✭✭✭✭ Most familiar for playing the title role in ‘I Daniel Blake’, Dave Johns is less well known for being a stand-up comedian, in spite of doing it for much of the last 40 years. On his opening night in Edinburgh he ably demonstrated why it shouldn’t have taken a Ken Loach film to bring […]
Festival
Review: Hal Cruttenden – It’s Best You Hear It From Me
✭✭✭✭ One of several ‘work-in-progress’ shows that premiered at the Fringe-lite festival last year, It’s Best You Hear It From Me returns as the finished product this year. The main changes aren’t the result of audience feedback – last year’s show could easily have gone on the road with no alterations – but instead come […]
Review: Charlie Williams – Eh up, Me Old Flowers
✭✭ Billed as the Charlie Williams Story, this is the story of the first black comedian to become a household name in the UK. Sadly, caught between being a This is Your Life style biography and an attempt to view 1970s comedy through a 2020s lens, it fails to deliver. We see him visited by someone from […]
Review: Tim Key – Mulberry
✭✭✭✭✭ Tim Key had the showbiz world at his feet, about to appear on Pointless Celebrities and also lined up for the part of a paedophile in an episode of Vera. And then the country went into lockdown, and now two years later he’s back playing student union gigs wearing a tracksuit. Welcome to the […]
Byrne and Bishop to play brain tumour gig
Festival news: Jason Byrne, John Bishop, Jessica Fostekew, Rhys Nicholson, Michael Akadiri, Phil Wang and Maisie Adam are confirmed to appear in this year’s Big Brain Tumour Benefit. Taking place at Underbelly’s biggest venue – the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, McEwan Hall – the entire box office income is going to The Brain Tumour Charity, the […]