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Jimmy Carr’s ‘greatest hits’: 15 years of thuggish jokes and tawdry stereotypes

June 22, 2017TheGuardian

In a long-running tour, the supercilious standup brings back old gags, leaving a bad smell – and a loveless worldview – in his wake

‘I’m jealous of bands,” Jimmy Carr told the NME when his current tour was conceived, 18 months ago. “You go and see a band, and they knock out the hits. And you think: I wish I could do that …” It turns out he could: he’s now deep into a tour entitled The Best of, Ultimate, Gold, Greatest Hits, which unites favourite gags from 15 years of off-colour standup. It’s a relatively new idea to comedy, which, conventional wisdom tells us, thrives on novelty and surprise. But there’s clearly an audience out there willing to laugh at the same jokes over and again, and Carr – as usual – has been quick to exploit the commercial opportunity.

It doesn’t feel like a treat to hear these jokes again, because they’re not exactly well loved in the first place

Ronny Chieng on International Student and testing the limits of The Daily Show

June 18, 2017TheGuardian

Playing himself might be the ‘easiest job in the world’, but the boyish-looking, sick burn-delivering comic has been reliving some excruciating memories

On stage and screen, the comedian Ronny Chieng is famously irritable. A senior correspondent on America’s beloved news satire The Daily Show, and titular star of ABC’s Ronny Chieng: International Student, the short, boyish-looking, sick burn-delivering comic has the querulous demeanour of a man prone to outrage and allergic to pleasantries.

The 31-year-old Malaysian has been like that since his first public (non-university) gig, at a tiny, dingy, subterranean Melbourne comedy room in 2009, performing a slightly rinkydink set in front of a crowd of approximately eight people. I know, because I was one of them.

Tonight at 11/10c, correspondent Ronny Chieng reports on the Fox News/Jesse Watters racist Chinatown segment. pic.twitter.com/FTq8HyJ0KD

Half the country hate you immediately, no matter what you say. You kind of realise every day is transient

Jenny Slate: ‘Ivanka Trump is a fake feminist and should be ashamed’

June 18, 2017TheGuardian

The US actor, standup and author on her new film, Gifted, rescuing her career after being fired from Saturday Night Live, inspirational women and the terrifying situation in the White House

Jenny Slate, 35, is an American comedian, actor and author. The middle of three sisters, with a ceramicist mother and poet father, she was raised in Milton, Massachusetts. While at Columbia University, Slate performed standup and improv. Moving to Los Angeles with then-husband, director Dean Fleischer-Camp (they’ve since amicably divorced), Slate joined Saturday Night Live in 2009, but accidentally swore in her first episode and was fired after one season. A stop-motion short animation made with Fleischer-Camp, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, became a viral hit, leading to New York Times bestseller children’s books and plans for a feature-length movie.

With her distinctive voice, Slate featured in Zootopia and The Secret Life of Pets. On television, she appeared in Parks and Recreation, Married and Girls. Her performance in Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, playing a comic navigating a pregnancy termination, won her awards including the Critics’ Choice award for best actress in a comedy. Slate stars in another Robespierre film, Landline, due out in the summer. In her latest film, Gifted, she plays a teacher who becomes involved with a man (Chris Evans) caring for his maths prodigy niece (Mckenna Grace).

Joseph Morpurgo: ‘I once got dive-bombed by a bird on stage’

June 16, 2017TheGuardian

The cult character comic on the things that make him laugh the most, from Corbyn kebabs to Hans Teeuwen

The [00s MTV sketch show] Human Giant deserves more shine than it gets. My favourites are Mother & Son Moving Company and Let’s Go.

Dying Laughing review – savagely funny documentary about standup

June 16, 2017TheGuardian

Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Stewart Lee, Garry Shandling and Victoria Wood feature in this film about the craft and catharsis of comedy

A murderer’s row of standup talent has been assembled for this documentary on the craft and catharsis of comedy. Chris Rock, Steve Coogan, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman and Stewart Lee are among the many faces providing testimony to the euphoria and agony that telling jokes to a group of strangers can bring. The film is stronger on the latter point, with some savagely funny accounts of the many ways that comedians deal with hecklers, and one devastating account of a gig going horribly wrong.

The endless conveyor belt of talking heads does rather lose its lustre over time, and some actual standup would have been welcome, but there’s a dizzying amount of insight, not to mention a real poignancy to some of the contributors: including Garry Shandling and Victoria Wood, both of whom died in 2016.

