November 2013
People might criticise Jack Whitehall for all sorts of things, but you can't knock his work ethic. On Monday night he was simultaneously guest-hosting Never Mind The Buzzcocks on BBC2 and putting in a star turn on C4 in Fresh Meat. And tonight he made it three channels in three nights with the first episode of Backchat on BBC3. In fact his stand-up show was on BBC3 at 9pm tonight too, making it something of a Jack Whitehall love-in.
Thanks to Nick Revell pointing them out on Twitter, I've been enjoying wading through some lovely old comedy pictures from the mid-1980s taken by Bill Alford. It is appropriate that they come from Malcolm Hardee's Tunnel Club because to me they feel like an episode of Time Tunnel. Looking at the grainy monochrome I'm thrown into another era.
It's nice to be reminded every now and again that stand-up comedians aren't a bunch of egocentric careerists intent on piling up small fortunes comparable to the GDP of a minor principality. It is also nice to see that they can pull their collective fingers out and act quickly when there is an emergency.
Even stand-up comedians have to have a bit of a holiday at Christmas, if only to count up all the royalties they've made on their DVD sales. But in the run-up to Yuletide there are still plenty of alluring live shows in December. So put on your scarves, grab your gloves and get out to the following...
It is such a good idea I can't believe nobody has thought of it before. In fact it is such a fiendishly simple, fiendishly inspired, fiendishly brilliant idea I'm kicking myself that I didn't think of it first. From November 22 to November 29 the Chortle Comedy Book Festival will be celebrating the cross-pollination of comedy and publishing with a literary laugh-in featuring readings, discussions, signings and, of course, gigs.
For a small island the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland punch well above their combined weight when it comes to stand-up comedy and two fine exponents come to London this week.
If you judge a show on the number of celebrities you spot in the audience Barry Humphries' opening night at the Palladium must rank as a massive hit. This was biggest star-spot I've ever encountered. Cynics usually dismiss the people that come to these things as the kind of people who would go to the opening of an envelope and then still slip out the back door when the red carpet paparazzi have knocked off, but this was very much the A list rather than the Z list.
For a few tantalising minutes earlier this week it did sound as if maybe Andy Kaufman had pulled off the craziest stunt in comedy when his 'daughter' appeared at The Andy Kaufman Awards in New York on Monday and announced that her father had not died of cancer in 1984 but was alive and well and had become a stay-at-home dad.
I don't know if they have a secret installation hidden somewhere underground in America where they keep turning out brilliant comedians, but Bill Burr (picture by Koury Angelo) is the latest superb stand-up heading for the UK in the footsteps of Rob Delaney, Paul F Tompkins and Susie Essman. And, of course, Louis CK. In fact an article in Rolling Stone recently anointed the seasoned 45-year-old Bostonian as the "New Louis CK".
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