January 2014
When I arrived at the Soho Theatre last week just before the lights went down to see Robert Newman I spotted Sean Hughes in the audience. I thought that was a pretty good sighting and a nice nod to Newman that one of his contemporaries was checking him out. In the interval, however, I realised that Hughes had been beaten in the game of celebrity-audience-member Top Trumps. It was pointed out to me that Russell Brand and Jemima Khan were sitting a few rows back.
Normally I plan my Edinburgh Fringe gig-going with tedious military precision, but one late night last August I was at a bit of a loss and wandered into The Tron pub to check out a comedian I didn't know much about. Liam Williams, who is also in the highly-regarded-by-Tim-Key sketch group Sheeps, was doing his solo show and it was one of those lucky finds, an enticing mix of northern flights of fancy and gritty Leeds-based autobiography.
Last year around the time of Ben Elton's The Wright Way there was a lot of talk in the press about whether comedians lose it in old age. One comedian who goes about his business quietly and is still as funny as ever is Norman Lovett.
It’s not a sentence that you hear every day - “Excuse me, I must go and get rubberised” - except in certain Soho clubs. Or if you are visiting the Red Dwarf set at Shepperton Studios and talking to Robert Llewellyn, who plays the valet Kryten, the latex-faced mechanoid in the cult science-fiction sitcom.
Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer return to our screens on Jan 14 with their new sitcom House of Fools. Read a preview of the programme here. BTJ spoke to Bob Mortimer about the programme, which co-stars Matt Berry, Dan Skinner, Daniel Simonsen and Morgana Robinson. It is very childish, very odd and very funny indeed.
I've got a theory that every entertainer – apart from Daniel Kitson, of course – ends up doing something very different to what they originally imagined themselves doing. Johnny Vegas ends up selling tea, Ben Elton ends up writing The Wright Way. I don't know what Charlie Brooker's original ambitions were, to be honest, but I've always felt he wanted to stand outside the establishment tent pissing in, not in it pissing out. But then what do I know about what goes on in Charlie Brooker's brain?
2014 is shaping up to be a busy year for Seann Walsh. The Brighton-bred comedian has just announced UK dates for his Foster's Award-nominated show The Lie-In King. The tour includes a short run at the Soho Theatre from February 3 - 8. Full details below.
It's not surprising that there is a strong whiff of deja vu watching Uncle, the first episode of the new sitcom starring Nick Helm written by newcomer Oliver Refson. A one-off pilot went out on C4 in 2012 and the first episode of this BBC3 series is basically the same scene-setting plot, tarted up and with Helm sporting a slightly tidier haircut.
I was tickled to read comedian Davey Johns' comments on Facebook recently about the phenomenon of homing in on the audience member who isn't laughing. Johns nailed the situation perfectly: "There's a couple just stoney faced. Nothing from them at all. All around laughter but they are oblivious to it and in your head you're just thinking 'what the fuck is wrong with them?' Everyone is having a great laugh, but your head is just focused on why the fuck aren't they laughing."
It has been interesting to see Michael Gove's attack on Blackadder for perpetuating the myth about World War 1 being a "misbegotten shambles". Judging by the Education Secretary's comments one might think that one of the greatest British sitcoms ever made was actually a commie plot to bring down the establishment. Gove even went as far as accusing Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's portrayal of idiotic officers as being "designed to belittle Britain and its leaders".
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