Comedy news: Such Small Portions's blog

Altitude, the annual comedy festival in the Alps has been in full swing throughout this week as many of the UK's favourite comedians head to the posh ski resort of Meribel for what is one of the most unique comedy festivals in the world.

The brainchild of snowboarding junkies Marcus Brigstocke and Andrew Maxwell, the festival is now in its third year and, though ski resorts are not normally known for their ability to harbour new talent, Altitude is building a reputation as the place to come to one of two of the comedy circuit's hottest new acts months before they hit the Fringe.

Last year Lady Carol was one of the festival's highlights with her unique style of musical cabaret, (Later that year she was ‘discovered’ at the Fringe ) this year it was the turn of Abandoman to take the festival by storm.

Booked at the last minute due to Rich Hall pulling out the improvisational rap duo who consist of Rob Broderick and James Hancox have only been together for a mere nine months, but they are already gaining plaudits from some of the biggest names in the comedy world.

The Abandoman act is made up of a series of improvised rap songs built from audience interaction. Whether it is ‘what’s in your pocket?’ - a song where Broderick wanders the crowd rapping about various unusual things sprung from people's garments - to a love song which picks two random members of the opposite sex and matches them with their dreams, Broderick has an inate ability to conjure up an improvised musical delight as if nothing.

And when you have Marcus Brigstocke as a willing beat-boxer you know the only way is up. The last time SSP saw Brigstocke so readily help out onstage he was being a groupie for Jarvis Cocker at Latitude, this time it was the tiny venue of Jacks Bar which saw the left-wing Argumental presenter take to the stage with his vocal equivalent of a magicians hat.

Speaking to SSP Broderick said: “We we’re walking down the road in Glasgow last week and were asked if we were free to perform in France. Next thing we knew we were here."

The accolades have certainly been coming in. Al Murray was good enough to stop the pair in the street to say how impressive it was 'to throw so many balls in the air and catch them again' while Maxwell and Brigstocke have been singing the pairs praises.

Expect big things from Abandoman in 2010 - and an interview on these pages in the coming week.

Coming up next week on SSP. Photo galleries from Altitude and interviews with Stuart Goldsmith, Dan Antopolski, Andrew Maxwell and Abandoman. Stay tuned.

Andrew Mickel, SSP TV critic

You may have seen Lizzie and Sarah (If you haven't, catch it here)  last weekend on BBC Two. However, you quite probably didn't, considering it was scheduled at 11.45 on Saturday night. Even the BBC's own comedy blog was rather desperately pointing out to people that they could watch it on iPlayer, considering there was naff all chance that anyone would watch it live.

That's a shame, as it was sweet and sad, triangulated somewhere between the bleakness of Nighty Night, the middle-aged fragility of Jam & Jerusalem, and the sisterhood-rises-up-in-arms vibe of Thelma & Louise.

It adds to the litany of dumped female-led comedy of late, joining the cancelled Pulling and Jam & Jerusalem. All three had something distinctive to say about women, were touchingly true to life, and above all else, were very, very funny.

Women in TV comedy are starting to look like an endangered species. So aside from all the stars of said shows, here's who it would be nice to see moved from the fringes of broadcasting and put centre stage.

The panel show guest
Sarah Millican
Currently in Sarah Millican's Support Group and 7 Day Sunday
It's been a common and completely on-the-nose criticism of panel shows that women are so rare that what is left smells a bit like a boy's changing room. Sarah Millican is warm, funny, and good at bouncing off other people – exactly what the shows need. She's got topical comedy pedigree after her time on 7 Day Sunday on Radio Five Live, and a successful appearance on The Bubble showed she can do telly.

The panel show presenter
Victoria Coren
Currently in Only Connect
Panellists are one thing, but a female presenter would really show that telly can still recognise a funny woman when it sees one. Victoria Coren has made a name for herself as the school marm host of minor quiz hit Only Connect, but she's also great in the role because she's darned funny – even with no comedic panellists to work with or audience to feed off, she's still hilarious. Plus she did that great BBC Four spoof, A History of Corners, on Screenwipe. More of the funniest Coren, please.

The break out to mainstream star
Josie Long
Currently guesting in all manner of 'things'
Whenever Josie Long guests on panel shows she is whimsical and enthusiastic, like Paul Merton was before he got a bit arch. Still, it's never as funny as her sweet stand-up routine, and it looks like she'd need something else to get that level of funny out of her. Strangely her most successful TV appearances were on the UK and Australian editions of ITV improv show Thank God You're Here. Tap into that vein, strip away the hipster talk of knitting her own cardigans, and her sunny disposition could conceivably help her go mainstream. Like Michael McIntyre, but not awful.

