Jay Richardson

The best places for barbeques in Edinburgh and Glasgow

Barbecue recipe alternatives to burgers and sausages

For the more discerning al fresco cooks and diners, here's The List's lowdown on how to spark up your barbecue summer.

John Cleese - interview

The legendary ex-Python talks to us ahead of his wide-ranging Alimony Tour

Condemned to perform until he dies, till he is an ex-Python, till he has ceased to be, John Cleese is remarkably sanguine about his current Alimony Tour, necessitated by the comedy legend’s $20m divorce from his third wife. A retrospective of his life…

The best upcoming Scottish comedians in 2011

James Kirk, Chris Forbes, Dee Custance, Davey Connor, Antony Murray

Overlooking the cosmopolitanism of Glasgow’s International Comedy Festival, The List invited five of the best upcoming Scottish comedians to the Stand for a light-hearted debate about the psychological trauma of making drunks laugh on demand. James…

The Death of Eli Gold

David Baddeil's fictional biography returns to his favourite themes of love, sex and commitment

A comic meditation on the death of ‘the world’s greatest living writer’, the destructive selfishness of male desire and the passing of the last ‘great man’ as a species, David Baddiel’s fourth novel further explores his preoccupations with love, sex and…

The best free and cheap things to do in Glasgow and Edinburgh

Visit a library, go for a walk, bake a cake or see some cheap theatre

Beat the January blues with these guaranteed pick-me-ups, suggested by our writers and some friends of The List. They’re all free, or cost just a few quid, so you’ll come out of winter with your bank balance intact and a smile on your face

Stefanie Pintoff - In the Shadow of Gotham

Deeply flawed turn of the 20th century crime drama full of the unnecessary

(Penguin) A turn of the 20th century crime drama, In the Shadow of Gotham is deeply flawed. A damaged detective in a quiet town north of Manhattan is dragged back into New York’s seedy underbelly by a brutal murder, partnering with an eccentric…

A selection of the best comedy podcasts

Free comedy from Robin Ince, Richard Herring, Andrew Collins and Marc Maron

The explosion in free podcasts has been a boon for comedy fans, delivering intimate interviews, topical improv and experimental sketch shows, all the while plugging audiences directly into the psyches of their favourite stand-ups. US comic Marc Maron’s…

Natalie Haynes - The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

(Profile) With a rich broth of war, patricide and incest tales to draw upon, comedian Natalie Haynes champions the Greeks and Romans as role models and warning oracles for coping with the 21st century. A passionate authority on the classics, this…

Emily Woof at the Writer's Retreat

The ex-actress conducts a deep involvement with language

Emily Woof first graced Edinburgh nude and on a trapeze for a trilogy of one-woman Fringe plays, under the Sex umbrella. And throughout The Whole Wide Beauty (the debut novel by The Full Monty and Wondrous Oblivion star), the loss of physical expression…

Nicolai Lilin: author of Siberian Education

The writer tells of his time in prison, tattooing, and film offers

Handed his first weapon at the age of six, Nicolai Lilin was destined for a life of violence. Having fled the horrors of his past, he tells Jay Richardson why death is sometimes a better option. Born into a Siberian criminal dynasty, convicted of…

Neil Hamburger descends upon the Fringe with a surprise for his critics

Controversial stand-up talks Tenacious D, hecklers and Mel Gibson

With a characteristically phlegmy cough, Neil Hamburger clears his throat and recalls his last Scottish gig, opening for Tenacious D in Glasgow. ‘I sure got a lot off my chest there,’ he reminisces. ‘Though of course, they got even more off because they…

Top five late-night comedy shows at the Fringe 2010

Late ‘n’ Live, Lach’s Antihoot and Spank! deliver the goods past midnight

Late ‘n’ Live Still one of August’s hottest tickets, this booze-fuelled behemoth of a night retains less of the volatile anarchy of its Cowgate heyday. Nevertheless, it remains a tremendous opportunity to see some of the festival’s best comics in a…

Sketch team Delete the Banjax return after success of 2009

Word-of-mouth comedy hit of 2009 return for more

‘We came up with a bit of a reputation and it just went off!’ recalls Sam Champion, in a pub similar to the Free Fringe Royal Mile watering hole where Delete the Banjax established themselves last year. ‘We loved doing the Free Fringe and agreed with…

Des Bishop tells his father's near miss story at Fringe 2010

Irish-American comic presents My Dad Was Nearly James Bond

Des Bishop has wanted to tell his father’s story for a long time. The former model and actor, who had bit parts in Zulu and Day of the Triffids, narrowly lost out to George Lazenby for the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. After…

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…

Stewart Lee - How I Escaped My Certain Fate

(Faber) Like Ezra Pound’s notes on The Waste Land if they’d been more cutting, self-critical and in awe of Johnny Vegas, Stewart Lee here transcribes and annotates the three stand-up shows that brought him back from disillusioned retirement in 2001…

The Swedish and Norwegian comics hitting the Edinburgh Fringe

Magnus Betnér, Dag Sørås and Lasse Nilsen head up Scandinavian invasion

Magnus Betnér is leading a charge of the Swedish and Norwegian stand-ups playing the Fringe. Jay Richardson meets those who are raising the bar of north European comedy

Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

(Old Street) Satire has become a dirty word in Britain, devalued through excessive application to intelligent but superficial, self-satisfied observations of our uncertain times. In the US though, where The Daily Show and The Onion set the standard…

Richard Herring - How Not to Grow Up!

(Ebury Press) Expanding on his 2007 stand-up show, Oh Fuck, I’m 40!, this unlikely coming-of-age memoir chronicles Richard Herring’s hurtle towards middle age and the various crises it accelerated. Unmarried, childless and avowedly immature, the…

This Party’s Got to Stop - Rupert Thomson interview

Rupert Thomson ‘always had this perverse view that fiction is true and memoirs aren’t, because there’s so much you can’t say in them’. Yet the novelist always knew he was going to write This Party’s Got to Stop, the moving, darkly humorous account of…

Emily Woof - The Whole Wide Beauty

(Faber) The debut novel of actor and playwright Emily Woof, The Whole Wide Beauty arguably betrays its author’s thespian background with the sheer self-absorption of her characters, densely layered but seemingly incapable of empathy outwith sudden…

Stewart Francis hits the Stand

Stewart Francis used to open his set with, ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t heard of you either.’ Between hosting schlocky gameshow You Bet Your Ass in his native Canada, then moving to Spain, his memorable one-liners were an itinerant treat on the UK circuit to…

Alex Horne - Wordwatching

(Virgin Books) Alex Horne is a true logophile. He’s a lover of words, especially rare words, like ‘logophile’, that seldom make it into dictionaries. Or ‘bollo’, ‘pratdigger’ and ‘mental safari’, his own recent coinages that the comedian has been…

Scotland: An Eejit's Guide

Less a reflection on its audience than a spoof of the sort of titles you’ll find in Waterstone’s clearance bins come January, Scotland: An Eejit’s Guide is a comedy homage to Caledonia from two of its most voluble amateur historians. Mixing grim…

Tim Minchin: Ready For This?

The Australian musical comedian returns to Scotland

I’ve interviewed Tim Minchin several times, but never in the surprisingly big, hairy and hungover flesh before. ‘I’m totally comfortable on stage but I like to appear discomforted and vulnerable because it works with my material. I’m surprised how…