Bruce Dessau
You don't get to be a comedy superstar by accident, by having a bit of luck or by having a canny manager. I'm sure all of those things help, but I've seen Michael McIntyre twice in the last week and both occasions have confirmed that there is a simple reason why he is one of the biggest comedians in the country if not the biggest.
With bands constantly reuniting maybe the next stage in the comedy-as-rock-and-roll phenomenon is for double acts to reunite. Not much chance of Baddiel and Newman getting back together though as both are currently gearing up for a full-on return to solo work after a break.
You don't get to be a comedy superstar by accident, by having a bit of luck or by having a canny manager. i'm sure all of those things help, but i've seen Michael McIntyre twice in the last week and both occasions have confirmed that there is a simple reason why he is one of the biggest comedians in the country if not the biggest.
5pm Update – Following publication of this piece Jason Byrne tweeted to explain that "Lee Evans begged me to close, he said he couldn't follow the byrne magic"...
Russell Howard's Good News can hardly be called one of TV's best kept secrets. It has regularly topped the BBC3 ratings and is one of the most viewed programmes on iPlayer. It was voted BBC3's Best Ever Show by Digital Spy and Howard was voted the number one Weird Crush by Heat Magazine earlier this year. Not sure if that last one is a compliment or not.
As fans of musical satire on Radio 4 may well have heard, Mitch Benn is only half the man he was. After being overweight for most of his life the Liverpool-born all-rounder decided he did not want to die without seeing his children grow up and lost eleven of his 25 stone a couple of years ago. Reduced Circumstances, which is an extended version of last summer's Edinburgh show, addresses the issue but not, ahem, too heavily.
1.The recent BBC4 documentary Frost on Sketch Shows suggested that the sketch show was in the doldrums because all the best comedians want to be stand-ups these days. Well Frosty should pay more attention, because there are plenty of aspiring performers out there planning to prove you wrong. The difficulty is not making sketch shows, it's making good ones.
If anyone can get the filming of a stand-up DVD right at the Hammersmith Apollo it must be Jack Dee's people. His management company is behind Live at the Apollo so know all the right angles. This gig, which was part of Dee's first tour in six years, was being filmed for the autumn DVD market and should be the perfect present for your grumpy dad.
Update 21/5/13. After this piece was published I was contacted by Chris Cox, self-styled "mind reader who can't read minds" and we had a very interesting chat about the use of plants in magic and mentalist shows. My interview with him appears in italics on the next page after the end of the original article (click on "next" at bottom right of this page).
Ventriloquist Nina Conti has always been an intriguing performer. Whereas an arena-filler like Jeff "I Kill You!" Dunham plays the genre largely for easy laughs, Conti is more ambitious, constantly breaking down the barrier between performer, puppet and audience.
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