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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‘Anyone else would have kicked him out’: celebrity flatmates reveal all

Stealing clothes, sharing a bed, cereal for dinner… from Shaun Ryder and Bez to the boys from Busted, former housemates remember their first houseshareShaun Ryder and his Happy Mondays bandmate Bez first lived together in Salford, Greater Manchester,…

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Ben Bailey Smith on groovy dancing, UK rap stars and quiz show hell

The rapper, standup and actor – AKA Doc Brown – answered your questions on writing children’s books, the best of British hip-hop, Brexit confusion and rapping with Ricky Gervais 2.09pm GMT Time’s up!That’s my time y’all. Thanks for all your questions, …

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A new start: Suzi Ruffell on growing up dyslexic and discovering the joy of writing

School was a daily struggle for the standup. Now that she can write on her own terms, doing so serves as a release from lifeAt school, I feared English. My teacher, Mr Griffiths, was great, but my essays and coursework never lived up to much. I am not …

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Episode #237: Sarah Cooper

Sarah Cooper could have enjoyed a lucrative career in tech, only she didn’t enjoy Google as much as she did making jokes about it. She began performing stand-up in 2010, and in 2013, saw a blog post she wrote about how to look smart in meetings go vira…

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