standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Simon Brodkin is best known for his cheeky Cockney wideboy character Lee Nelson, and for pranking the famous – notably handing Theresa May her P45 at the Conservative Party conference in 2017, throwing Nazi-themed balls at Donald Trump when he visited his Scottish golf course in 2016, and, in 2015, storming Kanye West's Glastonbury set and showering then Fifa president Sepp Blatter with banknotes. But now in 100% Simon Brodkin, he is touring as himself for the first time.He starts with some gently mocking interaction with the front row, and then Brodkin tells us about his home life as the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It has been seven years since Alexei Sayle last toured, with radio shows and books detaining him elsewhere, but he's back with a bang. As he walks on stage, he immediately starts railing about the “Eton boys running the country”; instead of hailing the school for having produced 20 prime ministers, “it should be in special fucking measures.” Oh, we've missed him.The old-fashioned lefty – who invented alternative comedy, he says with a knowing look more than once in the 80-minute set – is in mourning for what might have been, he says. He clearly has a lot to get off his chest, as a referendum Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Matt Forde sets out his stall in Brexit: Pursued by a Bear from the first line: “We meet in diabolical circumstances.” These aren't good times, he says, with two major leaders in the Western world whose relationship with the truth is merely that of passing acquaintance. Add in the UK's continuing divisions over Brexit, and diabolical seems apt.We know where Forde is coming from. He's a proud Remainer and Blairite, a former adviser to the Labour Party and a vehement critic of Jeremy Corbyn – who gets it in the neck just as much as Boris Johnson does. Forde sees little difference between Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When Frank Skinner did a London run of new material last year, the show was billed as a taster of a longer touring version. I wrote then that the show whetted my appetite for more, and I'm glad to say that the updated version, Showbiz, which now has a West End residency, has delivered.Showbiz comes after Skinner has chalked up more than 30 years in comedy and is a pleasing mix of reflections on parenting, the ageing process and fame. He starts the show by cheekily using Bruce Forsyth's famous phrase “Nice to see you, to see you nice” when he walks on stage. As he says drily: “No one else is Read more ...
Veronica Lee
A mixed bill rarely pleases all comedy tastes – whether in style or content – and so it proved at the launch of the Leicester Comedy Festival, which starts next month. In a line-up of eight comics that had few star names, the best came last – but more of that later.The gala was presented by the hugely likeable Charlie Baker, a Devonian who gets great mileage from his home county, approaching middle age, being married for nearly 20 years and liking his food too much. And while there was a lot of cheeky interaction with the front row along those lines, he was always the butt of the joke; Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Andy Parsons is a comic known to like a good old rant, particularly on a political issue. But in Healing the Nation he takes a calmer, more conversational approach as he tries to do what it says on the tin in a show that he fully expected to be performing after the UK left the EU – but more of Brexit later.In trying to dig down into what it means to be British in 2019, he starts with seemingly more mundane stuff about issues that may divide us in theory but in practice don't lead to us gouging each other's eyes out, such as transgender issues or the badger cull, and how easy it is to make Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jack Whitehall is hardly ever off the telly, appearing on gameshows or jollying around with his father, Michael, presenting the BRIT Awards and proving to be a decent actor in dramas such as Decline and Fall. But now he's gone back to live comedy with his new show Stood Up.Whitehall, as befits his stadium-tour status, goes full Hollywood with his entrance through the audience as a group of spangly-clad dancers gyrate on stage. But the material – littered with wanking and diarrhoea references and an extended fart gag – is often rather less sparkling. He delivers mostly mundane Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ivo Graham's latest show The Game of Life follows on from his previous hour, in which he talked about passing a milestone in life and the prospect of starting a family. Now he is a dad, and uses domestic detail as the starting point for some fine observational comedy about fatherhood, class and politics.There are teasing glimpses into his background. Graham comes from a “family of squares with me the occasional rhombus” and while he may describe himself as weak and pathetic in one routine, his comedy gets meatier with each show. He is usually the fall-guy, as when he recounts the toe- Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jack Dee has made a career out of being a grumpy old man, even though he started on the comedy circuit in 1986 when he was 25. Back then, his dour, seen-it-all-and-not-impressed material was wonderfully at at odds not just with his age but also the same generation of alternative comics and their high-energy political sets.But now, at the age of 58, he has grown into the stage persona, and his unsmiling, deadpan shtick suits him perfectly.He dismisses the audience's welcoming applause with a sarcastic “Thanks anyway” but the more he disses them and their town, the more they lap it up. Of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Is there anything Tim Minchin cannot do? He sings his own songs, plays hot bar-room piano and tells jokes about the existence of God. He composes musicals, performs in Lloyd Webber and Stoppard, writes a multimillion-dollar Hollywood cartoon which he is allowed to direct – until he isn’t. As he explains in this riveting new show, the sell-off of a chunk of DreamWorks, the consequent nixing of his Aussie animation Larrikins in 2017 and his retreat to Sydney, brutally slapped a glass ceiling on his manic multitasking.The film’s cancellation plunged Minchin into a period of morbid self-pity. The Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It has been 15 years since Ben Elton, known as Motormouth in his 1980s heyday – last toured. A decade-and-a-half ago, one of the instigators of alternative comedy tells us at the top of the show, he could have still passed muster as young or cool. Now, at the age of 60 and the father of grown-up children, he’s having something of an existential crisis.He admits he’s in danger of sounding past it as he lists the things about the modern world that confuse or depress him, but this is no grumpy old git rant (although he cleverly plays with that trope a few times in his two-and-a-half-hour show). Read more ...
Owen Richards
There’s been no avoiding Rob Beckett in recent years. His high beam smile and infectious personality have made him a mainstay of comedy shows. Now he’s back on the road with what he calls the best job in the world, stand up. You can tell he means it, with a show that thrives on enthusiasm if not consistency.“Wallop” is a show of two halves, quite literally. There’s no tour support, instead favouring a cheap selection of inappropriate songs to introduce two 45-minute sets from Beckett. He uses this time to zip through a mass of topics, including cookware, soft play, family weddings and Kinky Read more ...