Comedy Interviews
10 Questions for comedian Alex EdelmanMonday, 19 December 2022![]()
US comic Alex Edelman first came to the attention of British audiences in 2014, when he was named best newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for his show Millennial, in which, said one critic, “he regales us with tales of smart-arsery and backchat”. He has since toured with more of his clever and erudite observational comedy in Everything Handed to You and Just For Us, as well as performing them in the West End. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: writer and comedian Tom DavisFriday, 13 August 2021![]()
After leaving school at 14, Tom Davis spent 10 years working as a scaffolder on building sites, while always harbouring what he thought was the impossible dream of getting into comedy. Hailing from Sutton in south London, he had a go at standup and for a time found himself in drag, singing Disney songs. Read more... |
Roy Hudd: 'I was just trying to make 'em laugh'Monday, 16 March 2020![]()
Roy Hudd, who has died at the age of 83, was the last link to the age of entertainment before television. Born in 1936, he entered the business just as music hall and variety were dying out. But he knew the luminaries of that era: Gracie Fields, Max Miller, above all Chesney Allen, who asked him to play the late Budd Flanagan in a stage revival of the songs of Flanagan and Allen. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Garrison KeillorMonday, 27 June 2016![]()
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, and has been for the past 42 years, ever since Garrison Keillor first reported on the town's goings-on in his weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Keillor's purring baritone is the gentle voice of non-coastal America, and it is picked up by 700 local public radio stations by four million listeners. But at 72, and after a health scare, Keillor is stepping down. Read more... |
10 Questions for Comedian Alexei SayleTuesday, 12 April 2016![]()
Alexei Sayle (b 1952) first came to fame at the birth of alternative comedy, as MC at the Comedy Store in London at the dawn of the 1980s. He cemented his reputation via his recurring role in the anarchic student sitcom classic The Young Ones, as well as appearances in a number of Comic Strip Presents… films. He has written and fronted a host of sketch shows, including the Emmy Award-winning Alexei Sayle’s Stuff. Read more... |
10 Questions for Ventriloquist Nina ContiTuesday, 08 April 2014![]()
Nina Conti is a postmodern visitor from a previous era. Ventriloquism, the remarkable skill of vocal misdirection, was a staple of yesteryear’s mainstream. Its practitioners were odd men pedalling flaccid Saturday-night humour. And indeed she inherited her skill from a much older man. Read more... |
10 Questions for Harry ShearerSunday, 26 January 2014![]()
It is the fate of political leaders to be played by actors. In the circumstances Richard Nixon hasn’t been dealt a bad hand. He has been portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, by Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon on stage and screen and by tall handsome Christopher Shyer in Clint Eastwood’s J Edgar. But towering over them all is Harry Shearer, who has been impersonating Tricky Dicky since Nixon was actually president. Read more... |
10 Questions for Count Arthur StrongMonday, 11 November 2013![]()
Autumn is a season of tumbling leaves, dark afternoons and of course fatuous memoirs from people off the telly. But every so often the world is taken by surprise, less by autumn itself than by the arrival of an autobiography by a genuine star that contrives to stand aside from the hideous commercialism of the bestseller lists. Such a book is Through It All I’ve Always Laughed. Or so its author would no doubt claim. Read more... |
10 Questions for Musician & Comedian Reggie WattsMonday, 17 June 2013![]()
Equal parts prodigiously talented musician, consistently funny comedian, auteur, theatre performer, free thinker and writer, Reggie Watts is nigh on impossible to pigeonhole. He is a hurricane of furious creativity operating completely in his own lane, hurtling full-speed towards Parts Unknown. Primarily known for his inimitable blend of improvisational music and comedy, each show he performs is completely original, never to be repeated. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Writers Ray Galton and Alan SimpsonThursday, 14 March 2013![]()
Is Steptoe and Son the platonic ideal of the British sitcom? Two men trapped in eternal stasis, imprisoned by class and bound together by family ties as if by hoops of steel, never to escape: it’s what half-hour comedy should be. Posterity would seem to agree, because since the sitcom ended in 1974 the two rag and bone men have never been out of work, appearing in the cinema, on stage and radio. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
![Tight-knit ensemble: Anjli Mohindra, Deborah Findlay, Gina McKee, Romola Garai, Harmony Rose-Bremner in 'The Years'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Years%201.jpg?itok=Tc5XqxSD)
Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical book Les Années charts a woman’s life across time and space, history and memory, through...
![Bringing unhinged joy](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/NINA_CONTI_LIVE-07236%28Credit_Paul%20Gilbey%29.jpg?itok=G1I9o9NW)
“I really am the repository for all your shit,” Nina Conti’s famous Monkey hand puppet tells her. Monkey may have a point.
The brilliance of...
![Folk and furious: Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Plínio Fernandes, Hadewych van Gent](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/noisenight198%20braimah_plinio_hadewych-3%20%281%29.jpg?itok=0h5c1mgB)
It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper...
![Deus ex machina: Dionysus (Tommy Franzén) takes pity on grieving Ariadne (Kristen McNally) in Minotaur](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Tommy%20Franze%CC%81n%20%28Dionysus%29%20and%20Kristen%20McNally%20%28Ariadne%29%20in%20Minotaur%20%C2%A92025%20Tristram%20Kenton%20%281%29.jpg?itok=GHMuDnZY)
Greek myths are all over theatre stages at the moment, their fierce, vengeful stories offering unnerving parallels with events in our modern world...
![The Lurkers in 1978. Left to right: Pete “Manic Esso” Haynes, Nigel Moore, Pete Stride and Howard Wall.](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%20Lurkers_header_1000.jpg?itok=SVrHqgvo)
On its own, the second session The Lurkers recorded for the BBC’s John Peel show on 18 April 1978 is arguably a curio, a footnote. Four tracks of...
![Creator of a musical metaphor for hidden things: Héloïse Werner](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Hidden%20Mechanisms%20with%20He%CC%81loi%CC%88se%20Werner%20%E2%80%93%20alternate%20%28Plain%2016x9%29.jpg?itok=FzCv2wyV)
When a piece of music is heard for the first time ever, there’s always the delicious hope that, just by being there, an audience might witness...
![Exquisite contrast: Christina Gansch (Susanna) and Michael Mofidian (Figaro)](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Figaro%201_0.jpg?itok=VEZ2X_Hl)
Drained as they are at present of crucial funds, WNO are managing to...
![New on Le Bloc: author Jacqueline Feldman](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Jacqueline%20Feldman%20credit%20Amelia%20Golden%20%281%29-min_0.jpg?itok=6hSqqc97)
Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s ...