Comedy, Brian Donaldson

Louis CK

Brilliant comedic rants far from negative

19 Aug 2008

There's little fanfare about Louis CK when he takes to the stage for the second of his two Pleasance Courtyard dates. With the lights dimmed, a slow roar has built which completely drowns out the introduction (his status is so big he doesn't have to…

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…

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…

Terry Saunders

26 Aug 2008

In the dank bowels of the ghost-ridden Baby Belly 3, where it rains indoors no matter what it’s doing outside (though, let's face it, chances are it’ll be raining there too), two shows from likeably nervy individuals addressed obsessions with varying…

Pappy's Fun Club

14 Aug 2008

The sleeper hit of 2007, PFC storm back with Funergy (is it possible to have a laugh and be environmentally friendly at the same time?), with an avid following cracking up at every daft aside or snippet of nonsense. There's an early-Boosh charm to all…

And On Your Left… Ruth Bratt

Memorably madcap bunch of characters

21 Aug 2008

It’s been a mixed bag of a Fringe for female character comics, but Ruth Bratt’s collection of mad hatters certainly puts her in the top bracket. Set up as a road trip around the sites of Edinburgh, the show introduces a tour guide who is a mixture of…

The Cup

14 Aug 2008

COMEDY DRAMA BBC2, Thu 21 Aug, 9.30pm Do we really need another fly-on-the-wall docu-comedy-drama about flawed individuals living out their largely miserable lives? Apparently so, as The Cup smashes its way towards us with more ‘subtle’ humour and…

Umbrella Birds

Sweating out life's problems

7 Aug 2008

Mark Watson is no longer the hardest working performer on the Fringe. That accolade may actually go to Emily Watson Howes who just so happens to be the popular stand-up's good lady missus. Not only is she the creator and director of World War II drama…

The Hollywood Outlaw Comedy Tour

Not a killer in the house

22 Aug 2008

You know things have gone badly wrong when comics are blaming the audience for the icy atmosphere at a gig. In this instance it was each and every one of the four stand-ups who comprise the Hollywood Outlaw Comedy gang who in their own individual way…

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…

Ivan Brackenbury

Ill-advised gags in the Disease Hour

21 Aug 2008

Fresh from a triumphant Fringe 07 which included an if.comeddie nomination and a string of rave reviews, Chesterfield and North Derbyshire’s foot-in-mouth specialist hospital DJ is back. And in a seasonal twist, he’s turning August into Christmas-time…

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…

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…

Omid Djalili

26 Aug 2008

No one can really deny the lofty position that Omid Djalili now occupies in the British comedy world. Having begun in the Fringe wastelands a decade ago, he can pop by to do a week here fresh from a BBC1 Saturday night show deemed so successful by the…

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

Ahir Shah & Alex Maple

Raw talents in unfettered mayhem

21 Aug 2008

A few years back, a show entitled It’s a Shambles won the Perrier Best Newcomer award. If that moniker hadn’t already been snapped up, it could so easily have applied to this ramshackle affair. And yet, rather than making this an hour of difficult…

Carl Donnelly & John Robins

21 Aug 2008

Two chaps with bright futures amble along amiably with their separate stand-up sections, linked by an amusing satisfied drinking sound, fashioning out little urban observations and memories of childhood. Clearly, this has no bearing on the star rating…

Lady Garden

14 Aug 2008

With Adrian Edmondson and Jennifer Saunders in the crowd, it's no surprise to learn that the cast list revealed that one of the young comic actresses has the surname 'Edmondson'. But the talent on stage was spread widely throughout some spot-on sketches…

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…

Otis Lee Crenshaw

Season pro stil has fire in his belly

22 Aug 2008

Rich Hall is a man who know show to treat his audience right. While his gigs as plain old Rich Hall back in the mid to late 90s helped forge a ridiculously high standard for the next generation of Fringe stand-ups, it was as C&W legend Otis Lee Crenshaw…

James Dowdeswell

21 Aug 2008

A perfectly likeable chap with a decent story to tell about his experience of being at a school which had a near-Columbine incident and its strange aftermath, this is an hour about how it's tough being nice. Perhaps it is simply easier to find and write…

Isabel Fay

14 Aug 2008

There's an energetic and quirky charm about Fay's set of oddball characters that makes it hard to hate them, but with a little extra work on the script, we could have loved these failures a bit more. The arachnophobe drafted in for a spider exhibition…

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…

Josie Long

A logic-defying show about science

7 Aug 2008

The queen of lo-fi is back with kitsch artefacts all around and a scattery mind deep within. This year her comedy patchwork has Josie Long fiddling around with science, a subject she studied at school (for 'studied' read 'sat with her head on the desk…

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…

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…

Arthur Smith’s Arturart

Artistic venture with knob gags

21 Aug 2008

Winner of last year’s Spirit of the Fringe if.comeddie award, Arthur Smith’s Arturart returns with another explosion of what its creator describes humbly as a ‘vanity project’. Situated at 15 Queen Street, the fiftysomething stand-up veteran’s…

Dan Atkinson

21 Aug 2008

Not sure whether Atkinson woke up in a bad mood that afternoon or whether he'd simply left his mojo elsewhere, but this hour of moaning about having been left behind by his friends and whingeing about having moved to London kicks off promisingly but all…

