Heard the one about the standup who built lift shafts? Comedians on their previous careers
Modelling bras for Asda, giving tours of parliament, proving yourself on a building site … top comics relive their old day jobs
Continue ReadingTag: Culture
Alex Salmond to star in Edinburgh Fringe show
Ex-first minister to host Alex Salmond Unleashed – billed as mix of comedy, music, political reminiscence and chats with guests
Alex Salmond vowed to bounce back after losing his parliamentary seat last month. “You’ve not seen the last of my bonnet and me,” he said, paraphrasing a Jacobite song.
The former Scottish National party leader and ex-first minister of Scotland is aiming to fulfil that prediction next month, though not with a return to frontline politics.
Continue ReadingThe 10 best things to do this week: Lovebox and Painting Pop
Frank Ocean tops the bill at the east London festival, while Abbot Hall in Cumbria celebrates Blake, Hockney, Boty and more
Dog-friendly screening
Dog lovers and fans of stop-motion animation rejoice! London’s Picturehouse Central is hosting a special dog-friendly (well-behaved canines only, please) screening of My Life As a Courgette on 9 July. Water bowls and blankets will be provided (for the dogs, obvs).
At Picturehouse Central, W1, 9 July
The 10 best things to do this week: Lovebox and Painting Pop
Frank Ocean tops the bill at the east London festival, while Abbot Hall in Cumbria celebrates Blake, Hockney, Boty and more
Dog-friendly screening
Dog lovers and fans of stop-motion animation rejoice! London’s Picturehouse Central is hosting a special dog-friendly (well-behaved canines only, please) screening of My Life As a Courgette on 9 July. Water bowls and blankets will be provided (for the dogs, obvs).
At Picturehouse Central, W1, 9 July
Mrs Brown’s Boys live? They’ll need more than malaprops and mincing to thrill an entire arena
Good Mourning Mrs Brown, the cross-dressing hit’s live show, is so full of horseplay, guffaws and in-jokes, I started to feel like a gooseberry
One surefire way to elicit sympathy from your cultured friends: tell them you’re going to see Mrs Brown’s Boys at the O2 arena. Was there ever a more polarising show on British television than Brendan O’Carroll’s cross-dressing comedy? It has been the UK’s most popular sitcom by some considerable margin over the past five years, but it is despised by sophisticates, who see in it the revival of all the tired conventions and chauvinisms that alternative comedy, or modernity more generally, were thought to have seen off for good.
Related: Mrs Brown’s Boys: how the ‘worst comedy ever made’ became a smash hit
Continue ReadingTim Key: ‘Man Bites Dog is the funniest film I’ve ever seen’
The eccentric poet, standup and actor on the things that make him laugh the most Continue reading…
Continue ReadingPenn & Teller’s smug shtick and Sadowitz’s twisted tricks: magicians conjuring with comedy
The American duo’s slick act shimmers with Vegas-style glitz, while the Scottish standup’s sleight of hand is as flabbergasting as his vicious jokes
The classic magician image, we are told in Penn and Teller’s new show, was established by the French conjuror Robert-Houdin in the mid 19th century. But who, in the post-Paul Daniels era of postmodern magic, bothers with top hat and tails any more? These days, magic comes at us in all shapes and sizes.
At the Robert-Houdin end of the spectrum – smart suits, if not tuxedos – Penn and Teller brought a little bit of Vegas to the Hammersmith Apollo this month, in a characteristically high-end two hours of trickery. Yes, their patter (well, Penn’s patter; Teller is silent) defers to the modern requirement that magicians debunk the supernatural and mock the credulous, but their iconoclasm is strictly rationed. Theirs is a traditional magic show, and they relish their high status to the point of smugness, delighting in duping their audience.
Related: The must-see standup of summer 2017: Daniel Kitson, Sara Pascoe, Rob Delaney and more
Related: That’s not magic: Penn, Teller and Derren Brown reveal all (or do they?)
Continue ReadingSteven Wright, master of meh: ‘This is just how I talk. It accidentally went well with the jokes’
The big-haired, sleepy-eyed standup is an Oscar-winner, one of America’s best-loved comedians and ‘a car that has no gears’. Now, his deadpan style has won him a perfect role in The Emoji Movie
There are answers, and there are Steven Wright answers. Who else – responding to questions over the phone from London to Rhode Island, where he loves to vacation – would compare owning an Oscar statuette to “seeing Neil Armstrong bouncing down your driveway as if he was walking on the moon”? Who else, reflecting on 38 years as one of America’s best-loved standups, would describe themselves as “a car that has no gears”. Wright elaborates: “I just started at an open mic night in the 1970s and I’m still going, still doing now what I started to do then. I know other people might look up to me. But really, I’m just me after a bit of time has gone by.”
That’s true, to a large extent: Wright’s comic style has remained remarkably consistent over four decades. But the 62-year-old isn’t being “just me” right now. He’s being an emoji, in an animated movie to be released this summer. That’s where the transformation ends, however, given that the deadpan-bordering-on-catatonic Wright has been cast as Meh, the only emoji characterised by a complete lack of emotion.
Continue ReadingChris Rock’s Total Blackout review – blistering start to a new world tour
Perth Arena
More than joke machine, Oscar host, even talking zebra, this standup legend is one of his generation’s most incendiary speakers
Chris Rock may need no introduction but apparently he still fancies a warm-up.
The evening before his performance in front of 8,000 people at the Perth Arena, where tickets ranged from $95 to $145 (not including the dreaded booking fee), the American comic swung by a local pub, the Charles hotel, to do a surprise set at their $20 comedy night.
Related: Dying Laughing review – savagely funny documentary about standup
Related: From Bob Newhart to Chris Rock: 10 standup comedy milestones
Continue ReadingSofie Hagen: ‘I was a chubby, white four-year-old, talking like Will Smith’
The Danish comedian and podcast host on the things that make her laugh the most, from Will Smith to The Green ButchersIrish comic Alison Spittle. She will candidly talk about peeing in a pint glass during a mental breakdown and it will make you laugh w…
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