The glossy American import
Tina Fey
Currently in 30 Rock
There are approximately eight articles proclaiming how great 30 Rock is per actual viewer of the show in the UK. Its first series was shown on Five, but in a late night spot where the audience dwindled to naught. It seems to have a bit of reputation as being telly for people who watch Mad Men – sure, it's great, but it's too clever for the mainstream. But it's packed with enough quickfire jokes that with a bit of decent promotion, a terrestrial channel could easily pick this up and make it a hit in double quick time.

The dark comedy star
Alice Lowe
Last seen in Beehive
E4 sketch show Beehive wasn't great, and considering it was a slight, glossy affair, it seemed a strange place to see Alice Lowe. She could easily become the new Julia Davis, as they (normally) both specialise in character comedy that is normally prefaced in descriptions by the word 'dark'. She's not really recaptured the giddy heights of her time in the various Garth Merenghi shows, but given the right vehicle, it would be good to see Lowe back on telly.

The homely BBC One Sunday evening comedy
Liza Tarbuck
Currently on Radio 2
Someone on the radio has obviously realised Tarbuck is hilarious – she's due to take over from Jonathan Ross on Radio 2. But why stop there? She was warm and fun on the Big Breakfast, and merrily feisty on Linda Green. It doesn't really matter what the format is, just get her back on telly, please.

The brassy chat show host
Natalie Casey
Currently in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
For those who only know Casey from BBC Three's perennial Two Pints, this may seem a strange suggestion. But Casey did sterling presenting work anchoring shows on MTV about a decade ago, as well as co-hosting early Big Brother's Little Brother. She's bolshy, chatty and amiable, and knows how to work an audience. She could easily make a BBC Three chat show work where Lilly Allen and Johnny Vaughan have both failed miserably.

The voice over
Emma Kennedy,
Currently on Twitter, prolifically

Kennedy's voice is probably familiar, even if her face isn't – she's often on the radio, and Richard Herring's podcast – while also doing some TV work, like The Smoking Room. She also co-narrated The Comic Side of 7 Days. These days, 90 per cent of all voice over work on TV seems to go to Mitchell or Webb. It would be good to get a bit of gender balance for the ears as well as for the eyes.

In the continuing series of blogs looking into the world of British comedy TV, Andrew Mickel sums up the potential of the new BBC3 show Dappers...

BBC Three have announced a new comedy drama pilot. It might be good, it might be bad. The details we know so far certainly don't help to work out whether we have a Being Human or a Phoo Action on our hands... 

BAD OMEN

“BBC Three today announce casting for a brand new comedy-drama pilot, Dappers”

BBC Three managed to make one good series of Being Human, complete with snappy dialogue and grounded plots. But the second series managed to include the best character for no more than, oh, five minutes (Nina), drivel on about God a lot, and keep the main characters apart from each other when their chit chats used to be the best part of the show. Take this together with the rest of their current comedy output and, well, it's not sounding good, is it? Also: TERRIBLE title. 

GOOD OMEN

“from Mamma Mia! writer Catherine Johnson”

But wait! Because this sounds very good. Not good because she wrote Mamma Mia!, but good because she did an episode of the cruelly underrated Liza Tarbuck vehicle, Linda Green. Plus she used to be a scriptwriter on Byker Grove. The woman is the living embodiment of comedy drama. 

BAD OMEN

“Starring Lenora Crichlow (Being Human, Material Girl) and Ty Glaser (Above Suspicion, The IT Crowd)”

Not that I have anything against either of them – Lenora Crichlow is scrappily very funny – but they're both younger than me, and I don't want to watch that. 

GOOD OMEN

Other cast include “Darren Boyd from Smack The Pony and Olivia Poulet from The Thick of It”

Both of whom are outright hilarious. Although why name Smack The Pony for Darren Boyd? He was far better and more used more recently in Green Wing, being all lovely and tall and blonde. More of that, please. 

BAD OMEN

“who have moved to Bristol for its laid-back charm”

It's a common move, that, as us uptight Londoners can't resist the irresistibly laid-back charm of Massive Attack and Holby City. 

GOOD OMEN...

Also stars “Eddie Large, Little and Large...”

Who always seems quite game for a laugh... 

