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Flight of the Conchords review – business time again, with irresistible new songs

March 17, 2018TheGuardian

Milton Keynes theatre
Brett McKenzie and Jemaine Clement return with a magisterial performance

“Some of you are probably thinking, ‘Gosh, they look a lot older,’” says Bret McKenzie, during one of Flight of the Conchords’ deliciously pregnant inter-song pauses. It is a remark met with a wall of knowing laughter: the screens either side of the stage succeed in underlining the star status of the duo, but also in highlighting the flecks of grey peppering their hair. Since they were last in the UK, the New Zealanders may indeed have become “dustier”, they may even have become rustier, but the pair are keen to reassure their Milton Keynes audience that they still know how to rock.

his confidence isn’t misplaced. The Conchords have lost neither their beguiling, monotonous demeanour nor their ability to perform laugh-out-loud, foot-tapping bangers while simultaneously deconstructing them. How easy it would have been to perform nothing but the hits – yet more than half of the 15 songs they play are comparatively new.

Jack Barry: ‘I recently dreamed that a telepathic baby summoned me to its house’

March 16, 2018TheGuardian

The standup and Chinese graduate on the things that make him laugh the most

I want to be nice and say one of my friends but that feels like a waste when this article is supposed to be about promoting me. So I’m going to say it’s me.

Jack Barry: ‘I recently dreamed that a telepathic baby summoned me to its house’

March 16, 2018TheGuardian

The standup and Chinese graduate on the things that make him laugh the most

I want to be nice and say one of my friends but that feels like a waste when this article is supposed to be about promoting me. So I’m going to say it’s me.

‘Non-stop gagster and comedy scientist’: Paul O’Grady, Alan Davies and Frank Cottrell Boyce on Ken Dodd

March 13, 2018TheGuardian

Paul O’Grady’s family cheered him outside court. Alan Davies couldn’t get a word in over lunch. And he got Frank Cottrell Boyce by the chuckle muscle. Stars remember the brilliantly bizarre comedian

If Doddy was doing a show in Liverpool, it was always packed out. He had a fabulous imagination that gripped children and adults. As a kid I got the Diddymen annual and would see him at the theatre and just be completely entranced. At Christmas we’d watch him on TV at my auntie’s. She’d scream with laughter. My auntie and my mum used to go and stand outside the courts to show support during the trial over his taxes. When he came out, they’d shout: “We’re behind you, Ken! Good luck, lad!” He was very much loved in Liverpool.

Ken Dodd, the man from Mirthy-side: a career in clips and 10 of his best jokes

March 12, 2018TheGuardian

From the Diddymen to dissecting northern humour, the Liverpudlian’s sense of absurdity never deserted him

My agent died at 90. I always think he was 100 and kept 10% for himself.

I do all the exercises every morning in front of the television – up, down, up, down, up, down. Then the other eyelid.

How many men does it take to change a toilet roll? Nobody knows. It’s never been tried.

What a beautiful day for dashing down to Trafalgar Square and chucking a bucket of whitewash over the pigeons and saying ‘There you are, how do you like it?’

I have kleptomania. But when it gets bad, I take something for it.

What a beautiful day for Dame Nellie Melba to drop a choc-ice down her tights and say ‘How’s that for a knickerbocker glory?’

You’ve got to be a comedian to live there. I call it Mirthy-side.

What a lovely day for knocking on a TV policeman’s door and saying: ‘Hello Mrs Savalas. Have you got a licence for your Telly?’

Did any of us, in our wildest dreams, think we’d live long enough to see the end of the DFS sale?

My dad knew I was going to be a comedian. When I was a baby, he said, ‘Is this a joke?’

Ken Dodd discussing northern humour on Late Night Line-Up in 1965 pic.twitter.com/qMYkbjGpbz

Tickling sticks laid in tribute at Ken Dodd’s Liverpool home

March 12, 2018TheGuardian

Fans remember comedy legend who ‘broke the mould’ at house where he was born and died

A pile of flowers and feather dusters – or “tickling sticks” – has begun to grow outside the 18th-century house in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, where the comedian Ken Dodd was born and died.

