Comedy Reviews
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. [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
Andy Zaltzman
Originally published at The Groggy Squirrel ANDY ZALTZMAN, 32, ADMINISTERS HIS AFTERNOON DOSE OF UTOPIA, STEPS BACK, AND WAITS TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS If your budget for this year’s festival is a little lower than usual and you want to stick to the ‘safe bets’ rather than squandering your money on something dubious, Andy Zaltzman [...]
Johnson and Boswell – Late But Live
Originally published at The Groggy Squirrel. Openly insulting Scotland to its face has become a recurring theme in the latest works of Stewart Lee. Thankfully, it is an imagined Scotland of haggis and shortbread and an arachnid Robert the Bruce that is the object of his comedy scorn and the result is very, very funny. [...]
Martin Soan
Originally published at The Skinny Long before Vic Reeves or Harry Hill brought their brands of surreal humour to the mainstream, Martin Soan was tickling our fringe fancies with his impossible costumes and absurd enactments. While Soan is assuredly an originator of alternative comedy, he is not a stand-up as anyone would ordinarily define the [...]
Laugh space: a guide to alternative venues
As a comedy festival begins to attract attention from the international community, it inevitably unfurls its tentacles into a variety of unexpected venues. Just look at Edinburgh: the ‘Fringe’ is the main focus of the festival where it used to just shout obscenities from the edges. Somehow Edinburgh has become a festival of obscene edges. [...]
Why not Sadowitz?
Originally published at TMCQ “Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.” – Oscar Wilde. It’s one helluva coincidence that Ivor Cutler died just one tiny week before the Glasgow comedy scene did. One can only hope that both will soon return from beyond the [...]
