The Edinburgh award-winning Canadian comic on the things that make him laugh the most, from suede clogs to Phil Kay
Phil Kay once turned a 700-strong crowd in the Queens Hall, Edinburgh into an improvised wedding. Funniest show I’ve ever seen. We were crying with laughter and in awe of the sheer audacity of this mad mess of ideas. Brilliant.
Continue ReadingComedian’s use of the P-word was designed to show how attitudes have changed – but standups pushing boundaries don’t have the right to be offensive
Daniel Kitson called me a Paki last week. Well, not literally: he stood up at his sold-out show at the Roundhouse in north London, where he’s in the middle of a three-week residency, and spray-gunned the word six, seven or more times in the space of what might have been 30 seconds, a minute at most, at a room of hundreds of people in which I was very possibly one of only two brown people, the other sitting next to me.
Now, as comedians are wont to obsessively tell you, context is everything. So let’s start again.
Related: Daniel Kitson: the Salinger of standup
Continue ReadingCanvassing for support, getting heckled, hanging out in bars – it’s all great practice for politicians. And Alex Salmond is leading the way
• Joanna Griffin and Lola Stephenson are a comedy double act
Parliament rises for recess tomorrow and the MPs will swap the daily commute to Westminster for breakfast in bed – whether to opt for soft or hard boiled eggs, their only pressing concern. They can stop worrying about leaky cabinet meetings and finally get round to fixing that leaky tap in their downstairs bathroom, or shoot straight off to their holiday pad in Tuscany. But this August, why not Airbnb their second home, pack their kids off to a Eurocamp (while they still can), and hop on a train to the Edinburgh festival fringe to put on a show?
There’s a risk that a one-star review could crush their fragile confidence before all those autumn coups but a sellout run could boost their popularity and have the masses chanting their name at A Popular Music Festival™.
Continue ReadingCanvassing for support, getting heckled, hanging out in bars – it’s all great practice for politicians. And Alex Salmond is leading the way
• Joanna Griffin and Lola Stephenson are a comedy double act
Parliament rises for recess tomorrow and the MPs will swap the daily commute to Westminster for breakfast in bed – whether to opt for soft or hard boiled eggs, their only pressing concern. They can stop worrying about leaky cabinet meetings and finally get round to fixing that leaky tap in their downstairs bathroom, or shoot straight off to their holiday pad in Tuscany. But this August, why not Airbnb their second home, pack their kids off to a Eurocamp (while they still can), and hop on a train to the Edinburgh festival fringe to put on a show?
There’s a risk that a one-star review could crush their fragile confidence before all those autumn coups but a sellout run could boost their popularity and have the masses chanting their name at A Popular Music Festival™.
Continue ReadingRunning a festival venue is about more than booking acts and selling tickets. From converting lecture rooms to spending £25,000 on Astroturf, we reveal the costs of putting on a show
Ten years ago, at the Edinburgh festival, Anthony Alderson became the not very proud owner of 44 Vauxhall Astras. Alderson, the Pleasance’s director, had bought 22 of the cars from a scrapyard for a show called Auto Auto, staged in the Grand, the largest of the Pleasance venues. But it turned out they were the wrong kind of Vauxhall Astra. The show turned cars into comedy percussion instruments and these all had sun-roofs. So Alderson had to buy another 22. “I think the scrap dealer thought he’d hit the goldmine,” he recalls ruefully.
Related: Theatre producers’ unbreakable rules for the Edinburgh fringe
One year, a large dance company made back the costs of their entire Edinburgh run with a single gig in South America
It’s tough to run a venue, and it’s getting tougher. People do it because they are addicted to Edinburgh in August
Related: Edinburgh festival 2017: what to see and where to go
Continue ReadingLou Conran terminated her pregnancy after five months when she discovered her baby would not survive outside the womb. Now, she is telling her story at the Edinburgh fringe
“Nobody has cried through the previews,” says Lou Conran, “so it can’t be that bad.” The standup, who has supported Sarah Millican and is an Edinburgh festival veteran, is pleased with the warm-ups for her new fringe comedy show, especially as her subject matter lends itself more easily to tears than laughs.
