is falsely accused of molestation and chased by an enraged mob of parents.

Limmy's Show

edfest.tv - video

22 Aug 2008

Internet phenomenon Limmy presents his unique mix of imaginary scenarios, daft videos and a rundown of his top five hates.

Achtung Pal

21 Aug 2008

Twelve hopeful students chew, gag and gurn their way through a barrage of German and 'Schottish' accents in this dreary 1943-Nazi-occupied-Dundee-set comedy. Sparky performances from the stinky Scottish gypsy prostitute and an officer's secretary are…

Ali Cook

21 Aug 2008

He chews razor blades, crushes doves and gets journalists up on stage to help him perform tricks: Ali Cook simply has no fear. With a pleasing mix of cheesy/sinister, there is happily little that is A Touch of Vegas as he demolishes mobile phones…

Carol Leifer

A Fringe debut to forget

21 Aug 2008

Of course, it’s daft to generalise, but when heavily-anticipated American stars have come across to the Fringe they’ve either blown us away or totally bombed. In the happy former camp are Demetri Martin, Kristen Schaal and Doug Stanhope. In the…

Felix Dexter

21 Aug 2008

Affable as Dexter seems, his is another show of thwarted ambition, over-reliance on funny voices and an hour show that clocks in at almost 50 minutes, a somewhat irritating trend that has been all-too prevalent this year. There's nothing lightweight…

Jason Byrne

Totally insane, bloody funny

21 Aug 2008

Several things will probably happen at a Jason Byrne gig. A teenage boy in the crowd will squirm while Byrne guesses what he gets up to behind closed bedroom doors. Audience members get assigned surreal characters, based around something Byrne’s caught…

Hal Cruttenden

14 Aug 2008

For a man apparently obsessed by the little things in life, Cruttenden tackles some pretty weighty subjects: the Irish troubles, WWII, death. He also worries about his big face, blokey physique and girly voice, wanting to be political, but unable 'to be…

Jon Richardson

The mutt's nuts is wearing the cat's pyjamas

14 Aug 2008

Living on your own might be fraught with danger and potential misery, but it doesn't half give a decent comic shedloads of material for a show. And fortunately, Jon Richardson is more than just a decent comic; he's a true star in the ascendant. This…

Neil Delamere

14 Aug 2008

This year the big-at-home, not-so-here Irish stand-up Delamere has based his show on a farcical, boozy holiday in Stockholm. This is no travelogue but merely an anchor to tie down his breathless, amiable wit. Delamere may be your standard…

Bethany Black

Personal story told with little verve

7 Aug 2008

You would think that a goth, lesbian, post-op transsexual might have a few interesting stories to tell? And Bethany Black does, but she doesn't know how to tell them. From an early age Black felt she was in the wrong body. By her twenties she was…

Rob Deering

Experienced comic avoids making a tit of himself

7 Aug 2008

Some musical comics mask a lack of gags with skill in their chosen instrument. Not Rob Deering. An all rounder, his is a sharp, slick wit and he's deft with the hecklers too; hefty experience on the circuit really shows. Despite the humongous jugs he's…

The Cheese and Pineapple Club

Semi-cylindrical sphere of fun

7 Aug 2008

This charming show sits somewhere between Josie Long and Penny Spubb's with its homemade artwork and quirky qualities. Sarah Campbell and Grainne Maguire are having a party complete with awkward small talk, inappropriate flirting and, of course, cheese…