April 2014
I see Pam Ann got a, how shall we put it, mixed review in the Guardian this week. Brian Logan gave the show at the Leicester Square Theatre two stars and called it "the comedy of casual smut and insult". Other major critics seem to have stayed away and maybe dodged a bullet. I didn't review it for the Evening Standard – I put it on the list but there was no space to run a review.
It is hard to believe it, but it is ten years ago that zombie apocalypse romcom classic Shaun of the Dead was first released. The UK release was on April 9, 2004. To mark the occasion the scripts of Shaun, alongside the scripts of the other two films in “The Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy” – Hot Fuzz and The World’s End – have now very kindly been made available to download free, complete with previously unseen sketches, lesser known facts, curious squiggles and background trivia.
Stand-up star Stewart Francis has announced his biggest UK tour to date. The UK-based Canadian’s Pun Gent tour will start on April 16, 2015 at the Epsom Playhouse and finish with three nights at the Bloomsbury Theatre from June 11.
Francis is the master of quickfire wordplay, piling on pun after pun after pun. In 2012 he won Dave’s Funniest Joke Of The Fringe Award with "You know who really gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks".
The Pleasance Theatre has officially announced its first batch of 50 shows today. Among the highlights is a new play, My Obsession, by Paul Merton's wife Suki Webster starring, erm, Paul Merton and about an obsessive fan meeting their stand-up hero.
Al Murray, The Pub Landlord has announced a new 52-date UK tour. One Man, One Guvnor will start on September 3 and run until November 30 ending with three nights at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank in London.
The tour marks two decades since the Landlord first appeared onstage as part of Harry Hill's Pub International show. Or as the advert puts it, "20 Years at the Lager Top".
Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman will be appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe this August. He is booked to do a week in the Cabaret Bar at the Pleasance Theatre.
Details are sketchy at the moment and it is not clear to what extent this will be a comedy show or an attempt to add stand-up to his bow. A report in the Scotsman says that he will be talking about "pogonophobia, underpants and the human condition." Pogonophobia is a fear of beards – Paxman came in for some critical stick when he grew one recently.
In an age when pretty much everything from your first pooh to your dying croak ends up on YouTube there isn’t much of Daniel Kitson around. In his early days there was a famous clip of him on Blockbusters aged 15 knocking around when Bob Holness asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said “stand-up comedian”. That clip now appears to be gone. Possibly taken down by Kitson, possibly taken down by Holness before he died. I suspect the former is more publicity-shy than the latter.
Monty Python's Michael Palin is to set out on a solo tour this autumn. The tour will start in Crawley in September and end in his hometown of Sheffield in October and will be called Travelling To Work – the same title as his third volume of diaries to be published at the same time, covering his post-Python career when he became famous for his globetrotting documentaries.
Ben Miller is set to guest star opposite Peter Capaldi when the new series of Doctor Who returns this autumn.
Commenting on his role, Ben Miller says: "As a committed Whovian I cannot believe my luck in joining the Twelfth Doctor for one of his inaugural adventures. My only worry is that they'll make me leave the set when I'm not filming."
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