mon 15/09/2025

Bruce Dessau

Bruce Dessau's picture
Bio
Bruce specialises in music, TV and comedy. He writes for The London Evening Standard and is the author of biographies of numerous major figures, including George Michael and Rowan Atkinson. His latest book is Beyond A Joke: Inside The Dark World of Stand-Up Comedy (Random House). He is also the editor of comedy website beyondthejoke.co.uk

Articles By Bruce Dessau

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Lammermuir Festival 2025, Part 2 review - from the soaringly...

My colleague Boyd Tonkin visited the Lammermuir Festival for the first time this year. His eyes and ears have been opened to its treasures, but...

Blu-ray: The Sons of Great Bear

Westerns had long been popular with German cinema audiences, some of the most successful being early 1960s West German adaptations of novels by...

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review - comedy rock band f...

That difficult second documentary – or if you will, “rockumentary” – seems to have been especially challenging for...

Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - a great company reduced...

So it’s come to this: WNO’s autumn season reduced to two operas, a Tosca borrowed from Opera North and a revival of their own Candide...

Not Your Superwoman, Bush Theatre review - powerful tribute...

The Bush is likely to continue its fine recent run of hit plays, with this funny, poignant, culturally authentic and beautifully acted two-hander...

Music Reissues Weekly: Robyn - Robyn 20th-Anniversary Editio...

Sometimes, record labels don’t like what those on their roster have recorded. Such was the case with BMG Sweden and Robin Carlsson who, as Robyn,...

Album: Twenty One Pilots - Breach

For the past decade, the Ohio alternative superstars Twenty One Pilots have cultivated a deep lore starting with 2015’s Blurryface, and...

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly eleg...

It can be a hostage to fortune to title anything “grand”, and so it proves with the last gasp of Julian Fellowes’s everyday story of...

BBC Proms: Ehnes, Sinfonia of London, Wilson review - aspect...

Critics (including this one) casually refer to John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London as an all-star outfit, an army made up of generals. This week I...