...BAD OMEN

“...and Gwen Taylor, Barbara”

...who doesn't, as she almost exclusively plays no-nonsense (read: rude) Yorkshirewoman. 

UNFATHOMABLE OMEN

“Damien Timmer, executive producer for Mammoth Screen, adds: "We hope Dappers puts Bristol on the TV comedy map for some time to come!"”

Uh, Skins, anyone? Or Being Human, for that matter, seeing as the BBC insist on classifying that as comedy? 

ATTROCIOUS OMEN

“These Dappers share laughs, banter and bust-ups with a chirpy resolve and two fingers to the snot-bags who've never dreamed.”

So it's going on the Phoo Action pile after all. Oh well, never mind

In a world stuffed with ever more banal forms of comedy panel shows, Andrew Mickel breathes an online sigh of relief as he enjoy U.S. show Infomania's fresh take on satirising the news

Is there a more tired format on British telly than the satirical panel show? There's a reason that old episodes get so readily repeated on Dave: they're the same jokes every week.

Start with a round about the Tories or Labour doing badly in the polls, prefacing some jokes about David Cameron being posh or Alistair Darling having funny eyebrows; Andy Parsons stiltedly tells a joke that did the rounds online about three months ago; a questionable survey discovers people in Scotland are more likely to be vegetarians; a token light-hearted story about a cat from Cheshire who eats cheese; applause applause, job done. That's 'the establishment' served its ass on a plate for the week, apparently. 

It was a sorry state of affairs when Russell Howard's Good News on BBC Three proved popular enough to get two more series commissioned, despite having exactly the same sort of half-heartedly vicious jokes as its terrestrial brethren only with a heartwarming video of a kitten at the end in some misguided attempt to call itself upbeat.

Too much stuff happens in the public eye these days to cover such a predictable agenda at such a slow pace, and until someone makes the Thick of It on a weekly basis, no regular British satire show seems to have grasped that yet. So where else can you go? One made-up word: Infomania. 

This is perhaps the point where you will see that it is a web-based TV show and give up on the idea, but hold on to your hats: this is a web show with production values. The presenters have clear skin and ironed shirts. The graphics flash and swoop like a Japanese news bulletin. And above all else, the jokes are actually funny. Actual, laugh-out-loud funny, putting the LOL into LOLSATIRE. Just because this show successfully maps the online world as well it does the offline one, it doesn't mean that it has to look like a YouTube video.

It also goes blisteringly fast, managing to pack in about eight times as many jokes as the average episode of the Daily Show. Now, I'm pulling a mild sleight of hand here: Infomania isn't supposed to be a news-based show, really, as it also packs in everything from music to magazines, and claiming it is supposed to be satirical is also a bit of a stretch.

But it still manages to get more in about actual news and media – from how the US healthcare debate is being framed, to the quietly shocking ways that women and gay people http://current.com/items/92121385_thats-gay-ac-kalypse-now.htm get portrayed on television – than any other programme currently manages.

Three major downsides: It's probably best known for Target: Women  (“Yoghurt: the official food of women!”) which is barely ever on anymore. Then there is the programme deadweight in the form of Ben Hoffman, the programme's own Andy Parsons. And lastly, this is American, albeit far less US-centric than one might think.

Still, if it's a choice between this and another set of jokes about how Scottish Gordon Brown is from Scotland, I know what I'll be watching...

New episodes of Infomania are available on Friday mornings on current.com/infomania and Current TV, Fridays, 10pm.

Postscript
I forgot to say that the barely-remembered The Comic Side of 7 Days  was the best thing that BBC Three ever commissioned and if they'd bring back then British news satire would be single-handedly saved.

Andrew Mickel, TV Blogger, Such Small Portions

With all eyes of the BBC Strategic Review focused on the fate of 6 Music (read the Such Small Portions piece on that here), some of the other changes have gone somewhat under reported. 

Take the refocus plans for BBC Four: It will screen less comedy and entertainment in favour of more arts and music. The plan says instead there should be more comedy on to BBC Two. Considering Two's current comedy roster includes how-did-this-shocker-get-such-a-good-cast The Persuasionists and the-sort-of-thing-that-is-probably-going-to-get-moved-to-BBC-One Miranda, it's a much-needed shot in the arm.

