With comedy festivals cancelled around the world, Amazon Prime is releasing 10 original Australian specials to tide you over. Filmed at Melbourne’s Malthouse theatres, the series will feature names including Celia Pacquola, Tom Gleeson, Anne Edmonds, T…
Continue ReadingMy sixtysomething mother lacked confidence, but has reinvented herself as Manchester’s answer to Mrs MaiselRuth Linton, my mum, is an eternally overdressed, perennially late, sixtysomething (don’t ask, because she’ll always deduct two years), divorced,…
Continue ReadingThe procedure left the comedian with sexual anxiety – and a tell-all show at the Edinburgh festivalJournalistic etiquette decrees that any delicate questions are usually saved until near the end of an interview. That doesn’t apply, however, when you ar…
Continue ReadingStand Comedy Club, Edinburgh The standup tenderly hymns the joys of new parenthood in this delightful, tightly focused showHaving a baby is about as far from unique an experience as it’s possible to get, so it’s impressive how Josie Long makes it her p…
Continue ReadingAged seven, comic Steve Bugeja helped his mum find a new partner. They had to watch his magic tricks – and know how to handle a trellisWhen I told my mum that my fringe comedy show was going to be all about her being single when I was growing up, she s…
Continue ReadingThe actor and comedian on birdwatching, taking naps and gaming with his sonI try to go to bed around midnight because I like to get up early, at 7am. It’s difficult to wind down when you come off stage because of the adrenaline. It keeps me awake longe…
Continue ReadingThe comedian is doing a show about her father in Edinburgh. She talks about the sexist LA standup scene, her reconciliation with her dad – and doing jokes about his ex-wives
With just a hint of a smile, Camilla Cleese admits that the name of her Edinburgh fringe show is “the ultimate, shameless nepotism”. It’s called Produced by John Cleese, even though it isn’t produced by him at all. But she is. “I don’t think he would put money into something as un-lucrative as this,” says the daughter of the comedy legend, “unless it was a marriage”.
Camilla barely mentioned the connection in her first Edinburgh show, back in 2014, except for some jokes at the expense of her father’s many – and often expensive – marriages. But this time around, more confident and more experienced, she’s embracing her heritage. “I want to talk a little bit about being his daughter but, because I’m not doing a full hour, I don’t really have the time to delve into all the different aspects. So it will be a combination of that and some of my standup. For people who are familiar with him and his work, it’s clear where my influences come from. I can blame anything offensive on him.”
If I misbehaved, he’d act like a gorilla, going on all fours. I’d be so embarrassed, I’d immediately shut up
If you’re asked to go on the road with a male headliner, there can be an assumption something is going to happen
Continue ReadingWhen the comedian Mawaan Rizwan put his mother Shahnaz into his videos, they were an instant hit. And then Bollywood came calling…
In 2012, the comedian Mawaan Rizwan was making videos for YouTube and gaining modest success. One day, he found himself in need of a stooge for his latest sketch, so he roped in his mum, Shahnaz.
The resulting video, My Mum Hates Me, in which the two of them banter back and forth about all the ways in which they annoy each other, took off in a way he’d never experienced. “That got 115,078 views,” he says. “So we did loads more sketches. In one of them, she dressed up as a goth, in another she was a midwife.”
She had always been very strict and focused on our schoolwork, but when she acted in my videos, I saw her in a new light
Continue ReadingA former alcoholic, a cancer survivor and a man who lost all his money in a Bitcoin crash are among the comics coming back from the brink at the Edinburgh fringe
‘I didn’t start drinking until I was 18,” says Matt Rees. “That’s quite a rarity for someone in the UK. But straight away, I recognised that I liked it – and I knew that one day I’d have to stop.”
Rees, who was born in Maesteg, south Wales, is making his debut at this year’s Edinburgh fringe with Happy Hour, a look back at his battle with alcohol. He started performing in 2010 and quickly scooped up some new act awards. Then, two years ago, his comedy career stalled as he experienced problems with addiction.
‘It’s normal to go on stage after a few pints, and it’s fine to be hungover the next day. Someone with a normal job would’ve been fired’
Related: 50 shows to see at the Edinburgh fringe 2018
Continue ReadingJust a month before their first child is due, the standup couple are doing a show together – seeking the audience’s parenting tips
“It’s mad,” says Josie Long, “but it feels like the right thing to do.” Braving the blustery weather at a pavement cafe near their east London home, Long and fellow comedian Jonny Donahoe are discussing their unlikely new project, which enjoys its first and only UK performance next week. For Josie Long and Jonny Donahoe Are Having a Baby (With You), the couple take to the stage to chat, joke and desperately seek advice on the imminent arrival of their first child. They’re taking one of the most intimate experiences a couple can have, and making it public when Long is eight months pregnant – heavy, exhausted and, she says, “physically vulnerable”. What are they thinking?
This isn’t the first time the couple have smudged the line between art and life. Long is a revered art-comic, activist and queen of indie standup; Donahoe is one half of bluesy lefty musical act Jonny and the Baptists. They met when she saw him perform the acclaimed solo theatre show Every Brilliant Thing. Impressed, she invited him to co-author a new project together – about a couple falling in love. “The plan was to have intimate conversations with each other,” says Long, “a very vulnerable writing process, and what came out of it would be very unusual.” But a few months in, both parties were deeply confused. “I remember saying to [the comic] Bridget Christie, ‘I think we might be in love with each other. But it might not be real, it might just be for the show’,” Long remembers. “And she was like: ‘Fuck the show! What do you want, a show or a baby?’ And I was like: I want a baby!”
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