Bruce Dessau
In a bid to keep Britain cheery and share the love of laughter this Christmas, UKTV channel Gold has launched a national competition to find the perfect Christmas cracker joke. Gold is offering a £5000 prize and a chance for the winner to feel like a member of the royal family and have their very own personalised Christmas crackers made.
"Three stars but it read like a Five." Well, that's it. I'm joining the star brigade. When the Edinburgh Fringe kicks off I'll be reviewing as many shows as I can while retaining my sanity and will be giving each of them a star-rating out of five as all major comedy coverage now does.
There is a lot riding on Pappy's new BBC3 sitcom Badults. The much-loved sketch combo has already had two tries at transferring their lunatic stage sensibility, doing a pair of C4 Comedy Lab pilots, so is Badults third time lucky? It certainly comes when their confidence is riding high. Last year's Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated Fringe show, Last Show Ever, was their best live show to date.
Were my ears deceiving me? On Tuesday night I turned Radio 4 on at 6.30pm and heard a familiar Scottish accent being unfamiliarly reasonable. Frankie Boyle was one of the guests on the first edition of a new series of It's Not What You Know, chaired by Miles Jupp.
I'd had a hectic time this week so decided not to review Derren Brown's new show, Infamous, at The Palace Theatre. Looking at the reviews that have now appeared I'm torn. Part of me wishes I'd reviewed it. Part of me is glad I didn't.
Do you find Mrs Brown's Boys funny? If you do I'm afraid I cannot help you. All I can say is that you are not alone. The hit sitcom is currently packing them in at the O2 Arena as part of its sell-out national tour, yet is hated with a fervour on a par with African tyrants. Its crime? Being old-fashioned.
For Hal Cruttenden's latest tour dates click here.
Dude where's your set? How do you review a show that is barely a show? That's the problem with Jake and Amir's first visit to the Soho Theatre.
Viv Groskop had a good job in journalism, nice friends, a lovely family. So why did she decide to go and spoil it all and get into stand-up comedy? This is one of the key questions she asks herself in I Laughed, I Cried, a kind of Fever Pitch for the World of Funny. And after dithering about on the stand-up fringes for a while Groskop didn't just dip her sparkly trainer-clad toes into stand-up, she decided to do 100 gigs in 100 days, putting a strain on her marriage and her health.
How do you write about someone who defies description? Is Reggie Watts a comedian? He certainly doesn't conform to any stand-up template I'm familiar with. Is he a singer? This gig, part of Yoko Ono's Meltdown Festival, was a terrific showcase for his voice. What does he want to be? After his 75 minute set I'm still not absolutely sure. What I am sure about though is that his show was an absolute blast. Funny, soulful and deafeningly loud. At one noisy point I was almost literally blown away.
Pages
Zircon - This is a contributing Drupal Theme
Design by
WeebPal.
