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Robert Newman: ‘Scientists think we’re all stupid. It makes me angry…’

April 16, 2017TheGuardian

The comedian tells us why Francis Crick, Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking are the butt of his jokes in his new book and radio series

When I meet Robert Newman, he is wearing a homemade brain scanner on his head. He had it built as a prop for his most recent show about neuroscience. Newman is a writer and comedian who had a hugely successful career as part of a duo with David Baddiel in the 1990s and has since been doing his lecture-cum-standup style of high-brow comedy. His previous topics have included the history of oil, the war on terror and evolution.

Off stage, Newman is the only comedian to have been cited in the science journal Nature and he has written about neuroscience and robotics for Philosophy Now. He’s here to talk about his new book, Neuropolis, and its accompanying BBC Radio 4 programme, in which he guns for an unlikely bunch of targets – neuroscience writers – for having, he says, a reductionist view of the world.

It’s like there’s a competition among science writers – who can say the most horrible thing about humanity

Why I love… Dave Chappelle

April 15, 2017TheGuardian

I will never not laugh at his bit on chicken and racism

Back when easy streaming was a twinkle in some young executive’s eye, some TV was just… unavailable. If you were desperate to watch that US TV show, you could try the dodgy VHS guy down the market (ahem). So for a long time, I just heard about US comedian Dave Chappelle’s legendary show. When I finally got to watch, on a grainy DVD copy, I laughed so hard I cried.

Dave Chappelle, 43, moved to New York as a teen and was soon on stage at the world famous Apollo theatre. By 19, he was cast as Ahchoo in the spoof Robin Hood: Men In Tights. The 90s were good to him (more film and TV work, and his first standup special) but it was the 2000s that cemented his legacy: he co-created Chappelle’s Show in 2003, influencing a new generation of TV comedians in the process. The sketches and characters are iconic now (professional hater Silky Johnson and Chappelle as Prince are my favourites) and still relevant. His standup style is warmly sly and anecdotal: he’s your best friend but, like, 2,000 times funnier. I will never not laugh at his bit on chicken and racism, or applaud his incredibly nuanced “how old is 15, really?” bit on how black kids are perceived.

Danny Baker: ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000 nearly killed me’

April 14, 2017TheGuardian

From crisps to his co-host Danny Kelly, the long-serving radio personality reveals the things that make him laugh the most

Not exactly standup, but Monty Python at Drury Lane in 1974. I had to leave my seat to compose myself – I genuinely thought I might die.

The 10 best things to do this week: from Jude Law’s new play to Rookie’s podcast

April 14, 2017TheGuardian

The actor finally returns to the Barbican stage and the precocious Tavi Gevinson interviews her pal Lorde, while elsewhere Stormzy’s cousin plays live

Cambridge literary festival
Although many people worked themselves into a fury after the US election, few managed to bash out a savagely satirical novella in response. Howard Jacobson’s talk on his Trump-inspired book, Pussy, is sure to be one of the highlights of this top-class literature festival.
At various venues, 18-23 April

The 10 best things to do this week: from Jude Law’s new play to Rookie’s podcast

April 14, 2017TheGuardian

The actor finally returns to the Barbican stage and the precocious Tavi Gevinson interviews her pal Lorde, while elsewhere Stormzy’s cousin plays live

Cambridge literary festival
Although many people worked themselves into a fury after the US election, few managed to bash out a savagely satirical novella in response. Howard Jacobson’s talk on his Trump-inspired book, Pussy, is sure to be one of the highlights of this top-class literature festival.
At various venues, 18-23 April

Charlie Murphy, Chappelle’s Show star, dies aged 57

April 13, 2017TheGuardian

Brother of Eddie Murphy, who turned his encounters with Hollywood’s great and good into much-loved TV skits, has died

Charlie Murphy, the older brother of Eddie Murphy and a comic performer who turned his encounters with Rick James and Prince into standout sketches on Chappelle’s Show, has died at the age of 57.

In the show’s recurring segment Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories, Murphy would recount how his brother’s fame brought him into the orbit of the biggest stars. His versions of the experiences, played out by him, Chappelle and others, became enduring hits. In one sketch, Prince is at first mocked for his frilly shirt but then shows his slick moves on the basketball court. The music legend then serves everyone pancakes.

TJ & Dave review – wizards of improv conjure a comedy gem

April 12, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The Chicago pair show they are masters of their art with an off-the-cuff performance that is as poignant and sharply observed as any scripted show

Most writers and comics spend months – even years – honing scripts and refining gags. Chicago improvisers TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi make mincemeat of all that, plucking from thin air a one-act, multi-character play that is as funny, shrewdly observed and emotionally complex as many a slaved-over work. Right up there with the best of the Pajama Men and Improbable Theatre, they really are Zen masters of their art. I found their unshowy and beadily intelligent improv blissful to watch.

There are no frills, gimmicks or audience participation, just two middle-aged men building a story detail by extemporised detail. It begins with two office workers wondering at the late arrival of a third. One of them wears a new watch, bequeathed by his dead dad; the other, touched, spontaneously phones his own father. On these bare bones, fragments of a tale are fleshed out, in which an elderly couple fret about macaroni etiquette, a 7-Eleven attendant kvetches about his uncle Marcel, and a driver with blood spattered across the grill of his car “has no idea if it was a kid or a raccoon”.

Adam Kay review – ex-doctor dispenses mirth and strong medicine

April 11, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
As well as diagnosing the entertaining eccentricities of patients, musical comic Kay issues an electrifying clarion call on behalf of NHS staff

Musical comic Adam Kay is a former doctor, of obstetrics and gynaecology – or “brats and twats” as he demurely puts it. His new show (from which a book has been commissioned) now addresses that career, partly for political reasons, as his blistering denouement makes clear. Those closing 10 minutes are tonally a thing apart from what precedes them: an emotionally naked disclosure of a career-ending incident, turned politically blunt clarion call for the staff of our beleaguered NHS. It doesn’t even pretend to be comedy, and makes a mockery of aesthetic judgment.

It’s stirring stuff; Jeremy Hunt should be fed this show on a drip. Even its main section – blackly comic extracts from Kay’s hospital diary, intercut with punning songs – counters the Tory claim that striking junior doctors are in it for the money. Here, we find our diarist missing Christmases, cancelling longed-for holidays and sacrificing relationships at the altar of medicine. He meets the eccentricities and idiocies of the British public with infinite patience and an infinitesimally raised eyebrow, and daily endures sights – geysers of patients’ blood; “the worst penis I had ever seen” – that would make lesser mortals (critics, say) quail.

Rich Hall: ‘Albert Brooks is one of the funniest comedians ever’

April 7, 2017TheGuardian

From squid pelts to neurotic standup, the misanthropic US comic, writer and musician reveals the things that make him laugh the most

Kevin Meaney, the recently departed Boston comedian, had the flat-out funniest 20 minutes of any comedian I’ve ever seen. It was basically an interior monologue delivered at a level of camp hysteria that literally had people in the room pounding the table with their fists and falling out of their chairs.

Tom Rosenthal: ‘I thought it would be cool to dye my hair into a Mongolian flag’

March 31, 2017TheGuardian

The standup and Friday Night Dinner star on the things that make him laugh the mostDave Chappelle on Sesame Street. Continue reading…

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