Kieran Hodgson is known to television viewers from Two Doors Down and to online fans for his spoofs of TV dramas; but comedy fans know him best for his high-concept stand-up shows, which draw heavily on his personal life.
And so Voice of America, his latest live offering, follows in the same vein, charting as it does his lifelong love affair with America, formed years before he actually set foot in the 50 states.
Death can be a powerful driver for comedy, as countless stand-ups and sitcom writers will affirm, but it has to be sensitively handled. Dark humour can be, forgive the pun, life-affirming, and an excuse for the tears, whether of pain or pleasure, to flow.
Dara Ó Briain’s has described his previous show So… Where Were We? – in which he describes his search for his birth mother who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby – as his Philomena, while his latest, Re: Creation, is his version of Elf, in which a grown man travels across the world to find his birth father.
Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative talent – more than a decade ago, but he reached a new audience with his appearance as the good guy-goes-bad-then-good-again Nate in the lovely television comedy Ted Lasso.
Zoe Lyons knows her audience; as a few shoutouts confirmed, many of them are long-time fans, and have had lives with similar highs and lows along the way, and she delivers stories about her life that reflect theirs too. And so it proves with her latest touring show, Werewolf – which I saw in the cavernous surrounds of Earth Hackney – as she talks about finding contentment in middle age.
Greg Davies doesn’t spare himself in his new show, Full Fat Legend, his first tour in seven years after having been busy being mean to celebrities on Taskmaster on Channel 4, and showing his acting chops on the BBC’s dark comedy The Cleaner, among other projects. In a busy 90 minutes he talks about his dodgy prostate, pointless masturbation and his errant "bumhole”, among many other unflattering – but very funny – stories.
The title of Marcus Brigstocke’s latest show, Vitruvian Mango, is, like the man himself, rather clever. He appears on stage with a mocked-up version the Da Vinci drawing it references with his naked body replacing the artist’s model to illustrate the theme of the show, which I saw at the Alex in Faversham. His version of Da Vinci’s image of the perfect male form is, he attests, “sweeter, softer, seasonally available and, when ripe, delicately perfumed”.
Matt Forde gives a warning: “Don’t heckle the disabled – that’s a hate crime.” What an opener for his latest touring show, The End of an Era, which I saw at the Oxford Glee Club.
To explain: in 2023 the back pain that Forde thought was sciatica turned out to be spinal cancer. Major surgery that included severing nerves in his nether regions followed, and post-surgery he now uses a stoma bag and self-catheterises. Thankfully Forde has recovered.
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic team of arts and culture writers went ahead with an ambitious plan – to launch a dedicated internet site devoted to coverage of the UK arts scene.
Many of our readers today may have forgotten the arts journalism atmosphere of the first decade of the new century – especially the decimation of traditional broadsheet arts coverage that followed the financial crisis of 2008.
Harry Hill reminds us at one point during his latest touring show that he’s 60, but there’s no let-up in the energy he brings to New Bits and Greatest Hits, a pleasing mixture of old and new material showing he still packs a punch on stage.
There are sufficient new gags to justify the first part of the title, but equally enough old ones to keep his long-term fans happy – although the audience at Wilton’s Music Hall suggested that his fanbase now covers a few generations who appreciate Hill's madcap comedy.