What a few weeks it’s been for Opie & Anthony fans. Yesterday, longtime broadcaster Anthony Cumia was suspended from Twitter… MORE
Anthony Cumia’s Twitter account suspended, allegedly following a fight with an A.V. Club writer appeared first on The Laugh Button.
Gregg “Opie” Hughes has been fired by SiriusXM, capping off what’s been a tumultuous time for the talk show host… MORE
It’s official, Opie fired from SiriusXM appeared first on The Laugh Button.
The past two times I visited Austin this spring, Laughly was all over the place — first as the official partner of the Moontower Comedy Festival, and then last month exclusively live-streaming the Funniest Person in Austin finals. It’s no coincidence you’re probably starting to see and hear more about Laughly, too. Laughly is one of […]
Continue ReadingThe dry-witted US essayist talks about how he went from working as an elf in Macy’s to becoming ‘the American Alan Bennett’
David Sedaris’s partner of 25 years, Hugh Hamrick, calls the first chunk of the essayist’s diaries, published under the title Theft By Finding, “David Copperfield Sedaris”. And it’s true, Sedaris concedes, the book – which covers the years from 1977, when he scribbled his first entries on the backs of coffee shop placemats while travelling around, to 2002 – has a certain rags-to-riches quality. In the second volume, on the other hand, “I just go from shopping at Paul Smith to shopping at Comme des Garçons, and I’m on airplanes all the time”. The thought prompts a memory of a recent plane trip, first class from Hawaii to Portland, Oregon. “This woman said, you are so lucky to be seated up front, it’s a great spot for people-watching. And I said, hmm, it could be, but we don’t really count you as people.” He bursts out laughing, and so do I, even though I know I oughtn’t. What on earth did she say? “She laughed, she knew I was kidding. Hugh was horrified. Horrified.”
There’s something about that one-liner that characterises Sedaris’s writing: a flash of directness, even brutality, that threatens the social veneer (especially in first class); the reassuring feeling that of course he’s kidding, with the faint background feeling, “but not entirely”; the spreading realisation that he’s getting at something far more complex about human nature, absurdity and awkwardness. “He’s like an American Alan Bennett,” says the quote (from this newspaper) on the back cover of Theft By Finding. Both writers occupy that space in which their subversiveness and caustic records of daily life run up against the foam blanket of “humour”, as if we can maximise the cuddliness and minimise the edge by focusing on the laughs.
Related: Read extracts from Theft By Finding Volume One – by David Sedaris
Related: Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls review – recollections of a resolute outsider
And I said, could you close the door, please? And he shut the door in her face and I never saw her again
Related: David Sedaris at Edinburgh: ‘I’ll never run out of things to laugh about’
In the lanes of Sussex, he is known as the American who picks up the litter, for which he has a passionate hatred
Continue ReadingJim Norton is a best-selling author and comedian you’ve seen in multiple stand-up specials on HBO and EPIX and in recurring roles on Louie and Inside Amy Schumer. But you’ve likely also heard him for almost two decades now every morning on the radio — first as the third mic with Opie and Anthony, then […]
Continue ReadingBefore Dan Whitney became Larry the Cable Guy, he called up radio stations with what then was an even more popular character or two: Rose and Iris, two little old ladies from Boca Raton, Fla. He reminisced about his pre-Larry prank calls in a new interview for In Depth with Graham Bensinger, which airs in […]
Continue ReadingThe Stables, Milton Keynes
The standup reveals she’s taken up boxing on her Calman Before the Storm tour, and the show swipes energetically at a formidable array of targets
“No one says, ‘Hicks. Pryor. Calman’,” says Susan Calman, ruefully. “I’m not a dangerous comedian.” By her own admission, Calman is considered precisely the opposite, a “Radio 4 favourite”: chirpy, erudite, unlikely to alarm the livestock. Now 10 years a comic, her touring show locks horns with that reputation, and asks: is she the comedian audiences suppose her to be? If that sounds self-reflexive, I can only report that the navel gaze has done no harm to the comedy. This is a good-time standup set, more assertive and upbeat – and at ease with itself – than the shows I’ve seen her perform in the past.
The most recent was 2015’s Lady Like, in which Calman recounted a nervous breakdown she experienced as she adjusted to newfound celebrity. No such shadows cloud this set, which is conspicuous for its energy and ebullience. Itemising the expectations others have of her (left-wing, intellectual, lesbian) – endorsing some, scorning others – there’s a real attack to Calman’s comedy here. She’s taken up boxing, she tells us – and this feels like 90 minutes delivered by a contender always on the balls of her feet.
Related: Susan Calman webchat – your questions answered on zombies, depression and Clare Balding
Continue ReadingCity Varieties Music Hall, Leeds
The broadcaster’s first standup tour, Cradle to the Stage, is a lucky-dip of nostalgic childhood stories and showbiz anecdotes
You’ve read the autobiography. You’ve seen the sitcom. Now here’s the solo stage show of Danny Baker’s life – or at least, the bits of it he can squeeze into its two-hour duration. It’s billed as a “first ever standup tour” but really, it’s just one story after another from a man with an inexhaustible capacity for gossip and anecdotage. “There’s no script,” he says, then later: “I’m pretty good company, but that’s all this is.”
I’m not about to contradict him: Cradle to the Stage is less a show than a lucky dip into the grab-bag of Baker’s storied past. Having spurned his mate Jimmy Carr’s suggestion to preview it, he now jokes with his off-stage technician that he hasn’t rehearsed the show either. Act One ends abruptly at the behest of a downstage stopwatch, when – to Baker’s dismay – we’re only 15 years into his life story. From then on, he keeps alluding to all the great material he failed to cover in the first half.
Related: Danny Baker: ‘People assume I must be hiding some dark secret’
Continue ReadingThe Peabody and Daytime Emmy Award winner will host The Craig Ferguson Show on SiriusXM Comedy Greats weekdays starting February… MORE
Craig Ferguson launches daily SiriusXM show appeared first on The Laugh Button.
Former Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson is headed to SiriusXM. According to Variety, SiriusXM has set a deal with Ferguson to host a live, two-hour, “format-free” show, titled The Craig Ferguson Show, which will be “a mix of long-form interviews, guest visits, viewer call-in segments, sketches, observations from Ferguson and ‘little story pieces’ of […]
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