Jenny Slate: ‘For every bit of garbage Trump spews, I’ll write something beautiful’

The standup comedian is used to writing for public performance, but her remarkable book Little Weirds was written as private consolationJenny Slate is sitting in the middle of a storm. She’s safe inside, somewhere on a Massachusetts peninsula, and it’s…

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Boulevard theatre, London’s new Soho venue, announces first shows

State-of-the-art West End theatre opens its doors with a season including plays by Cormac McCarthy and Lucy PrebbleA “novel in dramatic form” by Cormac McCarthy, a revival of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect and dramas directed by Kathy Burke and Yaël Farber …

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Ben Elton’s return to standup: ‘I’m as scared as I get’

Back on tour for the first time in 15 years, the trailblazing comedian has some scores to settle. How can he be a sellout, he asks, if he was never radical to begin with?They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes – but my inner 13-year-old would never for…

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All hail Tina Fey: the funniest comic of the 21st century

From skewering Sarah Palin to handing us Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, here are 10 of the SNL legend’s most hilarious moments The 50 best comediansA nice girl with an anarchic bent and a tongue as sharp as a boning knife, Tina Fey has dominated sketch comedy (…

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Episode #276: Josh Gondelman

Josh Gondelman is a writer and comedian who currently writes and produces comedy for Desus and Mero on Showtime. Before that, Gondelman spent five years at HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, earning multiple Emmys and other awards for his work o…

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Kate Tempest review – this isn’t a gig, it’s a reckoning

Leith theatre, EdinburghThe performance poet absorbs all of the uncertainty and anger of our times, and pours it into ferocious, apocalyptic music that both wounds and healsRarely can a room have felt so alive. With her Mercury-nominated mix of spoken …

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Virgil Films to release “Truly Tasteless Jokes” documentary in August 2019

Virgil Films has acquired a documentary about the best-selling Truly Tasteless Jokes books from the 1980s. The film, Tasteless, from comedians Jeff Cerulli and Matt Ritter, will come out next month. Cerulli previously directed a documentary about compe…

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Jo Brand says #MeToo is ‘something we need to keep pushing at’

Speaking at Hay festival, comedian recalls a charity event where a man forced his tongue into her mouthJo Brand has spoken of the need to maintain the momentum of the #MeToo movement despite the fact that some people are “fed up with it already”, recal…

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A lifetime of material: a comedian’s guide to the Indian election

The Stay Awake party, the polling station in an area populated by lions … on the eve of results in India, Anuvab Pal reveals how the biggest election in history – with 900 million voters – is comedy goldI sit down to read the Indian Express and come ac…

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New book details previously unrevealed stories from the night John Belushi died

A new book about West Hollywood’s notorious Sunset Strip hotel for superstars goes into deep details about the night comedy star John Belushi died from drugs. The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau …

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