Comedy Reviews
Standup Comedy in Glasgow
Originally published at Visit Glasgow
If, like me, you’re a scowling misanthrope who hates all music, art and sport, you might want to try some standup comedy. The main joy of comedy is in the jazz-like poise of a performer’s delivery but, if you’re lucky, they might talk about cocks as well. Brilliant.
Glasgow is a good [...]
Simon Munnery
Originally published at The Skinny
Simon Munnery is not one of us. “I iz not spaeking lick yo; cos I iz nit lick yo,” he says on one of his bizarre CDs. If he’s not lambasting audiences by making them wear dunces caps or performing an entire show with a bucket on his head, he’s [...]
Richard Herring, The Headmaster’s Son
Originally published at
By his own confession, Richard Herring is a dick. A lazy, needy, Guitar Hero-playing dick. But why? In this show, he rifles through his childhood memories in order to find out what could have possibly made him turn out like this. The working hypothesis: that his dad was his school headmaster.
Surely [...]
Arnold Brown Presents Happiness: The Search Continues
Originally published at The Groggy Squirrel
“I was walking along a street in Glasgow…” starts Arnold Brown.
And then he pauses. Somewhere inside your head, a clock ticks heavily. Flowers bloom, wither and die. Civilisations rise and fall. Entire galaxies fade from the night sky as their component stars expire one by one.
It’s a very long [...]
Wil Hodgson – Straight Outta Chippenham
Originally published at The Skinny
There is a fine line between comedy and therapy; you fart your vulnerabilities, fetishes and phobias into the room and hope for the best. Wil’s problem seems to be that he can never fit in: his coveted membership of skinhead society is marred by his house full of Care Bear [...]
John Shuttleworth: With My Condiments
Originally published at The Skinny
I’m the chef from Sheffield. Gonna teach you how to eat. John Shuttleworth presenting a show about food admittedly sounded like a step too far, even to a fan. But within minutes, all cynicism was vanquished. With My Condiments turned out to be the pure brilliance we should have expected [...]
Scottish Comedian of the Year 2007 final
Originally published at The Skinny
Scotland has brought us some truly immortal comedy institutions: the Edinburgh Fringe, Ivor Cutler, Billy Connelly and those see-you-jimmy hats. A Scottish comedy awards ceremony would certainly be more enjoyable to attend than, say, a Cornish one. Rory McGrath can only spread his talent so far.
And enjoyable it was. Personal [...]
John Hegley : Letters to an earwig
Originally published at The Groggy Squirrel.
A slight melancholy hangs over the Royal Mile this morning: the last day of the Edinburgh festival. There are lots of hangovers from those whose last performance is done and dusted but a few eager drama students still hand you their flyers in a final act of financial desperation. Posters [...]
The Book Club – All New Fighting Years
Originally published at The Groggy Squirrel
British comedy is often at the centre of a merciless tug o’war between the jocks and the nerds. It rope is tugged in each direction: owned by the ‘blue’ comedians in the early 1970s only to be taken by the satirists; divided oddly by alternative comedy in the 80s; [...]
Luke Wright, Poet & Man
The poet, Tim Turnbull, once opined that the difference between stand-up comedians and performance poets was that the poets try to make money by selling their books during the intervals while the comics “just want to be loved… like dogs”.
A good point well made, but there are other differences too. It’s a matter of punctuation: [...]
