Bruce Dessau
It was the eminent writer David Quantick who coined the phrase "pop will eat itself" in the 1980s when he was talking about the way musical genres kept cross-referencing each other. Soon afterwards a band formed calling themselves Pop Will Eat Itself.
Maybe I was not paying attention but the new series of 10 O'Clock Live seemed to slip out without much in the way of advance fanfare last night. Perhaps that was a shrewd move. This is the third run but somehow it always seems to need time to bed in, as if the stars, Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell, Lauren Laverne and Jimmy Carr need a while to get their satirical chuckle muscles working.
When it comes to comedy Sky is currently on a roll. From Hunderby to their recent Love Matters series they've been delivering the comic goods with enviable consistency and originality and they have done it again with Snodgrass, which goes out this Thursday and stars Ian Hart as John Lennon. Pretty canny casting as Hart has already played John Lennon twice on film, in The Hours and Times and Backbeat.
David Haig is one of our great comic actors both onstage and onscreen. Unfortunately his latest project, The Wright Way, is not so great. Here is a frank, funny interview with Haig from December 2008 when he was starring in the revival of Joe Orton's black comedy Loot onstage. At the time I speculated that Haig does his best work when he is sporting his trademark moustache.
Ricky Gervais has got a lot to answer for. Watching a preview of Ben Elton's new BBC sitcom The Wright Way it appears that he has taken his inspiration from When The Whistle Blows, the fictional workplace comedy featured in Extras. The gags might fly thick and fast, but they are peppered with farcical misunderstandings and cheap innuendo about knobs and knickers.
Comedy Crisis? What Comedy Crisis? Russell Howard has just announced a World Tour for 2014 taking in four nights at the Royal Albert Hall, which is certainly classier than the O2 Arena. Here is an interview with Howard from 2009 in which he talks about his family, his career and comedy onscreen as well as onstage.
Details of Russell Howard's tour here,
When I wrote some thoughts about Jack Carroll on Britain's Got Talent recently I sang his praises but wondered whether he wrote his own material. This prompted the following response on Facebook from Alan Holloway: "It's not a prerequisite to write your own material, really.
I was told to get in the trenches and cut back on the comedy godzillas by a reader recently so I made a trip to the the Invisible Dot's new regular Saturday Night Show last night. I'm not sure if this really counts as the trenches though. It's a swish, industrial room a spit from King's Cross station which attracts the coolest of comedy crowds (think Hacienda Club just before acid house kicked in but cosier) thanks to ID's skilful booking policy.
Julian Clary starts his new live tour, Position Vacant, this weekend. Details here. This interview, first published in The Times, dates from his last tour, Lord of the Mince, but, as you can tell from the title there may be a degree of "creative/artistic overlap".
Stewart Lee recently wrote an article in the New Statesman about the lack of right wing comedians. I sort-of doubt if Simon Evans is a card-carrying Cameronite, but there is something distinctly conservative about him. Not in a horrible Bernard Manning/Bob Monkhouse way, but in his love of traditional old values.
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