In a poem that has been widely shared by fans after his death, the comic thinks of his ashes being scattered in a bar – and getting a mention in the Guardian
‘Charming, soulful, a proper comic’: Sean Hughes tributes
I want to be cremated
Continue ReadingI remember the day my mom got the call that I landed the part of Malcom in Malcom in the Middle. She was grinning from ear to ear when she told me and I thought, “Boy, I must be really special huh?” Heh. Special. Special is just a word that your mom calls you before bed, your […]
Continue ReadingJeffery Self is honest. Painfully, painfully honest. He livetweeted his breakup-inspired nervous breakdown in 2013. Then when his ex became the star of the Logo series Fire Island, he recapped the show for Vulture. “How often in your life do you get to watch a garbage reality TV show starring someone with whom you had […]
Continue ReadingThe comedian-composer on his children’s book, Australia’s same-sex marriage vote and why he’s glad to be leaving Hollywood
Australian composer and comedian Tim Minchin, 42, was born in Northampton but raised in his parents’ native Perth. After an award-winning comedy career, he wrote the music and lyrics for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s global hit musical Matilda, followed by the stage musical adaptation of Groundhog Day. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Sarah, a social worker, and their two children.
Tell us about your new children’s book, When I Grow Up, which is based on the lyrics of the song from Matilda.
It’s awesome – I didn’t even have to do anything [laughs]. That’s the incredible thing about Matilda, it keeps manifesting itself in different ways. It’s profoundly gratifying to have something else beautiful put into the world that was sparked by something you wrote eight years ago.
In a global world, nationalism is a fantasy and it’s poison. It used to be appropriate but it’s not any more
Continue ReadingBudd Friedman, with help from Tripp Whitesell and interviews from dozens of the famous comedians, musicians and actors who worked for Budd over the past 50 years, has just published an oral history of his club, The Improvisation, which became simply The Improv and then much more than that. Among the major highlights of The […]
Continue ReadingStephen Rosenfield, founder of the American Comedy Institute, reveals how to make an audience laugh while using on-stage nerves to your advantage
As the founding director of The American Comedy Institute, a dedicated student of standup, and someone whose tutelage has bolstered the careers of Lena Dunham and Jim Gaffigan, Stephen Rosenfield is an authority on the complicated craft of standup comedy. And in his new book, Mastering Stand-Up: The Complete Guide to Becoming a Successful Comedian, he makes an otherwise terrifying art form – Americans reportedly fear public speaking more than they do death – remarkably accessible to both the layman and the comedy buff. Rosenfield spoke to the Guardian about the finer points of standup, from structure to subject matter, that are included in his book.
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Continue ReadingNot many people can claim that they landed their first post-college job as a 24-year-old speechwriter and joke writer for the President of the United States, which is just part of what makes David Litt’s new book Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years, out today, so fascinating. Now head writer at Funny or Die’s new DC […]
Continue ReadingDonna is a smart, beautiful, popular girl. Really, really big boobs, maybe? But they let her be head cheerleader anyway, because she can do all of the complicated routines and flips and so on, even though her boobs are like, huge.Most of the other girls are jealous of her, and of her awesome pony. They’re […]
Continue ReadingAusten’s women have the same rights as children; her ‘romantic’ match-making smacks of desperation. So how did the standup see the funny side of Pride and Prejudice for her new stage adaptation?
“Why does no one talk about how funny Jane Austen is?” I ask my friend Katie. We’d done English literature for three years at Sussex University – how was I only discovering these perceptive comedies a decade later?
“It’s all anyone ever says!” Katie is annoyed with me. “I tried to tell you how great she was but you insisted you’d never read any 19th-century novels.” She’s right. I got through my entire degree avoiding anything from the 19th century. I didn’t care if the steam train ended up in the workhouse, or the bonnet ran out of gruel. Regency literature was too coal-y for me, too long-winded and describey. I preferred modern books where you had to read other books explaining what the first book meant to know what happened.
How could there be any romance, any love, when females were wedding-night virgins, dependants with little respect?
Related: ‘I read my boyfriend Pride and Prejudice as a bedtime story’: meet the Jane Austen superfans
Continue ReadingFrom Botticelli to glossy magazines, women have been idealised and misrepresented for centuries. Performance poet Lydia Towsey reveals how her own near-fatal eating disorder set her on a path to explore new ways of looking at female bodies
Botticelli’s painting of the Birth of Venus was the first female nude painted and exhibited life size, and in many ways the medieval blueprint for every covergirl to come. It was about the birth of beauty, sexuality and glamour. But what would happen if, instead of washing up on an ancient Cypriot beach on her magnificent scallop shell, the Roman goddess were to arrive naked and vulnerable on a UK beach in the 21st century? This question is the starting point for my show, The Venus Papers.
It’s about lots of things – a theatrical performance combining poetry, humour, art, movement and music, in which I introduce Venus to my world. She encounters customs officers, tabloid newspapers, the male gaze, bars, Primark, life modelling, the perils of breastfeeding in public and something I’ve previously struggled to talk about in my work – the eating disorder I had for approximately seven years.
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