Just over a year ago, when she was five months pregnant, Conran discovered that her baby had a condition she could not survive. After an induced labour, her daughter was stillborn. “An empowering yet painfully funny show about life and ultimately the taboo of death,” states the flyer. Reactions to the concept, she knows, will be mixed. “My mum just said, ‘Oh my god. What are you doing? How on earth are you going to make that funny?’”
Related: Laugh a minute: Edinburgh festival’s 2017 comedy lineup
Related: The must-see standup of summer 2017: Daniel Kitson, Sara Pascoe, Rob Delaney and more
Continue ReadingA stash of film shot in the 1990s chronicles the rise of comedy’s big names including Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and Jo Brand
As the Edinburgh festival prepares to celebrate its 70th anniversary, a trove of portraits has emerged, cataloguing the history of some of the most celebrated comedians from its fringe.
The photographs feature Michael McIntyre, Eddie Izzard, Jo Brand and others, from when they were struggling for laughs in the back rooms of Edinburgh pubs. They came to light when the photographer Rich Hardcastle was putting together a book to mark his 25 years in the business.
Related: 25 years of shooting comedians
On stage their whole performance is an amplification of their personality. When they’re off stage they’re sort of normal
Continue ReadingOne act offers Badults-style sketches, the other does mindbending meta-gags. Both bring new shows to a station that specialises in self-satisfied comedy
The Pin and Daphne were part of a wave of creative, self-reflexive new sketch comedy that peaked at the Edinburgh festival two or three years ago. Now, both acts have shows on BBC Radio 4. I was interested to hear how their respective shticks transferred to the airwaves, and whether they could resist the tone of self-satisfaction that often afflicts comedy on the nation’s most urbane station.
The Pin’s show is entering its third series, and claims fans ranging from Ben Stiller to David Walliams. Daphne Sounds Expensive – starring the trio George Fouracres, Phil Wang and Jason Forbes – is returning for its second run. I hadn’t listened to either outfit on the radio before, although I know both from the Edinburgh fringe. In neither case can Radio 4 be said to be striking out into bold new territory – both companies are graduates of UK comedy’s most privileged finishing school, the Cambridge Footlights.
Related: Laugh a minute: Edinburgh festival’s 2017 comedy lineup
Related: The must-see standup of summer 2017: Daniel Kitson, Sara Pascoe, Rob Delaney and more
Continue ReadingThe standup and podcaster on the things that make her laugh the most, from Sunil Patel to Curb Your Enthusiasm
Katherine Ryan is the queen. I opened for her on tour and she would just kill every night. I was quite young and nervous so she’d introduce me by saying I was with her through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Continue ReadingRoundhouse, London
Kitson’s observations on everything from rough sleeping to sheep farming are beautifully crafted in a set that – with some polish – should be extraordinary
After a string of solo theatre shows, a new Daniel Kitson standup set is a major event for comedy fans. But is that what Kitson has delivered? Something Other Than Everything is a tightly scripted, technically ambitious piece that blurs the line between standup and theatrical monologue. Whether that’s to be welcomed is hard to judge from opening night, when Kitson repeatedly forgets his lines and confuses his technical cues. A planned 100-minute show sprawls to over two hours. The man’s brilliance is freely on display – but this performance tests the patience.
It can feel as if Kitson has crammed in every standup-worthy observation he’s made in the years since his last comedy show. He’s got too much to say, but recurring themes emerge – our responsibilities to one another; the downsides of progress; the complexities of liberal guilt. “There’s no right thing to do,” Kitson laments, “and no excuse for doing nothing.”
Related: Daniel Kitson: standup’s most restless, theatrical polymath
Continue Reading