But will the programming realistically be as daring on BBC Two as it is on a channel that doesn't have to worry about the mass audience? That seems unlikely when you think about many of BBC Four's slowburner hits. The Thick Of It is the obvious example, but there's also Charlie Brooker's expanding Screenwipe empire (indeed, his entire on-screen presence started on predecessor channel BBC Knowledge), Shooting Stars heir We Need Answers, and the dizzyingly funny three-part TV series of Cowards (all on YouTube here, helpfully) to name but a few.

A few months ago I spoke with Harry Venning, creator of the social work-based Clare in the Community cartoon strip and co-creator with David Ramsden of the Radio 4 show. He told me that the BBC have been interested in transferring the show to TV – but only if they re-wrote it in a different setting, like a school or a hospital.

Doing the show the way it was actually written is exactly the sort of thing that BBC Four could conceivably do, particularly considering they've already shown the Jo Brand care home comedy, Getting On. If they won't, will BBC Two?

Sure, BBC Four comedy hasn't all been great. Anyone who suffered through Marcus Brigstocke's painful impression of Jon Stewart on the Late Edition can testify to that. But as the last year has seen Channel 4's new comedy output seemingly fall to naught and the once-underrated BBC Three live down to its reputation, it seems that the cause of daring telly comedy has taken a major hit.

In the latest installment of our series about the lives of travelling comics we ask Tiernan Douieb about his experiences of Leigh Delaware on the M4 and the rap battles with Tom Craine.

On The Road, By Tiernan Douieb

‘Why don’t we do it in the road?’ sang Paul McCartney. The answer of course, is because there are high chances you would get hit by an oncoming vehicle. If by some chance you were lucky to escape such consequences, the whole ordeal would be less than comfortable due to the tarmac or gravelly road service digging or rubbing against backs or knees depending on your preference.

I know roads pretty well. You might say I know roads more than the average Joe. Considering that a lot of Joe’s don’t work on the roads and some do, this average may be inaccurate. I would say using the median or the mode I definitely do know far more about roads than the average Joe, but using the arithmetic mean I don’t because it is very mean and always proves me wrong.

Every week, in my mission to provide mirth to audiences around the country I travel shedloads of miles. That is an official amount. Already this week (and its on Tuesday as I write this. And I start the week on a Monday, not a Wednesday so I’m not cheating or anything) I have done more miles than Miles Davies, Miles Crawford and the town of Miles, Iowa put together and slung on a buddy road trip film called Miles and Miles in Miles. Were my carbon footprint to go into a JD Sports, it’d ask for fairly large shoe and the staff would be as confused as they usually are when anyone asks them anything, as they’re idiots.

‘Do I enjoy all the driving? ‘ I hear you cry. Well firstly, stop crying. That’s far to over emotional and I worry you have a hormone problem. Secondly, yes and no. No, because there’s nothing to make you feel more sad and lonely than being able to hold hour-long conversations about favourite service stations (a toss up between the M6 toll services as it feels like your own private station due to the lack of people, or Leigh Delaware on the M4), preferred routes and whether or not anyone cares about average speed cameras.

No one’s life should involve such dull misuse of language. Then there are all the time where the last thing I’ve felt like doing is driving the breadth of the country to get home, resorting to keeping myself alive with the levels of caffeine that could wake the dead. I’ve recently become horribly addicted to sugar free Red Bull, a drink that once the sugar is removed, contains no natural ingredients whatsoever.  Add to that all the traffic, road closures, flat tyres and other variants and it can be mega turd-like at times.

Then the yes bit.  Small yes bits first – I always get home right to my door; if its cold weather then my trusty VW Polo keeps me warm and dry instead of freezing on a train platform; and I have vast amounts of gadgets that make my mobile office feel as comfortable as possible. But better than all of that is giving lifts to other acts. I have had a lot of fun listening to others tales of the circuit or life in general, joking about the gig we’ve been to, or are returning from,  or swapping names of bands with various other museos in the comedy world.

Special mentions go to the ‘dodging the cats eye’ game that Dave Haddingham told me about during my first 12 months of gigging, which I still play to this day, and the endless road trip rap battles that myself and Tom Craine take part in, which all stemmed from the day we tried to shout insults at the M4. Not forgetting of course all those passengers that bring satsumas, sweets and even (in the case of Andrew O’Neill) veggie sausage sandwiches.

I cant really complain about it. I love scooting up and down the motorways, seeing parts of the country I would never get to see otherwise. Ultimately I’d find it tough to survive without my little car. Not least because they don’t have pavement for pedestrians on the motorways.

On The Road: With Keith Farnan