Two Episodes of MASH

Potentially great sketches simmer to nothing

21 Aug 2008

Their publicity photo brings to mind the sellotaped surrealist madness of early noughties Noble and Silver while their onstage relationship might, with a wildly imaginative leap mind, make you think of Terry and June had they been members of Monty…

Pajama Men

Fantastic yet familiar physical horseplay

14 Aug 2008

The Fringe traditionally gets its unfair share of headlines for being a hotbed of nudity and a feast of skin-baring. But two guys in their jimmy-jams before the watershed? What gives? The massively innovative North American double act of Shenoah Allen…

Zoe Gardner's Fault

14 Aug 2008

Previously one half of the Congress of Oddities, Gardner is hardly to blame for there being a dearth of quality character comics this year and she does her utmost to pull the genre out of the mire. Sticking a wig on to play her shrill producer and…

Pros from Dover

A riot of innovative sketching

7 Aug 2008

It's not enough these days for sketch show gangs to trot merrily on stage before simply delivering sketches followed by skits and topped off with some shards of broken comedy. Somehow the form needs to be shaken up, given a twist, dealt a postmodern…

Tom Allen

7 Aug 2008

There's a place in the theatre for Allen, because stand-up comedy is not his forté. The pleasure in his tale of finding some meaning in his family history is all in the telling; at the climax, Allen pretty much admits himself that the content is sadly…

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…

Richard Sandling

Format war rant full of comedic gems

22 Aug 2008

In the dank bowels of the ghost-ridden Baby Belly 3, where it rains indoors no matter what it’s doing outside (though, let's face it, chances are it’ll be raining there too), two shows from likeably nervy individuals addressed obsessions with varying…

Jarlath Regan

A charming but semi-comatose hour

21 Aug 2008

When you Google ‘relax the cax’, you will be asked, ‘Did you mean “relax the car”?’ Well, of course not, that’s just silly. But perhaps more daft is that gentle Irish comic Jarlath Regan failed to find it within himself to explain the title of his show…

Philip Escoffey

21 Aug 2008

It's almost impossible to criticise this show from 'mind-reader' extraordinaire Escoffey unless you simply refuse to buy into this entertainment sub-genre and are blind to the sights he lays before your eyes. Perhaps the only downside is that the…

The Jonny and Joe Show

Hanging loose with sketches and site-specific sillinessHanging loose with sketches and site-specific

21 Aug 2008

It’s one thing to concoct a brilliant idea (a meeting headed up by executives who are afraid of ghosts, unsure what petty cash is and hellbent on finding a missing mug) another is to pull it off. The trio collectively known as the House of Windsor are…

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…

Tea and Cake II

14 Aug 2008

About as appetising as a raspberry lasagne, the Tea and Cake crew's latest show is tediously hellbent on giving bad mime a kicking. Targets hardly come much softer than that and it's tempting to imagine a mime group showing footage of this hour as the…

The Guru

14 Aug 2008

With his 'Madonna' sidekick, Guru John Popolini (GJP) is determined to make us fulfil our potential and open up a wealth of opportunity. Coincidentally in the same room that Jackson's Way got us all hyped up on motivation, Popolini whips up a character…

Martha McBrier

7 Aug 2008

It's quite hard to get your head round what Glaswegian comic McBrier is trying to achieve on stage. With the barest of material (something or other to do with belief systems) she relies on her audience not only for suggestions but actually to inject…

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…

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…

FxP2 in Trouble!

21 Aug 2008

The thing with last-gasp chances are that you have got to take them. And thankfully this set of young sketch artists pulls out a ludicrously playful finale (a boy band mime) that saves the day. It's when they are left to their own writing devices that…

Jason Cook

Finding comfort and joy in the darkest of places

21 Aug 2008

It’s his birthday today, so you’d expect Jason Cook to be in party mode. His sister has even showed up for Joy in this tiny and packed Stand back-room. But while we pile out onto the street having hugged strangers and armed with paraphernalia that would…

Kiosk of Champions

Knockabout fun from undynamic duo

21 Aug 2008

Describing themselves at the upshot as the ‘conquerors of comedy’ and ‘buccaneers of wit’, Richard Sandling (he of VHS: Death to DVD Fringe fame) and Stuart Goldsmith (he’s toured with Mark Watson, you know) have managed to cobble together the most…

Alpha Males

Savage indictment of brutish blokes

14 Aug 2008

Last year, our introduction to Victor Legit ended in a shocking explosion of abrasive violence. This time around, the finale from the slightly corrupt but quick-thinking officer of FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) occurs in similarly gory…

Andrew Lawrence

14 Aug 2008

Lawrence may be cleaner cut than the former tramp-devil he once 'played', but that hasn't dampened the amusing malevolence seeping from his mouth. He isn't the only comic this year to make the connection between the Shannon Matthews discovery and the…

Glenn Wool

14 Aug 2008

Following on from his shaggy-dog surrealist wanderings of last year, Canada's loudest man gives us a bit more of a structure and pumps us with a little more laughing gas as he considers the repercussions of his divorce and an incident from his teen…