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Why I wrote a comedy show about incontinence | Elaine Miller

August 10, 2017TheGuardian

As a physiotherapist, I know a third of women don’t have reliable body control. I wanted to raise awareness of this taboo subject at Edinburgh festival

I’m a physiotherapist, and as a fresh-faced graduate, my ambition was to work in elite sports. I did it, too, thriving on team spirit, travel and free trainers.

Then I had three babies in four years, each blessed with a bigger head than the one before. A dramatic sneeze during a zumba class showed me (and everyone there) that my pelvic floor had been reduced to rubble. In that excruciating instant, I realised that what really mattered was not being able to jump a tiny bit farther, or run a bit faster than others, but, being able to jump and run without wet pants.

Edinburgh festival 2017: the shows we recommend

August 9, 2017August 23, 2017TheGuardian

Plan your viewing with our list of top shows, ordered by start time. This page will be updated throughout the festival Continue reading…

Aditi Mittal review – sharp reality checks amid Bollywood and Kama Sutra gags

August 9, 2017TheGuardian

Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh
The standup is strongest when she eviscerates cultural cliches in this nervy but promising fringe debut

Aditi Mittal’s recent Radio 4 show was called A Beginner’s Guide to India, and it also describes what Mittal serves up for her maiden Edinburgh fringe show, Global Village Idiot.

It can feel as if Mittal, one of India’s most successful English-language standups, is performing a set required to ingratiate herself to a UK audience, rather than one that might interest her more. I look forward to the show that defines her by something other than her nationality. In the meantime, this is a tasty appetiser from a comic showing flashes of sharpness and steel amid her off-the-peg gags about Bollywood and the Kama Sutra.

Frankie Boyle review – the dark lord of comedy hits his meanest streak

August 8, 2017TheGuardian

EICC, Edinburgh
The cackling peddler of brutal jokes about the most sensitive subjects is not for the faint-hearted, but his new standup show is relentlessly funny

If you thought Frankie Boyle’s monologues on his recent BBC show New World Order were too mild, this is the show for you. Repeatedly in Prometheus Volume 1 – receiving a handful of performances on the fringe – Boyle tells us this or that joke was censored from TV. And you can believe him. This is an hour of terrifically brutal material and one only hopes the man has a strong mouthwash on hand backstage. But it’s wickedly funny. Boyle is in the meanest streak of his career – the gags are still ruthlessly well honed, but the targets are more deserving and there’s a radical worldview to back up the radical insensitivity.

Joke for joke, and assuming you have a dark sense of humour, this is one of the most relentlessly funny shows around. That’s partly because Boyle wastes no time on pleasantries. Not for him the overarching concept or autobiographical back story. It’s usually just one gag after another, each one attended by a whiff of sulphur and that strange sound you get when people laugh and recoil simultaneously. “Scotland’s Jesus”, runs the title of a recent Boyle book, but as he cackles at one more joke about paedophilia, rape or drone warfare, it’s another of the Bible’s dramatis personae – the one with the horns and the forked tail – that leaps to mind.

New York Comedy Festival announces its initial schedule

August 7, 2017TheLaughButton

New York Comedy Festival is going under a bit of a change for the 2017 year. Particularly their longterm relationship… MORE

New York Comedy Festival announces its initial schedule appeared first on The Laugh Button.

Samantha Bee, Nick Offerman, Conan O’Brien, and More Are Headed to the 2017 New York Comedy Festival

August 7, 2017splitsider

TBS has partnered up with this year’s New York Comedy Festival, and in addition to Conan O’Brien’s previously announced week of shows at the Apollo, the network just released a video where O’Brien reveals some of the many comedians slated to perform throughout the festival. This year’s festival runs from Tuesday, November 7th through Sunday […]

New York Comedy Festival announces 2017 headliners for Nov. 7-12

August 7, 2017TheComicsComic

The 14th annual New York Comedy Festival, now in partnership with TBS, has announced its headliners for this November! Among them: truTV’s The Impractical Jokers Starring The Tenderloins at Madison Square Garden; Bill Maher at The Theater at Madison Square Garden; Brian Regan at Carnegie Hall; Jon Lovett’s “Lovett or Leave It Podcast”, Nick Offerman […]

Alexei Sayle review – still angry after all these years

August 7, 2017TheGuardian

Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh
The standup aims his moral disgust at targets including the Queen, Dominic Sandbrook and Jack Whitehall, in a hilariously mean but erudite set

Watching late-period Alexei Sayle reminds you how far intemperate moral disgust has fallen out of favour as a standup virtue. Yes, the inventor of alternative comedy (as he never stops calling himself) has mellowed a little with age: this new show contains reflective passages and there is a clearer distinction than in his heyday between a Sayle performance and a public order offence. But it’s all relative: Sayle, who has just turned 65, is still an angry old man, and one of the thrills his new show affords is the crackling tension between his avuncularity and his open hostility to a wide range of deserving targets.

He gives us fair warning, opening with a routine that draws attention to the threat posed by “Santa Claus-faced motherfuckers” like himself. They’re easy to overlook, but they’re behind most of the world’s nastiest problems. Not all of them, though: the Queen (who “pervades our civic life like a skin disease, doesn’t she?”) gets it in the neck, making an unlikely cameo in a criminal trial. And the historian Dominic Sandbrook is singled out for abuse, mainly for consistently misrepresenting the era – the 1970s and 80s – that Sayle considers his own personal fiefdom.

Tez Ilyas: ‘When comics talk about religion, it’s not very funny’

August 7, 2017TheGuardian

His show Made in Britain debunked myths about Muslims in the UK. As he returns to Edinburgh, Tez Ilyas talks about the cut and thrust of panel shows and why the fringe is like a freshers’ week for standups

Hi, Tez. This is your third standup show. What’s it all about?
In the crudest terms, the first one was about religion, the second was about culture and this is about politics. It’s called Teztify. I confront a lot of the assumptions people make about me. The main one is that I’m religious in a secular world and an extremely secular industry. I had a working-class upbringing in Blackburn, my politics are leftwing and I’m a man of colour – these are what I talk about.

Rose Matafeo: Sassy Best Friend review – fun-filled satire on romcoms

August 6, 2017TheGuardian

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
The comedian keeps things upbeat as she lightly interrogates Hollywood cliche and the role models on offer to young women

Rose Matafeo has watched a lot of romcoms, and decided that she’s classic “sassy best friend” material – hence the title of this new show. But what does that mean, and is it a good thing to be? A year on from the New Zealander’s whirlwind fringe debut with Finally Dead, this latest offering interrogates – with the lightest of touches – the personalities on offer to women, and one way in particular that those personalities can be tampered with.

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