We don’t really cover stand-up / live comedy here all that much and so, while the spotlight shines brightly on the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the next few weeks we’ll mostly be ranting away about Chris Lilley and trying to drum up support for Tony Martin’s nerd-friendly interview show A Quiet Word With… (starts... Read More »
[in which a throwaway moment in a show about something else entirely is hijacked for our own purposes] Early on the first episode of Comedy School (SBS, Saturday’s, 9.45) – a show that follows a group of would-be stand-up comedians at a East Sydney community college course – teacher Rob McHugh writes on the whiteboard... Read More »
So, as a token gesture towards the idea of live entertainment, I went to see The Shambles – Live in a Ballroom a few nights... Read More »
It’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival time again, and that means the streets of Melbourne are filled with…... Read More »
It’s time for a shocking admission: I have close friends who are fans of Sam Simmons. It’s safe to say that we agree to disagree on the quality of his work. But the relevant point here is that my Simmons-loving friends are big fans of live comedy, and they base their love (okay, enjoyment) of... Read More »
… by calling his 2010 Melbourne Comedy Festival show FAIL. Can’t fault him there. (c’mon, we’ve watched all of The Urban Monkey and two years worth of his jTV work. It’s not like he’s going to change his approach... Read More »
Barry Humphries began his first UK tour in over 10 years last Tuesday, appearing at the Royal Albert Hall in Last Night of the Poms, a musical extravaganza in which Sir Les Patterson and Dame Edna Everage performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the 100-or-so-strong Brighton Festival Chorus. The show was originally performed in the early 80s in both the UK and Australia, where it reportedly went down well. Unfortunately for Humphries, the same cannot be said for this... Read More »