ColumnsWhen Eddie Izzard toured ‘Sexie’ in 2003/4, critic Clive Davis wrote in The Times: “Too much of this show [though] had a second-hand air to it, the fans valiantly ignoring the fact that many of…
The Yin and yang of comedy crowd control
Billy Connolly let rip at an official venue photographer last week in Killarney, for apparently impeding his line of vision. The incident was condemned by some of the Scot’s own fans and, by all accounts,…
Room for a laugh?
Talking about seating arrangements for a comedy gig is one of those industry conversations that, no matter how much you try, you can’t ever forget. The sheer mundanity of it is overwhelming – I know,…
What’s my line on the comedy one liner?
Dara O’Briain told the Radio Times that Mock the Week became more fun after Frankie Boyle left because the topics on the show were no longer closed down by Boyle’s one-liners, brilliant though they were. I can see…
Comedy is the great aphrodisiac – or is it?
On the first of many occasions on which I interviewed Arthur Smith we got talking about funny women. Not comedians specifically, but just generally. Arthur suggested that some men were threatened by them. I’d heard…
Loadsacomedy!
Margaret Hilda Thatcher. To some she was the first Spice Girl, to others the last dictator. Twitter exploded on Monday with the announcement of her death, and the news rolled on, despite a story that…
Comedy tourism – next stop, something else?
I never went InterRailing as a youth. I could regret this, but then I think about the constant late, boozy nights, the likelihood I would have taken up smoking earlier and the constant moving from…
That difficult marriage of live and sitcom
Watching Louis CK live last week was a huge pleasure. To make the 02 feel like an intimate venue is quite a feat, and the American comedian did just that. I don’t know how many…
Sketch comedy that’s the finished item
It could be said that I am not a big fan of live sketch comedy: I can think of a few performers who would snort with derision and consider that an understatement. Among them would…
Is the right stuff being left out of comedy?
I read last week that Radio 4′s News Quiz was finding it hard to balance up the number of left-wing comedians with right-wing ones. This will have surprised no one including Radio 4. Caroline Raphael,…
Winning a Chortle is no laughing matter
In the last five years numerous comedy awards have come onstream, but there are one or two that are considered particularly significant benchmarks for magnificence in mirth. The comedy awards in Edinburgh (once known as…
The comfortable future of comedy
My recent column about press nights was a tongue-in-cheek flight of fancy – just in case you hadn’t noticed. Or so I thought. The imagined luxuries in that piece became a partial reality recently, the…
Ken Dodd vs Madge – it’s a close call nowadays
As I mentioned in a previous column, I’m sucker for nostalgia and, as it turns out, comedy fares as well as music when we delve back into the past. I can’t remember at what point…
It’s time to take comedy press nights seriously
I had a brief toys-out-of the-pram moment last week before travelling to Oxford to see the press night for Harry Hill’s latest tour. I was told that the show finished in time for the 10.35pm…
The comedians’ comedians
Picture scene one: a comedian at an open mic night trying to impress a room populated by only six other comics. Nobody laughs. Them’s the rules. Picture scene two: one comedian on stage at a…
Is comedy returning to the schisms of 30 years ago?
I saw Alexei Sayle and The Blow Monkeys within the space of a week, last week, and to do so in the context of a seemingly never ending political and cultural 80s revival, was too…
US comedy offensive
The Yanks are coming. Of course, on the comedy scene, that’s nothing new. 2013 will provide London audiences another clutch of opportunities to appreciate their funny American cousins – that’s funny as in ha, ha,…
As Liverpool was to football, so McIntyre is to comedy
“Do you like Liverpool?” I was once asked by a fellow student during my ‘A’ Level days. He was enquiring of their successful football team of the 1980s rather than of the city. I replied…
Comedy camps divided by a shared smugness
A couple of comedy J-bombs went down the throat of the great British public over Xmas – namely Jack Whitehall and James Corden on Channel 4′s The Big Fat Quiz of the Year. The aftershocks…
A vintage year beckons for live comedy
In all honesty 2012 wasn’t a vintage year for live touring comedy. I composed a top five of shows for last year, and while the choices – Andrew Lawrence, Mike Birbiglia, Rob Delaney, Doctor Brown…
Jobs & Auditions