The must-see standup of summer 2017: Daniel Kitson, Sara Pascoe, Rob Delaney and more

June 13, 2017TheGuardian

The star of Catastrophe brings carnality, the elusive Kitson attempts to ‘alter language’, Sara Pascoe goes dating, while Hannah Gadsby goes out with a bang

Penn and Teller
Las Vegas’s loss is Britain’s gain, as the veteran magic double-act return for UK tour. Publicity has focused on Penn Jillette’s relationship with the US president, with whom he worked on Celebrity Apprentice in 2012. “We wish we could make Trump disappear,” ran the headlines. That’s not, unfortunately, the prospectus for their new show, which should feature the usual impressive combination of jazzy set pieces hyped by Penn and tender conjuring vignettes by Teller.
• At Hammersmith Apollo, London, 20-25 June. Box office: 0844-249 4300.

Rob Delaney
When he first gigged in the UK, the American comic Rob Delaney was mainly famous for being funny on Twitter. Two years ago, cresting Channel 4’s hit show Catastrophe, he delivered a depraved (his word) standup show entitled Meat. This summer, that carnival of carnality is back.
• At Leicester Square theatre, London, 5-15 July. Box office: 020-7734 2222.

Tom Green: ‘It demystifies the presidency when you’ve had Trump scream in your face’

June 13, 2017TheGuardian

He was the original online prankster who married Drew Barrymore and got fired by Trump. As he returns to standup, he talks about not getting his dues – and where you draw the line in comedy

Tom Green has been rapped about by Eminem, fired by Donald Trump and married briefly to Drew Barrymore. He made an influential and outrageous MTV series (The Tom Green Show), as well as one of the most reviled films of all time (Freddy Got Fingered). He also documented his experience of testicular cancer in a TV special that didn’t blanch at the sight of the surgeon’s scalpel. And it is not merely a figure of speech to say that he has guts – millions of viewers have seen them, unpacked on the operating table during surgery to inspect his lymph nodes.

Sitting in a London bar, the 45-year-old, 6ft 2in Canadian comic is more contemplative than the manic, bug-eyed goofball who made his name in the 1990s. Back then, he blurred the line between pranks and performance art, prowling the streets with baguettes strapped to his head, addressing passing businessmen as “Mummy” or gyrating against roadkill. It was the roadkill stunt that earned him a namecheck from Eminem, who complained in The Real Slim Shady: “Sometimes I want to get on TV and just let loose, but can’t / But it’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose.”

Related: Freddy Got Fingered

It can be a little frustrating not to get credit for what YouTube became

Comedians for Corbyn? They were keeping shtoom – or serenading Farage

June 9, 2017TheGuardian

Standup is supposedly a leftie haven. But from what I saw this week, the scene offered little support for the Labour leader – and, despite some droll insights, a lack of real debate

Where were you when you heard the exit poll? I was at a comedy show: Matt Forde’s Election Party Lock-In at Soho theatre in London, to be precise. The satirist, self-proclaimed Blairite and host of Dave TV’s Unspun had just canvassed his (all-white, all-male) politician panel for predictions, which ranged between a 45- and 75-seat Tory majority. Cut to David Dimbleby on the BBC live feed, the dropping of a political bombshell – and raucous delight and disbelief in this subterranean room. Comedy is about surprise, right? Here was a bigger shock than anyone present anticipated.

I spent the final week of the election campaign seeking out live political comedy. Away from the TV screens, able to be as current, candid and non-partisan as they pleased, what were comedians saying about May v Corbyn? One of the country’s most venerable political jokers is Andy Zaltzman, whose Bugle podcast enjoyed a rare live outing, also at Soho. The guest co-host when I attended was Nish Kumar: another fine social commentator, whose leftwing sympathies are usually clear – although at the Bugle I attended, no one was pinning colours to masts.

Sarah Kendall: ‘I once dreamed that I grew a penis and it was an arthritic finger’

June 9, 2017TheGuardian

The Aussie comic on the things that make her laugh the most, from tomatoes on toast to 30 Rock

My favourite would have to be Ellen DeGeneres’s HBO specials. She hugely influenced me when I first started because she made the whole thing look like a casual one-sided conversation.

Laugh a minute: Edinburgh festival’s 2017 comedy lineup

June 8, 2017TheGuardian

Sara Pascoe looks at life after a breakup, Trygve Wakenshaw brings his baby on stage, and Alexei Sayle, Ruby Wax and talkshow king Craig Ferguson all return to the fringe this year

In recent years, they’ve populated the shortlists of Edinburgh’s major comedy awards. Now they’re back in town with all-new shows to unleash on the world. The 2011 comedy award champ, Adam Riches, returns with what he’s calling – accurately enough, I’d guess – Inane Chicanery. The 2015 best newcomer, Sofie Hagen, and 2016 best show nominee Al Porter – both excellent comics – return with new sets. Then there’s one of the country’s smartest, most inquisitive – and funniest – acts, Sara Pascoe, back at the fringe after a year off, with a new show, LadsLadsLads, about life after a breakup. (Her ex, John Robins, addresses the same subject elsewhere in town …)

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