Allan Grice, a 71-year-old former senior fire officer, made the three-hour journey from Wakefield in West Yorkshire to Dodd’s home to hand-deliver a card of condolence, after hearing of the comedian’s death on the radio early on Monday.

Tickling sticks laid in tribute at Ken Dodd’s Liverpool home

March 12, 2018TheGuardian

Fans remember comedy legend who ‘broke the mould’ at house where he was born and died

A pile of flowers and feather dusters – or “tickling sticks” – has begun to grow outside the 18th-century house in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, where the comedian Ken Dodd was born and died.

Allan Grice, a 71-year-old former senior fire officer, made the three-hour journey from Wakefield in West Yorkshire to Dodd’s home to hand-deliver a card of condolence, after hearing of the comedian’s death on the radio early on Monday.

Ken Dodd: last of the music-hall maestros

March 12, 2018TheGuardian

The veteran’s linguistic prowess, outlandish appearance and musical smarts could tickle any audience into a state of collective ecstasy

The death of Ken Dodd not only leaves the nation a sadder place, it also feels like the end of an era. Doddy, as everyone in the business called him, was the last link with a music-hall tradition that stretched back through time to include legends such as Max Miller, George Robey and Dan Leno. He adapted his act to the demands of TV and radio, but he was essentially a man of the theatre who could induce in a thousand or more spectators a sense of collective ecstasy.

I claimed, when I interviewed Ken on his 90th birthday, that he and Laurence Olivier were the two performers in my theatre-going experience to be kissed with genius. But of what did that genius consist? For a start, a love of language that enabled him to usher us into a world of grotesque fantasy: a place of hairy Danes with bacon sandwiches strapped to their legs, of satyr-like seniors indulging in snuff orgies, of men with a third eye on the end of their finger. Even childhood was not immune. “I was born one day when me mother was out,” Ken used to quip. “We were so poor the lady next door had me.” That takes us back to Dan Leno who recollected a bizarre infancy in which he varnished the furniture, the cat and the interior of his dad’s boots with strawberry jam.

Sir Ken Dodd obituary

March 12, 2018TheGuardian

Comedian with an endless desire to make people laugh known for his tickling sticks, Diddymen and marathon stage performances

The last great “front-cloth” comic of our times, and the last standing true vaudevillian, Ken Dodd, who has died aged 90, was even more than that – a force of nature, a whirlwind, an ambulant torrent of surreal invention, physical and verbal, whose Liverpudlian cheek masked the melancholy of an authentic clown. “This isn’t television, missus,” he’d say to the front stalls, “you can’t turn me off.” And then he would embark on an odyssey of gag-spinning that, over five hours, would beat an audience into submission, often literally, banging a huge drum and declaring that if we did not like the jokes he would follow us home and shout them through the letter-box.

He entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1974 with a marathon mirth-quake at the Royal Court Liverpool lasting three hours, 30 minutes and six seconds. But his solo shows, in which he would perform three 90-minute-plus sets between magic acts, or a female trumpeter (the formidable Joan Hinde), or a pianist playing country music (his partner Anne Jones), frequently lasted much longer. One good thing, he would say, was that you always went home in the daylight. “And the sooner you laugh at the jokes,” he would say, “the sooner you can go home,” as if we were in school. He admitted that his was an educational show – when you did get home you would think: “That taught me a lesson!”

Sir Ken Dodd, legend of comedy, dies aged 90

March 12, 2018TheGuardian

Stars pay tribute to Liverpudlian comic described as ‘one of the last music hall greats’

Tributes have been paid to the entertainer Sir Ken Dodd, who has died at the age of 90 just two days after marrying his long-term partner.

Dodd died on Sunday in the house in which he was born in the Liverpool suburb of Knotty Ash, his publicist said. His wife, Anne Jones, was at his bedside.

What a wonderful day for sticking a cucumber through your neighbour’s letter box and shouting ‘the aliens have landed!’ Tatty bye Doddy. And thanks . #doddy

Comedy flowed through him like water. RIP Sir Ken Dodd. pic.twitter.com/v0FjVJVe1n

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