wed 16/04/2025

Comedy Reviews

Danny Bhoy, Bloomsbury Theatre

Veronica Lee

Danny Bhoy is big in Scotland and Canada and huge Down Under, as they say, but is a surprisingly unfamiliar name to many. I'm not sure, other than a lack of a television presence, why he's not as well-known throughout the UK as he should be: he's an extremely affable, laidback Scot whose brand of observational, conversational comedy is easy on the ear.

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Kevin Bridges, Hammersmith Apollo

Veronica Lee

Kevin Bridges, an affable young Glaswegian, has had a meteoric rise in comedy. He started gigging at 17, made his solo Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2009, where he played in a 50-seater and earned an Edinburgh Comedy Awards newcomer nomination, and returned the following year to a sold-out run in a 700-seat theatre.

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Michael McIntyre, O2 Arena

Veronica Lee

First a confession: I've never been a great fan of Michael McIntyre. He's a nice bloke for sure, works at his craft and is a slick performer with a huge following, both live and on television. Plus - and this is one of the best compliments I can pay to a stand-up because it's a difficult skill to pull off - he's one of the best MCs in the business.

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Stewart Lee presents John Cage's Indeterminacy, Cafe OTO

joe Muggs

John Cage is funny: this much we know. The deadpan prankster at the heart of 20th-century artistic experimentalism was always about the inadvertent punchline, the chuckle that comes from unexpected disjunction, the relief that comes from reminders of the absurdity of reality, as much as he was ever about any engagement with progress, technology, the transcendent.

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Edinburgh Fringe: James Acaster/David Trent/Daniel Simonsen/Ben Target

Veronica Lee

James Acaster: Prompt, Pleasance Courtyard ***

 

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Edinburgh Fringe: Tony Law

Veronica Lee

Tony Law: Maximum Noonsense, The Stand 

 

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Edinburgh Fringe: Alfie Moore/Eddie Pepitone/Claudia O'Doherty

Veronica Lee

Alfie Moore: I Predicted a Riot, Pleasance Courtyard ****

 

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Edinburgh Fringe: I, Tommy/Josie Long/WitTank

Veronica Lee

I, Tommy, Gilded Balloon ****

 

Everybody will be familiar with Tommy Sheridan's story, and not necessarily because they closely follow Scottish politics at their most internecine. Rather because the Glaswegian socialist went from being barely a paragraph in broadsheets to being plastered over the front pages of tabloids after a series of revelations – which he strongly denies – about visiting swingers' clubs.

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Edinburgh Fringe: Tam o' Shanter/Trevor Noah/Bridget Christie

Veronica Lee

 

Tam o' Shanter, Assembly Hall ****


Scottish schoolchildren are brought up on Robert Burns but other British students aren't so fortunate. We may know snatches of the great man's work – “Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie”, “O, my Luve's like a red, red rose” and so on – but few of us could recite even a stanza of Tam o' Shanter.

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Edinburgh Fringe: Jigsy/Pappy's/Joe Lycett

Veronica Lee

Jigsy, Assembly Rooms ****

 

Les Dennis may have started his career as a comic, and then as a presenter of cheesy, family-friendly television game shows, but of late he has been plying his trade as a very decent actor. And so it proves again in Tony Staveacre's one-man play about a washed up Liverpudlian club comic.

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