Comedy, Stand-up

Eilidh MacAskill and her Daily Ukulele Ceilidh

8 May 2008

MUSICAL COMEDY Last year, one woman set out on an incredible journey. There were tears. There was laughter. There were good times, there were bad, and there were midnight YouTube sessions in front of her cat, as Eilidh MacAskill attempted a…

Daniel Kitson

8 May 2008

The bearded wonder returns for two sell-out shows which will showcase The Impotent Fury of the Privileged which did so well at the recent Melbourne Comedy Festival. Daniel Kitson? Furious? Impotent? Privileged? We're not quite sure where to look.

Jimmy Carr

24 Apr 2008

STAND-UP Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Thu 24 Apr Some people out there have looked upon his stand-up and TV work and judged Jimmy Carr to be a smug, self-satisfied posh guy who would undoubtedly be prepared to eat himself were he comprised of the…

5 Things you might not know about - Nick Doody

24 Apr 2008

Nick Doody’s debut Fringe show in 2006, Before He Kills Again, kicked off with a disturbing song about clowns. So disturbing that the imagery cannot be repeated in a family publication. He shares a house with fellow stand-up Matt Kirshen. Noam Chomsky…

David Kay

24 Apr 2008

Some have compared this special Kay to American deadpan surrealist Steven Wright and if that isn’t enough to have you trotting along to The Stand, we’re not sure what will, as the self-proclaimed ‘fireball of Scottish comedy’ entertains you. The…

Comedy Central Collection

27 Mar 2008

DVD/CD (Comedy Central) For anyone who thinks that American stand-up comedy means Bill Hicks, Chris Rock and Joan Rivers, those wonderful people at Comedy Central are setting out to put you straight. A new set of DVDs and CDs should thrust you out of…

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…

Jon Richardson

13 Mar 2008

STAND-UP Brel, Glasgow, Sun 16 Mar Watching Jon Richardson disparage Rab C Nesbitt and spectacularly misjudge a Scottish audience remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen: ‘they got quite angry’ he recalls. But he was careful not to repeat it…

Janey Godley

28 Feb 2008

STAND-UP Jongleurs, Glasgow, Thu 28 Mar; The Garage, Glasgow, Thu 6 Mar; Oran Mor, Glasgow, Sun 9 Mar ‘I read an article about Josie Long and Kristen Schaal saying, “Isn’t it lovely that female comedians are returning to being quirky and nice?”…

Matt Kirshen

4 Jan 2008

STAND-UP Jongleurs, Glasgow, Fri 4 & Sat 5 Jan Reality TV has created many a pointless monster but it’s also attracted the already talented to show us what they’re made of. If you say ‘British comedian’ to the average American (whatever that may…

Review of the year - comedy

13 Dec 2007

Stewart Lee Becoming a father should be a big enough deal in anyone’s year, but British comedy’s bossman also scooped the number 41 slot in Channel 4’s stand-up comic poll. And boy, did he make hay from that, conjuring the Fringe’s comedy highlight in…

Milton Jones

15 Nov 2007

STAND-UP The Stand, Glasgow, Mon 19 Nov; The Stand, Edinburgh, Tue 20 Nov For Milton Jones, it must seem like a very long time ago since he was hitting the Edinburgh Fringe heights with a Best Newcomer success in 1996 and a main Perrier Award…

Bill Bailey

1 Nov 2007

STAND-UP SECC, Glasgow, Wed 7–Fri 9 Nov It seems clear that Bill Bailey has never minded looking somewhat foolish in the pursuit of his chosen career path. Back in the early days when he was a mere West Country boy trying to earn a modest showbusiness…

Brendon Burns

18 Oct 2007

STAND-UP Maggie May’s, Glasgow, Fri 19 Oct When Brendon Burns was nine years old, he decided that a career in stand-up comedy was the road he wanted to travel down. While in Texas with his family, he was snuck into a comedy club through its kitchen…

Mark Thomas

20 Sep 2007

STAND-UP There’s still something horribly unfashionable about political comedy in Britain. It can’t simply be that most comics have such sensitive leftist tendencies that they find it unbearable to go hell for leather at attacking the government that…

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…

Arnab Chanda

6 Sep 2007

Be funny about things that you know is one of the most common pieces of advice that young comics are given by more experienced stand-ups. Arnab Chanda, then, should have a wealth of funny stuff at his fingertips purely from the places he’s lived during…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Hattie Hayridge

23 Aug 2007

She may have one of the slowest openings to any comedy show on the Fringe, but Hattie Hayridge is in no mood to speed things along at any point. This is either fantastically brave or a sign that her nervy stage disposition is not as much of an act as it…

Jerry Sadowitz

23 Aug 2007

The Sadowitz invective seems ever more bilious each passing year. The victims of his ire in this show range from the English (‘feckless cunts’), Heather Mills (‘cripple’) and even Harry Potter (‘fictional cunt’). Outrageously offensive and with a…

Kirsten O'Brien

23 Aug 2007

Early on in what feels rather like a light-hearted corporate seminar for C-List celebrities, Kirsten O’Brien talks of her status as a ‘borderline boiler’ and the probability of male audience members having entertained bedroom fantasies for the toothy…

Kitty Flanagan

23 Aug 2007

Opening with a darkly humorous short film (that is almost worth the cost of admission alone), proceedings then lull as Flanagan embarks on an unoriginal stand-up routine that covers accents, children and therapy before lifting things by closing with an…

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…

Phil Nichol

23 Aug 2007

When a comic stands before his crowd after yet another uninspired anecdote and asks: ‘Don’t you think that was hilarious? I thought that was hilarious,’ you can only conclude that he knows he is in big trouble. With Hiro Worship, last year’s inaugural…

