I think I laughed more when I was at the Edinburgh show by Adam Hess than at any show last summer. I have to qualify that, however, by saying that I couldn’t remember many of the actual jokes afterwards, but that was because they flew around the room at such a fast and furious pace that I was still chuckling at one punchline when the next one hit me. He more than deserved his Best Newcomer nomination. I do remember that there was a lot about his childhood, something about nosebleeds and something else about hiding under a bed.
Sometimes overnight success takes years. Seymour Mace has been bouncing around on the comedy circuit for well over a decade now, but it was only last year that he picked up an Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination for a show that tied together all the madness of his previous outings in one neat package. There was stand-up, a game show element and props that evoked the childlike, anarchic, freeform spirit of Vic Reeves Big Night.
When you go to a lot of comedy competitions you start to see the same faces popping up in the finals. I spotted the very talented Bilal Zafar about a year ago and earlier this year he won the New Act of the Year competition, which is the most prestigious of the umpteen newbie competitions you can enter. The East London stand-up has made his name with a brilliantly honed routine about a Twitter spat over what was thought to be a Muslim-only cake shop.
“Don’t give too many flyers out, they are quite expensive. Also don’t give any to Spanish people, they won’t come”
A small bald man, wearing a two piece suit, with a garish yellow t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a chimp over the top of it says to a flyerer in matching outfit. He continues: “Don’t really push the first show, it’s not very good and a couple of acts have dropped out”
More comedy shows have been announced as part of this year's Latitude Festival. The new highlights include Bill Bailey and Katherine Ryan doing solo shows and Reece Shearsmith as a special guest along with Rufus Hound for Robin Ince & Josie Long’s Festival Shambles, a special take on their hit podcast, Book Shambles.
Also just announced are Silver Sony Award winner Milton Jones, Piff the Magic Dragon, Marcus Brigstocke, Dane Baptiste and Jen Kirkman.
Daniel Kitson has called Rob Auton "entirely compelling to watch". What more recommendation do you need? Auton is a cross between a minstrel and a poet whose shows are dreamy thought bubbles about aspects of the world that fascinate him. This year's show is about sleep. He has previously done shows about the colour yellow, the sky and faces, but if you know his name already it is probably because of me. In 2013 I had an hour to kill in Edinburgh and wandered into a free taster package next door to my hotel.
My attention has been drawn to the fact that there are now fifty sleeps until the start of the Edinburgh Fringe 2016. If you can’t make it to the Fringe there are previews all over the UK at the moment, with seemingly every available space in London being used for warm-ups. So from today Beyond The Joke will be cherry picking some of the most interesting shows that you can see both now and in Scotland.
Nobody seems to have told the person that did the opening credits for this comedy version of Question Time that it is about the EU. Instead subject titles such as “relationships” and “money” rolled past as if our host, serial cynic Jack Dee, was any old agony aunt.
There is certainly a lot of improvisation about at the moment. We reviewed this yesterday and there is this show at the Soho Theatre.
This review first appeared in the Evening Standard here.
There is always one excellent performer that the Edinburgh Comedy Award judges seem hell bent on overlooking and in 2015 it was Lolly Adefope. The versatile young comedian gathered great reviews and enthusiastic word-of-mouth buzz yet bizarrely the panel dismissed her.
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