Comedy, Stand-up

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…

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

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

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…

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…

Edinburgh Fringe - LGBT Highlights

17 Jul 2008

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

Out and about: Stephen K Amos

edfest.tv - video

25 Jun 2008

Amos came out on stage last year and it’s marvellous to see him increasingly weaving tender and masterful material about growing up gay in a British-African household. You’re guaranteed a good time with this talented pro as he imbeds important stuff…

Kristen Schall

Whispering genius cobbles together a hit

9 Aug 2007

The Assembly Rooms appears to have been putting up a determined campaign the last few years to platform a string of quirky female American comics with offbeat dispositions all of their own. Wendy Spero and Maria Bamford made inroads with varying success…

Omid Djalili

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

There are several downsides to modern fame. Being hassled in the street by ordinary people and getting hunted down by paparazzi when hanging out the washing are just two celebrity negatives. Having chirpy researchers from celebrity TV shows ringing up…

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…

The meaning of life: Mark Watson

edfest.tv - video

25 Jun 2008

Worrying whether a life choice would help with his comedy career was the least of his worries in Mark Watson’s previous existence. ‘I worked in a warehouse just outside Bristol, filing death certificates into boxes. It was unbelievably chilly in there…

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…

Tonight’s the night - Saturday Night Live Comedians - Baby Mama

17 Jul 2008

Tina Fey is the latest in a long line of comedians to come through the writer’s rooms of NBC’s legendary comedy show Saturday Night Live. Here’s a few more familiar faces

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.

Seymour Mace

17 Jul 2008

Ahead of his Fringe show – Testamental: Bible Stories Told By an Idiot – Seymour Mace adds a northern flavour to a series of shows at The Stand in Glasgow. Probably best-known as twins Craig and Steve in Johnny Vegas’ award-winning BBC3 sitcom Ideal…

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…

House of Windsor

Regal sketches with crowning glories to come

9 Aug 2007

With last year’s debut as the Future, Jonny Sweet and Joe Thomas received some rave reviews and an awards nomination before ending the summer being ensnared by one of the country’s powerhouse comedy PR companies. This year that soaring promise will…

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

Death in Benes - Carol Leifer

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

Having been convinced that playing a Fringe show in the late afternoon is no bad thing, US comic and Seinfeld muse Carol Leifer is now getting excited about her Edinburgh August. Julian Hall makes sure he doesn’t mention the ‘E’ word You may not know…

Wonderland absurdia: Phil Jupitus & Andre Vincent

edfest.tv - video

25 Jun 2008

Vincent and Jupitus' peculiar mix of Beckett and Lewis Carroll makes a link between two different eras of absurdism and surrealism.

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…

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…

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…

Tripod

16 Aug 2007

Australian musical comedy act Tripod could wring a few immediate laughs simply by virtue of their unlikely physical make-up. There’s the spindly, bespectacled guitarist who’s a dead- ringer for a young Maurice Gibb; the tall, excitable mop-top; and 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

Martha McBrier

An interactive work-out

9 Aug 2007

There’s no other way to approach the star rating on a show like Martha McBrier’s but to give it three. Not because it’s an averagely good show but because it’s a definite love her or loathe her scenario. Which is a shame as McBrier doesn’t like the…

Paul Sinha

King of the comedy world

9 Aug 2007

Paul Sinha has a simple recipe for enjoying life. He wants us all to remember those fleeting moments when we felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. While Sinha’s King of the World moments are rather more everyday than balancing on the prow of a doomed…

Feature - Sean Hughes

Renaissance man

12 Mar 2007

After 40, the old joke goes, everyone gets the face they deserve. Sean Hughes has had the same hangdog expression for years but he maintains that he hasn’t lost the drive which made him a star in his 20s. ‘When I started out I was full of young comic…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

Ivor Dembina

Free fun with a lewd slant

9 Aug 2007

Those looking for some high-minded cultural reference may not get the tagline for Ivor Dembina’s show: Jewish Comedy: Free At Last. If truth be told, the veteran Jewish comic has something of a penchant for the age-old anti-Semitic stereotype of the…

