May 2014
The line-up for ARGComFest, aka Actually Rather Good Comedy Festival, has just been announced. The two-day Fringe Preview festival is returning for a third year over the weekend of July 5 & 6. There will be 32 Edinburgh previews in two days, this year moving from last year's venue in Camden Town to The Garage, Highbury Corner, in Islington. One ticket covers access to all shows - there are either daily or weekend tickets. The festival is organised by James Lowey with the help of Matthew Crosby's contacts book.
Billy Connolly’s two-part series on the way we treat death was a strangely moving affair. Not because he was meeting bereaved and dying people from around the world, but because Connolly himself looked so frail at times. Connolly opened the series by explaining that in the same week he was told, among other things, that he had Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer. He was also given a hearing aid.
Is it decadent post-imperialist arrogance or dicking about in the name of entertaining telly? That was my first thought when I started watching 24 Hours To Go Broke, Dave’s latest comedy travelogue series in which celebrities – mostly comedians – visit various parts of the world with a suitcase full of bank notes and have to spend them in a day or face a horrible forfeit.
Dubliner Andrew Maxwell has lived in London for 20 years and to mark the occasion he has decided to do a tour of his adopted city. It’s not a big tour, running to just three more dates over the next week, but it is a nice tribute to the city and it means he gets to sleep in his own bed after each show. It started last night in the wood-panelled Peckham Liberal Club, which looks like it hasn’t changed since Jeremy Thorpe was the Liberal Party leader.
Kayvan Novak is set to appear in a new mainstream sitcom alongside Bradley Walsh. Novak, who made his name in prank show Fonejacker, will co-star in Woody - a six-part, half-hour sitcom created by Neil Webster and Charlie Skelton.
Eddie Izzard has been named as the headline act of the new Southsea Comedy Festival, which runs from July 31 to August 1. He will be performing his recent acclaimed Force Majeure show on both nights.
This was the second time I've seen David Baddiel's Fame: Not The Musical and it is as funny, clever and insightful as it was when I saw the shorter version at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer. It's Baddiel's first stand-up show for 15 years and yet it barely feels as if he's been away. He's as sharp, perceptive and pathologically honest as ever. I'm not quite sure why Baddiel rubs some people up the wrong way.
Well they haven’t uncovered another Steptoe & Son or Are You Being Served? but this recent revival of the BBC’s sitcom-spotting Comedy Playhouse strand has definitely been interesting. Over To Bill tried to mix broad humour with Curb Your Enthusiasm inappropriateness, while Miller’s Mountain felt like Mrs Brown’s Boys stuck up a Scottish hill. So what about the final instalment, Monks?
Marcus Brigstocke describes his current show Je M’Accuse as “pissing about”. After making his name as a passionate ranter on the heavier subjects of politics and religion he has decided to shoot the breeze a bit more here and just talk about himself and tell some simple, effective stories about past jobs, his childhood and his testicles. The result is an hour that is consistently funny even if you occasionally crave for something meatier.
Now here’s one for the geeks. As part of BBC2’s 50th birthday celebrations the channel dusted off its archive to reveal some rarely seen – or in some cases never publicly seen at all – comedy gems. This has got to be good I thought. And in some cases it was. In a lot of cases though I thought I’d accidentally tuned in to an episode of Before They Were Famous that was never aired because it wasn’t interesting enough.
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