After the smart-aleck sitcom Community and the outrageous Hangover movies, the rude and raging comedian is returning to standupRage, mania and disinhibition are the common factors in Ken Jeong’s comedy. That’s whether he’s springing naked from the boot…
Continue ReadingThe 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…
Continue ReadingEveryman, CheltenhamShakespeare, wizards and panto dames all play their part in an evening of autobiography that is a love letter to theatreScratch a great actor and you often find a born comic underneath and, watching Ian McKellen’s itinerant solo sho…
Continue ReadingThe death of the SNL star 30 years ago robbed the industry of one its finest voices – but not before she had blazed a trail for women such as Tina Fey to followThere is no shortage of excellent critical writing about the US comedy scene in the 80s, and…
Continue ReadingThis documentary about Sievey’s wacky comic creation makes a good case for bestowing posthumous national treasure statusIt’s appropriate that this absorbing, tender documentary has been driven by a surge of fan loyalty and love. A grassroots Kickstarte…
Continue ReadingMisogyny is behind the criticism of the Saturday Night Live comedian’s relationship with Kate BeckinsaleQuiz time! Put your calculators away, please, I have a maths problem designed to test every inch of your natural intelligence. Ready? Here we go: Pe…
Continue ReadingHaving been repeatedly told that he looks like David Tomlinson, Miles Jupp now finds himself playing the mildly aristocratic character actorThere is something unnerving about feeling that someone else has lived through your career before you’ve even ha…
Continue ReadingCelebrated for her performances in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly! Channing also earned an Oscar nomination for Thoroughly Modern MillieCarol Channing, the American actor who originated the roles of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes an…
Continue ReadingTrailblazing comic, Oscar-nominated writer and acting sensation Elaine May is back on Broadway. Nathan Lane, Cybill Shepherd and others reveal what makes her tickThe very idea ought to be mind-boggling. Elaine May, now 86, is currently starring as a wo…
Continue ReadingWhen the comedian Mawaan Rizwan put his mother Shahnaz into his videos, they were an instant hit. And then Bollywood came calling…
In 2012, the comedian Mawaan Rizwan was making videos for YouTube and gaining modest success. One day, he found himself in need of a stooge for his latest sketch, so he roped in his mum, Shahnaz.
The resulting video, My Mum Hates Me, in which the two of them banter back and forth about all the ways in which they annoy each other, took off in a way he’d never experienced. “That got 115,078 views,” he says. “So we did loads more sketches. In one of them, she dressed up as a goth, in another she was a midwife.”
She had always been very strict and focused on our schoolwork, but when she acted in my videos, I saw her in a new light
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