April 2014
The world seems determined to laugh at itself at the moment. Co-producer Simon Cowell is sending himself up rotten in I Can’t Sing! while the BBC is ensuring that it is the butt of the joke in W1A on BBC2.
Update: Following the publication of this piece I was told about an Alcohol Concern charity gig at the Leicester Square Theatre on September 17. Dry Humour's line-up includes Stewart Lee, Miles Jupp, Joe Wilkinson, Paul Tonkinson, Paul Sinha, Vikki Stone and Jim Smallman, with compère Rob Thomas. This gig will also have a dry bar for refreshments and a raffle to win a host of signed comedy goodies.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has today announced the nominations for this year’s awards. The biggest comedy nominee is The IT Crowd. Co-stars Richard Ayoade and Chris O’Dowd compete with The Wrong Mans’ Mathew Baynton and James Corden in the Male Performance in a Comedy Programme category.
After a bit of a lull there are some great gigs in London this week. So many, in fact, that BTJ has already written about the first one, One Night Stanshall, which pays tribute to legendary British eccentric Viv Stanshall, who seems to be the only cult comedian that Stewart Lee has not championed recently. It’s at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Tuesday.
The Mail Online has excelled itself with an article about Harry Styles and Jack Whitehall's girlfriend Gemma Chan.
Well, what a week for quitters. First David Letterman, 66, announces that he is retiring from The Late Show and then Bruce Forsyth, 86, announces that he is leaving Strictly Come Dancing. It is not clear what Forsyth is going to do next. Maybe he has an eye on the imminent Letterman vacancy. After all, hosting a chat show is about the only thing he hasn’t done in his positively biblical 250 years in showbusiness.
There is no doubt that Olivia Colman is on a winning streak at the moment. Last year she made waves in the seaside murder mystery Broadchurch alongside David Tennant. Last night she was the betrayed wife in the BBC drama The 7:39. She seems to be everywhere.
Wouldn’t it be great if Louis CK replaced David Letterman when the veteran host steps down from The Late Show in 2015. American television is so mainstream, so smooth. It would be a wonderful shock to the system to have someone that brutally honest who really homed in on the hollowness and hopelessness of the human condition in such a high profile job.
What must it be like to be the brain of Ricky Gervais?
Talk about politics and die young and you become a Comedy God. Tell brilliantly daft one-liners and die young and you are only worshipped by a select band of comedy nerds. That’s the difference between Bill Hicks and Mitch Hedberg. Buzzfeed recently put up a list of what was claimed to be almost all of Hedberg’s jokes ranked in order. I’m not sure if I agree with the precise order, but one thing is for sure, Hedberg, who died aged 37 in 2005, was a genius.
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