Phil Kay

Impish, semi-mental charm

9 Aug 2007

For the uninitiated, the first breathless minutes of the bedraggled, beardy and rambling Phil Kay’s routine are like watching a homeless dope smoker who has accidentally wandered onstage. But as he ricochets through his tales of shoplifting, smuggling…

Jason Manford

18 Sep 2006

STAND-UP The timeless criticism in which people are implored to act their age could never be more apt when directed at Jason Manford. Yet, in his case, it’s more likely that he’d be accused of acting way beyond his years; when he started his career…

On the offensive: if.comedy awards 2007

edfest.tv - video

25 Jun 2008

With a 2007 show entitled So I Suppose This is Offensive Now emboldened by a poster which features our comic host Brendon Burns as, variously, a Zulu warrior, disabled, a guy in a fairy costume and Jesus on the cross, you should know you’re in for a…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Rebus McTaggart

16 Aug 2007

Ecclefechan’s one-man law spree returns with a new set with the plaudits from last year’s Fringe having gone straight to Rebus McTaggart’s head. Happily, the same couldn’t be said of character comic Richard Thomson. Presenting a similar premise to the…

Sarah Kendall

16 Aug 2007

Back in the heady days of 2004, Sarah Kendall became the first woman to receive a Perrier nomination in nine years, and deservedly so. Having taken time out to trot the globe, she returned last year with a show that was worryingly patchy and left some…

Andrew Maxwell

9 Aug 2007

There comes a point in every comic’s career where he or she must decide whether they are going to stay the joker forever or grow up and move onto doing something respectable for the rest of their life. Andrew Maxwell had a brief shot at British TV…

Charlotte Hudson & Leila Hackett

Fresh sketches and bouncy tales

9 Aug 2007

Charlotte Hudson and Leila Hackett’s lively performance and British beach setting perfectly reflect a Blackpool-style summer: slightly tacky and full of tongue-in cheek exhibitionism. Fake seagulls call in the distance as a parade of characters accost…

Ian Stone

9 Aug 2007

A regular on the national comedy circuit, Ian Stone’s usual 9.05pm crowd are more likely to consist of chattering stag dos and leery hen parties. But the skills he has shaped to deal with such baying crowds make putty of a gently merry, receptive…

Micky Flanagan

9 Aug 2007

Stand-up at the Fringe may be viewed by some as a young person’s game, but there’s surely room for the more senior of our comedy talents to shuffle on to Edinburgh’s stages. At the tender age of 44, Micky Flanagan isn’t ready for his Zimmer frame quite…

Nina Conti

A tender display of an ancient art

9 Aug 2007

If your idea of ventriloquism involves slightly strange men jamming their hands up fluffy toys, then think again. Nina Conti is an eminently presentable young woman, with a simian sidekick more at home with muttering depressed asides (‘oh sweet…

Russel Howard

9 Aug 2007

Russell Howard shows a remarkable amount of restraint against what appears to be a natural inclination to gab with his audience. Other than to mock the odd crazy laugh, he concentrates on his material, which is an ability which the crowd requires in…

Stewart Lee

Confrontational comic getting grief from his mum

9 Aug 2007

It’s almost impossible to imagine that once upon a time Stewart Lee was in a creative and critical bunker. But after doing the Fringe for two decades he can look back on those days with wistful fondness, even remarking during this set that he half…

5 Things - Brendon Burns

5 Things you might not know about . . .

23 Apr 2007

1 Aussie comic Burns believes that death is our second biggest fear. Number one is speaking in front of a group of people.