Rhona Cameron

23 Aug 2007

‘I don’t feel you know enough about lesbian relationships,’ is somewhat unsurprisingly a misconception that this 41-year-old wishes to clear up, back at the Festival after a four-year break. But what broadens this show’s appeal from niche to mainstream…

Rich Hall

23 Aug 2007

It’s difficult even to imagine a Rich Hall performance being less than entertaining. His intelligent, grumpy, pragmatic worldview is broadcast by way of believable absurdities, anarchic situational vignettes and memorable wordplay. A pity he feels the…

Sean Hughes

23 Aug 2007

On the face of it, the stage Sean Hughes of 2007 doesn’t seem a whole lot different from the one who nabbed his first bit of fame back in 1990 as the youngest winner of the Perrier. With that boyish gaunt look still intact, he certainly doesn’t look any…

Shappi Khorsandi

23 Aug 2007

Shappi Khorsandi looks Greek, sounds posh, sleeps around and is an attention-seeking nightmare. Or so she would have us believe. The saucer-eyed, shiny-haired Iranian’s best material comes when she rips herself, very charmingly, to shreds. Taking all…

Simon Amstell

23 Aug 2007

Amstell is a good date. He makes you feel clever with his philosophical musings, draws you in with candid tales of heartache and social ineptitude and proves that his pulling power is still mighty away from the telly with tightly written, machine-gun…

Tony Lee

23 Aug 2007

Despite the title’s claim to be ‘aggressive,’ Tony Lee turns out to be a kindly softy suggesting that anyone with mental health problems and those who are very drunk shouldn’t offer themselves up as hypnotist fodder; he’s the one that would get sued.

A Different Kettle of Fish

16 Aug 2007

Irreverent, witty, surprising, mischievous, and overacted to great dramatic effect, this was an hour spent in wonderfully silly company. The troupe – four men and one woman – rattles through sketches so fresh they ought to patent them. JK Rowling…

Adam Bloom

16 Aug 2007

The concept of downtime is unfamiliar to Adam Bloom. After charging onstage and whirling through five minutes or so of funny, friendly, filthy audience interaction, the act proper begins without a wasted nanosecond. Bloom has a sort of sunny fury…

Al Pitcher

16 Aug 2007

He’s been called unpredictable and divided audiences with his ad hoc ways, but happily for Pitcher, his celebration of saying precisely whatever pops into his head could earn the recognition he deserves. Never a dull moment, this walking, face-pulling…

Andrew Lawrence

16 Aug 2007

Of all the descriptions Andrew Lawrence gives himself - ‘a voice like Joe Pasquale’ or ‘hair the colour of sexual rejection’ – the one that gets the biggest laugh is his ‘special needs character from a Dickens novel’. Returning after last year’s…

Francesca Martinez

16 Aug 2007

Martinez tells us from the outset that she doesn’t do chit chat, and this sentiment prevails. Proselytising on politics, religion and other weighty topics, she sometimes veers close to mere soap-boxing with the albeit admirable force of her convictions.

Hannah Gadsby

Claire Sawers

16 Aug 2007

Sleepy-voiced, droopy-eyed and dressed in a uniform of cover-all black, Hannah Gadsby wants to bring us up to speed on her 28 years. Raised in a hick town in Tasmania, and made to feel in turns ‘big boned’, ‘retarded’ or ‘dykey’ when growing up, she now…

Jason Manford

16 Aug 2007

Too much success early on in a career can be a double-edged sword. Jason Manford first came to attention two years ago with an inspired, Perrier-nominated debut in which he exploded various urban myths and apocryphal tales. As a fan of that auspicious…

Jim Jeffries

16 Aug 2007

You may consider yourself not easily offended. You may feel that nothing shocks you, and that there is nothing left to say that is truly controversial or distasteful. If this is the case consider yourself well and truly wrong. Since his appearance at…

Jo Caulfield

16 Aug 2007

With an opening gambit about Heather McCartney’s shoe(s), Caulfield shows she means business. Cooking up hell with her projectile invective about the things that enrage her, including Jodie Marsh, Clinton Cards and BA, she delivers one-liners like death…

Josie Long

16 Aug 2007

Josie Long is already holding court about nothing much as the sold-out audience squeezes in. She happily assures us that this is not to make it seem like a piece of avant-garde theatre, that she just likes to chat. Following on from last year’s runaway…

Lawrence Leung

16 Aug 2007

Australian comedian Lawrence Leung is under the impression that he isn’t cool. Granted he stands awkwardly on stage, an adorable grin spread across his face and displaying a beard only a maths teacher could sprout; yet there is something undeniably…

Liam Mullone

16 Aug 2007

Liam Mullone thinks we live in a world that’s too inhibited by rules, laws and health and safety regulations. He’d rather we took the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants attitude of the heroic rabbits in his favourite book, Watership Down, and started living…

Lucy Porter

16 Aug 2007

From the instant Porter bounds onstage, her consummate professionalism is evident. Speedy, precise delivery and uncommonly consistent rhythm explain her popularity. It’s just a pity she still relies exclusively on relationships for material. She has the…

Maeve Higgins

16 Aug 2007

This ultra-lovely Irishwoman falls into the Josie Long school of comedy, with sweet stories, domestic references and endearingly crap Halloween-based recycling ideas. Thanks to enough well-told dark material – such as a surprise rape gag or descriptions…

Mark Olver

16 Aug 2007

Olver’s confidence and breezy stage presence have been whetted by his work as a warm-up comic for TV shows, and a good thing too: you need to be pretty self-assured to hold forth on the intricacies of your colonoscopy to strangers. The Bristolian has a…

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…