Comedy
Veronica Lee
Were ordinary folk to plunder their lives for comedy, most of us would be sadly lacking in any topics worthy of analysis, let alone laughs. But Russell Brand, who every few years appears to reinvent himself – from drug addict to stand-up comic, from sex addict to husband, from anarchist to social campaigner, to name a few reboots – can in no way be described as ordinary.His latest show, Re: Birth, charts his latest progression, this time into parenthood, but thankfully it’s minus any of the self-congratulatory “I changed a nappy, aren’t I super?” material so beloved of lesser comics. Instead Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Jeremy Hardy is very happy to mock his audience and they love it. One of the biggest laughs of the night is when a punchline refers to us as a collection of “middle class white people”. Being Brighton, he goes further, explaining how tolerant the city is but that everyone’s frustrated as they have no-one to tolerate. Any immigrants, he explains, take one look and head down to Devon “where they have cream teas”. His “demographic”, as he refers to them, are certainly an older crowd, mostly retirement age, probably Radio 4 listeners who’ve heard him on endless quiz shows, but the comedian is Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ricky Gervais enters the stage after recordings of some the great (and not so great) men of history – including Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and Adolf Hitler. And then there's a portentous introduction – are we then going to hear some deep philosophical insights tonight? Well not so much, more chatty and relaxed riffing, with some of his most personal material yet.Gervais tells us he doesn't know why he titled his first stand-up show in seven years Humanity, as he prefers dogs and cats, and the bane of his life are people just waiting to be offended by his humour. He explains this Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What a day to open your political stand-up show, entitled State of the Nation, a few hours after Theresa May had announced a snap election. If Ayesha Hazarika needed any extra material, yesterday morning's events would certainly have supplied it. And sure enough, she gamely starts the show by saying drily, “You can only imagine how much fun I've had today,” before ripping up the show's script.She does some strong topical material at the top of the hour before she settles into the show proper, when she neatly puts the election into context for Labour voters. Jeremy Corbyn will not be amused at Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In the closing credits of Acorn Antiques, wobbling diagonally across the screen, it says the part of Berta was taken by “Victoria Woods”. Has there ever been a lovelier, truer typo? There was only one Victoria Wood, and yet she seemed somehow to be plural. She wrote and performed sketches and sitcom, songs and stand-up, musicals and drama. She directed, she produced. And she never seemed to stop until, alas, last year.Our Friend Victoria (BBC One) is a piquant reminder that television comedy has never unearthed anyone remotely like her. Her genius is irreplaceable. That genius, as celebs and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Russell Howard is in typically chipper form, and so he should be. Dismissed by some at the start of his career as just one of the slew of beige twenty-something blokes emerging in stand-up in the Noughties, he has built a solid television career and a huge stand-up following. Now, after a hugely successful UK tour, which included a record-breaking 10 consecutive nights at the Royal Albert Hall – overtaking the six shared by comics Victoria Wood and Billy Connolly, and the eight shared by singers Frank Sinatra and Barry Manilow – he's embarking on a lengthy worldwide tour.He's living up to its Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Peter Kay’s love – and extensive knowledge – of pop music is well known. He has often spoofed misheard song lyrics in his shows, and has released various charity singles over the years. Now, with this series of shows to raise funds for Stand Up to Cancer and Cancer Research, he displays his DJing skills with shows of three hours of non-stop dance music – a wonderful kind of school disco (for those who remember such things).That is, if the school discos you attended back in the day took place in an arena that holds several thousand and had a video and light show that frequently Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Miles Jupp starts by telling us he’s trying to fathom the kind of comic he should be, after he overheard a comment by an audience member at a show on his previous tour: he was nice, the man proffered, but what he said had taken him by surprise. So should Jupp now be full and malice and predictable?The answer, without spoiling it for you, is no. Instead Jupp is his usual gentle and fogeyish self that listeners to Radio 4's News Quiz, which he hosts, television panel shows on which he regularly appears, fans of Rev and The Thick of It, and those who have seen his previous stand-up shows, know Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The UK Pun Championships have quickly become a fixture of the Leicester Comedy Festival, and this year the organisers installed a boxing ring at De Montfort Hall to underline the event's competitive element.The eight contestants – a mixture of established acts on local club circuits and relative newcomers – were of varying ability and there was the odd cove among some obvious talent. While it was great fun, it was rather laidback and lacked much competitive edge until the final, and connoisseurs of slam poetry might have found proceedings rather tame despite the pugilistic setting.Jason Byrne Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Suzi Ruffell tells it straight: she's working-class and proud, but some people might think she's "common", which is the show's title. She has devised a quick quiz for us to check if we're working-class ourselves, and among the amusing tell-tale signs is: did your mum use to freeze milk? A new one on me, but the show is off to a good start.Ruffell comes from a large family in Portsmouth and, for some reason the comic can't fathom, they ignored birthdays and made little of Christmas, but made a big deal of Bonfire Night – and when talking about her relatives she paints a vivid picture of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Comedy fans will be familiar with "New York neurotic" – performed mostly by Jewish writers and comics, with Woody Allen being the exemplar. Chris Gethard, however, is from New Jersey, was raised as a Catholic and is not neurotic at all. Rather, this guy has been suffering from actual, pain-in-the-head, clinically diagnosed and heavily medicated depression for most of his life, and has now written a show about it.Career Suicide (which Gethard has performed in New York and at the Edinburgh Fringe last year) is certainly a frank account. He takes us through the low points - the suicidal thoughts Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Nick Mohammed doesn't do things by halves as his chatty airhead alter ego Mr Swallow. Forget the scholarly approach of finely researched biographies of Harry Houdini (“boring!”); his “first-ever entirely true auto-biopic” of the magician and escapologist comes complete with conjuring tricks, song-and-dance numbers and a whole lot of laughs.Ably assisted by David Elms as Mr Goldsworth and Kieran Hodgson as Jonathan (in oriental tunics for no discernible reason), plus an onstage pianist, Mr Swallow chatters on, while Mr Goldsworth, the producer of this show within a show, has a devil of a job Read more ...