Shappi Khorsandi

29 Jan 2007

The British Iranian comedy market is getting busier by the second with messrs Djalili and Monahan already giving it a good name and Madame Khorsandi having recovered from dodgy shows in the past to storm the Fringe last August. Her tales of growing up…

Owen O'Neill

17 Jul 2008

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…

Fred MacAulay

19 Jun 2008

STAND-UP Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 28 Jun They say a person’s character is formed by the time they’re seven. According to Fred MacAulay, his was pretty much good to go by age five. ‘Back then I was making up stories and telling lies to amuse…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Nick Doody

Allan Radcliffe

16 Aug 2007

Audience members are likely to spend the bulk of their hour in Doody’s company silently praying for the comedian to relax and enjoy himself. Doody has some solid, if unremarkable, material on recent news events, and one excruciating anecdote about the…

Zoe Lyons

16 Aug 2007

With a canvas ‘wall of fear’ depicting the fears of her friends, Lyons strides through this call to courage with aplomb. Never short of a word and barely stopping for breath, she structures comedy vignettes around topics as diverse as lesbian weddings…

Brendan Hunt

9 Aug 2007

Warning: don’t have sex with this man. Maybe think twice about employing him, too, and do not sleep with his girlfriend. After a merciless autobiographical trawl through the Boom Chicago star’s mucky linen that builds to a frenzied climax (literally) in…

Frank Skinner

Stand-up

9 Aug 2007

If you happen to be at one of Frank Skinner’s shows and spot a tear welling up in the corner of his eye, don’t be too surprised.

Karen Bayley

9 Aug 2007

They say that the most important thing is having the confidence to give it a go. But decent material and delivery also help. A self-confessed depressive turned optimist after a near-death experience, Bayley’s self-assured demeanour surpasses her…

Nick Mohammed

9 Aug 2007

The crowd-pleasing 4uarters showcases Mohammed’s talent for character comedy. His performances are flawless, each of his four creations are sculpted from personality quirks, unusual mannerisms and teeth-gritting faux pas, making the sketches unbearably…

Reginald D. Hunter

Sprawling set from comedy icon

9 Aug 2007

One of the problems with the Fringe is that us reviewers often need to get in early during a run while comedians may take the month to refine their material so that the show we see on the 3rd is rarely the one performed on the 20th. It’s worth pointing…

Russell Kane

Putting the accent on originality

9 Aug 2007

Plucking his theme from a review he received last year, Russell Kane decided to take on criticism and explore the notion of stereotype and cliché in comedy. A risky gambit, as it would be all too easy to simply slip into those stereotypes – the Essex…

Seymour Mace

9 Aug 2007

If Seymour Mace was a superhero he would be called ‘Comic Book Man!’ and his special powers would be making a nerdy slide show seem entertaining and hilarious. It doesn’t sound impressive, but fortunately Mace’s Where’s Batman? is far more inventive…

Simon Munnery

9 Aug 2007

Watching someone ponder the potential of an idea or flail around improvising a punchline is easier when you’re sitting on the carpet, paper cup of wine in hand as they play pool than when they’re spotlit onstage. Munnery’s baggy, genial AGMs are much…

Tara Flynn

9 Aug 2007

Standing alone on stage amid the heart-rending cries of Kate Bush, Flynn clutches a comic from her childhood and encourages the audience to embrace her time-travelling adventures. Full of anecdotes about growing up in rural Ireland, she lampoons sham…

Tony Law

Time-travelling surrealism

9 Aug 2007

As well as starring in theatre show Killer Joe , a trailer trash thriller with a cast of actors and comedians, Tony Law has what appears to be a stand-up show. It’s called Revenge of the Dog of Time and the Fringe brochure promises ‘random good fun’.

Toulson & Harvey

9 Aug 2007

The history of this Perrier-nominated pair (as seen largely through Toulson’s skewed perspective) is related. Theirs is a show that interacts with their audience, but with an affable non-threatening demeanour. Stand-out moments feature a…

Hitlist - The best comedy

2 Jul 2007

• Improbabble The crazy gang brings us some more games and skits and general larking about in their own inimitable Whose Line Is It stylee. The Brunswick Hotel, Glasgow, Fri 6, 13 Jul. • Jo Caulfield One of the more solid performers on the circuit…

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…

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…

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.

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…