Jay Richardson

Raymond Mearns

22 Jan 2009

STAND-UP If you’ve only witnessed Raymond Mearns on roistering compering duty, then you’ve barely experienced the burly Glaswegian’s skill with a well-spun anecdote. ‘I feel I can get a lot better if I get the opportunity to do longer sets,’ he says…

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…

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…

Laura Dockrill - Mistakes in the Background

30 Oct 2008

The emergence of a sassy-tongued poet who can relate to the yoof should be a good thing. And Laura Dockrill, aka MC Dockers, truly does seem to be articulating, in her unaffected, unchecked, stream of consciousness way, the existence of the Facebook…

Jacques Chessex - The Vampire of Ropraz

2 Oct 2008

CRIME NOVELLA Taking a true story, apparently, Swiss author Jacques Chessex has crafted a disconcerting novella of horrific sexual crime that alternately seduces and appals. Set against a bleak 1903 backdrop of rural belief in black magic, the Jura…

Scottish Comedian of the Year

18 Sep 2008

STAND-UP COMPETITION Approaching its third anniversary, the Scottish Comedian of the Year final looms ever more influentially in the stand-up calendar. Inspired by Manchester’s City Life contest – won by the likes of Peter Kay, Chris Addison and…

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…

Danny Wallace

Ghostbusters-obsessed yes man with another voyage of self-discovery

7 Aug 2008

The trailer for a Danny Wallace movie biopic might go something like this: ‘In a time of global terrorism, credit crunching and general fatigue with social networking sites, one committed tea drinker’s relentless optimism in the face of cynicism and…

Helen Fitzgerald

Gruesome tales from Glasgow-based Aussie

7 Aug 2008

Currently writing her fourth thriller, ex-parole officer and social worker turned screenwriter Helen FitzGerald was in perpetual ‘movie development hell’, until her latest rejection prompted her to transform the story into a debut novel. ‘Dead Lovely…

John Pinette

Fringe debut for big talent who appeared in Seinfeld

31 Jul 2008

A heavyweight performer in every sense, John Pinette never imagined he’d be playing ‘a place where I have the best cholesterol in the country’. The 44-year-old Bostonian has been a stand-up comedian half his life and a muffin devotee far longer, earning…

Sean Grant

Curmudgeonly Scots comic with show which pricks a few balloons

31 Jul 2008

Reigning Scottish Comedian of the Year and through to the So You Think You’re Funny? competition semi-finals, Sean Grant only began performing stand-up last summer after a declaration of love. ‘I’d always enjoyed watching comedy, but it never occurred…

'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…

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…

Helen FitzGerald - Dead Lovely

5 Jun 2008

CRIME NOVEL (Faber) Once I got beyond the fact that the murderer in this crime thriller-meets-chick lit novel resides on my Glasgow street, I found plenty to enjoy in Helen FitzGerald’s debut. Opening with Krissie’s confession that she’s cheated with…

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…

Ed Park - Personal Days

8 May 2008

COMIC THRILLER (Jonathan Cape) Set in an unnamed New York company, Ed Park’s quirky debut begins like a Dilbert cartoon or a particularly deadpan episode of The Office. A group of interchangeably fireable wage slaves, their jobs ill-defined even to…

TV Box Set Round-Up

13 Mar 2008

Set on a New York comedy sketch show, the whipsmart 30 Rock (Universal) •••• deservedly won Golden Globes for Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin. Former Saturday Night Live scribe Fey plays Liz Lemon, the chief writer struggling to save her baby from the best…

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?”…

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…

The Time of the Rebels

Travelogue by Matthew Colin

20 Sep 2007

A compelling account of the challenging and toppling of undemocratic governments by youth resistance groups across ‘the second world’, from Serbia to Georgia, through the Ukraine, Lebanon and beyond, Matthew Collin’s latest book is as much a tribute to…

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…

William Gibson

23 Aug 2007

For his new novel Spook Country, William Gibson has written a frightening dispatch from the zeitgeist with a plot that’s as outlandish as the technical and cultural details are convincing. The subliminal hum of Gibson’s influence will doubtless ensure…

Matthew Collin

16 Aug 2007

At the turn of the 21st century, uprisings against undemocratic governments in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine benefited from a prominent youth resistance, with groups using humour and satire to undermine the authorities. ‘After Otpor in Serbia, similar…

Nick Cohen

Observing hatred in all its forms

9 Aug 2007

Nick Cohen is a rare beast. A pro-invasion of Iraq commentator with impeccable left-wing credentials, he was moved to write What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way by a perception that liberals were forming an unholy alliance with fascism in failing to…

Glenn Wool

1 Aug 2007

Having missed Glenn Wool in Ireland on a day that he played three gigs and one football match, I eventually track him down to Amsterdam, where he’s spent two days balancing stand-up with the sit-down distractions of beer and ogling Dutch women.

A Light-Hearted Look at Murder

16 Jul 2007

BLACK COMEDY MARK WATSON A Light-Hearted Look at Murder (Chatto & Windus) (Image: © Emilie Fjola Sandy) Mark Watson has been described as ‘a Will Self with dignity’. Admittedly, it was in his spoof biography for the BBC2 comedy Time…

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer

19 Jun 2007

COMEDY Written by Peter Cook, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, this 1970 political satire was panned on release, yet now looks startlingly prophetic. Cook was never more charismatic than as the mysterious Michael Rimmer, arriving unannounced at the…

Rufus Wainwright

Album

21 May 2007

POMP POP Conceived as a more commercial release than the acclaimed but largely overlooked Want One and Want Two, Release the Stars is nothing of the sort, not so much radio-unfriendly as radio-oblivious, despite the presence of Neil Tennant as…

Fawlty Towers Experience

The hotel inspectors

31 Jan 2007

A swarthy waiter pursues a hamster beneath a table of dinner guests, chased by a tall, quiveringly angry man with a moustache. The diners erupt with laughter as the waiter re-emerges, accidentally displacing the wig on a female guest’s head. The furious…

I Think the Nurses Are Stealing My Clothes: The Very Best of Linda Smith

6 Dec 2006

CD Once voted the wittiest living person by Radio 4 listeners, Linda Smith’s death in February of ovarian cancer robbed the UK of one of its highest regarded satirical voices. Best known for appearances on The News Quiz, Just a Minute and Have I Got…

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

30 Oct 2006

The poorly executed Ali G Indahouse seemed to stymie Sacha Baron Cohen’s big screen ambitions, yet Borat appears set to make him Hollywood’s new Peter Sellers. Forget that unsatisfying turn as Talladega Nights’ Gallic gay racing driver, because Borat…

James Frazer - The Golden Bough (1890)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Though largely debunked as anthropology, the legacy of James Frazer's The Golden Bough remains incalculable. Tracing humanity's belief in magic through religion to scientific rationality, across a staggering array of ancient and developing cultures…

Alexander Trocchi - Young Adam (1954)

100 Best Scottish Books of all Time

1 Jan 2005

Virtually forgotten by his death in 1984, Alexander Trocchi's Young Adam was one of the great beneficiaries of Rebel Inc's assault on the Scottish literary canon during the 90s. But it took David Mackenzie's excellent film adaptation, with Ewan McGregor…