Frankie McNair: Relax Your Knees review – silly, rediscovered

Soho theatre, London The sparkling Aussie brings their award-winning Melbourne comedy festival show to the UKWhen Frankie McNair started taking comedy seriously, they tell us, it got boring – so boring they almost quit. Only when the Canberra native re…

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Get these Abbott & Costello Bobbleheads to commemorate 85 years of their “Who’s On First?” sketch

Today, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum (it’s a thing, we swear) unveiled the official Abbott & Costello… MORE
Get these Abbott & Costello Bobbleheads to commemorate 85 years of their “Who’s On Firs…

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Cally Beaton: ‘Connecting with people is the only skill I have. Luckily it’s a superpower’

The former TV executive on life lessons from Joan Rivers, paper-plane heckles and a ‘perfect day’ doing Live at the ApolloBefore becoming a full-time comedian, you were a high-profile TV exec and producer. Are there any transferable skills from this wo…

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Rhod Gilbert: ‘I think about my cancer 24/7. But there’s humour in there, definitely’

The Welsh standup used to direct his fury at service stations, baked potatoes and the tog-rating of duvets. Now he’s tackling anxiety, infertility – and his own battle with the cancer that stopped his tourA lot has changed since Rhod Gilbert began tour…

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Comedian Catherine Cohen: ‘Look, I find myself quite annoying, too’

The US comedy sensation is making up for lost time after Covid with a new show – still self-obsessed, but ‘a bit darker’ – and an opportunity for us to observe a quintessentially millennial comic grow up in publicAs long as there has been standup, comi…

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The best theatre, dance and comedy tickets to book for 2023

Danny Boyle’s Matrix-inspired spectacular opens in Manchester, Succession star Brian Cox returns to the stage and standups Maisie Adam, Guz Khan and Catherine Cohen are on tourMore from the 2023 culture preview Continue reading…

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The Guardian view on pantomime: the goose that keeps on laying | Editorial

There’s nothing like a panto to banish the blues, especially if it stars Sir Ian McKellen as Mother Goose – the grande dame of seasonal fun and frolics The actor Sir Ian McKellen and the comedian John Bishop are stepping out on to the West End stage ov…

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The secret life of cracker jokes: how bad gags became a Christmas classic

Cracker industry bosses and comics shed light on the art of the cracker joke, from winning formulas to ‘innovation teams’ – and why they’re more important than ever in the digital ageWhat do you get if you cross a potentially awkward, booze-soaked fami…

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One Woman Show review – joke-packed Fleabag parody is perfectly pitched

Ambassadors theatre, LondonLiz Kingsman’s slick, self-conscious ‘troubled woman’ show nests its complex jokes within jokes to tremendous effect‘We need women’s story,” says Liz Kingsman in One Woman Show, her slick parody of Fleabag and the countless c…

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The best comedy shows of 2022

From dazzling comic debuts at the Edinburgh fringe to occult sketches, soul-searching standup and deeply strange revelations, it was a top year for laughing matters• More on the best culture of 2022A set delivering all the livid topical comedy we expec…

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