stewart lee
If you like stand-up comedy Beyond The Joke has a treat for you. We have three copies of the DVD of series one of Comedy Central's The Alternative Comedy Experience to give away. The series was transmitted earlier this year and was acclaimed as an antidote to the shiny floor stand-up of Live at the Apollo. Comedy guru Stewart Lee was involved in selecting the acts and he appears on the DVD interviewing acts backstage at The Stand Club in Edinburgh where the series was filmed.
I was interested to read that Dominic Cavendish of the Daily Telegraph failed to make it past the interval at Stewart Lee's show when he went on a Friday. I also had misgivings about the show on Thursday night, although I had no difficulty staying to the end.
Everybody must surely have a fantasy version of what the perfect stand-up comedy gig would be. This is mine. A smart, funny comedian sets up shop in London somewhere. A small club, where instead of doing a one-night stand they can settle into a relaxed run and play regularly to appreciative audiences.
Comedy residencies used to be three or four nights, maybe a week if you were a big attraction. This week, however, two major comedy shows kick off in London and will still be on for quite a bit longer when the Christmas decorations are taken down in January.
It's been business as usual for Russell Brand in the last few weeks. A kerfuffle on Newsnight where Jeremy Paxman called the guest editor of The New Statesman "trivial" and had a go at him for telling people not to vote has been followed by a rant from Quentin Letts in the Mail putting the boot into him. As someone said on Twitter, Brand must be doing something right if the Mail has decided to take a pop at him. he is now in the middle of his Messiah Complex tour, which I saw on the opening night in Birmingham last month.
Oct 29 - Nov 1 David Baddiel - South Bank Centre, SE1. Fame: Not The Musical comes to London.
Oct 29 - Nov 10 Andrew Maxwell - Soho Theatre, W1. Impish Irishman's new show, Banana Kingdom.
The second series of Comedy Central's Alternative Comedy Experience is due to start in February 2014 but before then a DVD of the first series is to be released on November 18. This is the same day many of the big name live DVDs, including those from Adam Hills and Sean Lock, are released.
A London traffic snarl-up-from-hell did its best to ruin my fun last night. Closures around Hyde Park meant I missed the first two acts at the annual benefit for engagingly experimental radio station Resonance FM. I've investigated on your behalf and discovered that Robert Newman did a slightly overlong bit about evolution, presumably something from his solo show, reviewed here.
Suddenly after the summer slumber in London the next seven days feel like a properly exciting week for going out to comedy.
When you invite Russell Brand onstage at an awards bash you don't know quite what you are going to get. So, paradoxically, the GQ Awards should not really have been surprised earlier this week when Brand referred to the sponsors' past when he said: “If anyone knows a bit about history and fashion, you know it was Hugo Boss who made uniforms for the Nazis. But they looked f***ing amazing.”
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