wed 24/04/2024

Comedy Features

Peter Cook Season, British Film Institute

Bruce Dessau

The death of Peter Cook on 9 January 1995 was my JFK moment. I'll never forget what I was doing when I heard the news. I was driving from London to Granada Studios in Manchester to interview comedian Caroline Aherne. At the time she was married to the New Order bass guitarist Peter Hook, so when the radio announced that Peter Cook was dead my ears did a double take.

Read more...

2011: A Demon Barber, Demented Comedy and a Dogged Detective

Veronica Lee

In a year when there was precious little to laugh at economy-wise, some funny men and women were doing their best to keep our chuckle muscles in working order - although, strangely, you may think, few stand-ups were doing overtly political comedy - and the Edinburgh Fringe, normally a reliable source of laughs, was having a quiet year as lots of established comics stayed away and the next generation mostly hadn't yet found their voice.

Read more...

theartsdesk Christmas Quiz

Ismene Brown

You're going to test your stomach and sweet temper to the maximum today - test your brain and memory too with our monster quiz about the arts covered by theartsdesk in 2011. Every artform is represented here in 12 dozen questions. Settle down between courses, films and presents and see how many you and your near and dear can do.

Read more...

theartsdesk Christmas Quiz - Answers

theartsdesk

Here are the answers to our monster Christmas arts quiz of 12 dozen questions on the year past, as seen by theartsdesk writers. There are clues in all the questions in the main quiz page. If you don't want to know the answers just yet till you've grappled with them, close this page now.

Read more...

Christmas on theartsdesk: Brainteasers, Bran Tub, and the Best of 2011

theartsdesk

Any day now most of us will be hunkering down and for the most part drawing a curtain about the world outside. Before that happens, we’d like to tell you about theartsdesk’s plans for Christmas and the New Year.

Read more...

DVDs for Christmas: Comedy

Veronica Lee

 

Tommy Tiernan Crooked Man (Pias Comedy)

Read more...

theartsdesk's Christmas Presents Guide

theartsdesk

With the lightning speed of online delivery, there is still masses of time to select the best and most enjoyable presents for Christmas, thanks to the taste and wisdom of theartsdesk's pack of writers.

Read more...

Q&A Special: Comedian Jan Ravens

Veronica Lee

Jan Ravens is probably best known for several series of Dead Ringers, broadcast first on Radio 4 then BBC2, when she voiced all the female characters from Kirsty Wark and Fiona Bruce to Ann Widdecombe and Nigella Lawson. Before that she was part of the Spitting Image team, appeared on Alexei Sayle's Stuff and in sitcoms No Frills and The Grimleys. She has also appeared in 2DTV and Alastair McGowan's Big Impression.

Read more...

Ross Noble is pro-live

Jasper Rees

It sounds like a joke. These two Jehovah’s Witnesses walk up a garden path. You could, suggests Ross Noble, write it and “give it to someone like Jim Davidson”. Only this one's a true story. A few years ago these two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a man and a woman, walked up Ross Noble’s garden path. For all his big black hair, thick Geordie accent and a face that says "I am a stand-up comic", they evidently had no idea whose door they'd knocked on.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

Ridout, Włoszczowska, Crawford, Lai, Posner, Wigmore Hall re...

Advice to young musicians, as given at several “how to market your career” seminars: don’t begin a biography with “one of the finest xxxs of his/...

Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a mu...

Stephen is the first feature film by multi-media artist Melanie Manchot and it’s the best debut film I’ve seen since Steve McQueen’s ...

Album: Mdou Moctar - Funeral for Justice

Despite its title, Mdou Moctar’s new album is no slow-paced mournful dirge. In fact, it is louder, faster and more overtly political than any of...

Blue Lights Series 2, BBC One review - still our best cop sh...

The first season of Blue Nights was so close to ...

Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - ench...

Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital...

Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review -...

In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world –...

DVD/Blu-Ray: Priscilla

There’s a scene in Priscilla where Elvis stands above his wife, who is scrambling to put her clothes in a suitcase. Priscilla has just...

Špaček, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manch...

Billed as a “Viennese Whirl”, this programme showed that there are different kinds of music that may be known to the orchestral canon as coming...

Banging Denmark, Finborough Theatre review - lively but conf...

What would happen if a notorious misogynist actually fell in love? With a glacial Danish librarian? And decided his best means of...

Album: Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening

The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great...