Comedy news: Friends' reviews

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Thinking of a Gap Year in 2012 but need to read up on where to go? Look no further than the trials and travails of Sloaney traveller Orlando Charmon, whose new diary has documented all you need to know for a lash-fuelled travel experience.

Described as the ultimate guide to banter, you are invited to join Orlando on his Jager-fuelled hijinks across the globe, getting lashed with Hugo Chaves in Columbia, finding him stuck in prison in Burma, and dreaming about shagging Yoda in Japan along the way.

The posh tongue-in-cheek character whose YouTube video became a huge online hit, racking up almost 4 million views on one video alone – and his new travel diary is a succinctly written satirical take on what has become known as a right off passage for anyone in their late teens.

With his take on the ignorance of some travelers author Matt Lacey touches on some of the inconvenient truths of a gap year experience. From being dragged around 'boring museums' aimlessly seeking enlightenment (and secretly thinking of beer) to the whinging hacks who ask why they don't 'have their own travel blog'.

The book is also well researched, with the story based on real bars and clubs to spark the memories of people who have been there, done that, and got the T-shirt but might want to relive it once in a while. I laughed especially while reading Orlando's account of Byron Bay and remembering my own visit to the notorious Cheeky Monkey's nightclub at the tender age of 18.

What Lacey has managed to achieve with Gap Yah Plannah is to take a look at the whole experience of travelling on a gap year and has mock not just the stereotypical posh traveller, but to a certain extent the whole gap year bubble itself.

Throughout the diary there are subtle hints of the ridiculousness of travelling to find culture, but constantly having the guiding principle as the money – beer ratio, or cash-lash ratio in his mind – which is closer to the truth than many may want to admit. 

Astutely written and well researched Gap Yah Plannah may not help you actually plan anything, but could be considered essential reading for any discerning gap year traveller.

The Gap Yah planner is published by Fourth Estate and is available on Amazon.co.uk 

Tim Clark

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Apart from a few high-profile venues South London is largely quiet when it comes to comedy nights, especially in the forgotten void south of Waterloo. So to learn of a new comedy night Always Be Comedy (ABC) in Kennington establishing itself for putting on a number of talented new comics was refreshing news.

Introducing the house rules in a gameshow style format compere James Gill managed to liven the audience up for the first act while clearing out old rubbish from his house - an assortment of unwanted gifts which looked like a like a recession-hit Christmas included Die Hard 4 and In Gill's own words 'Frankie Boyle's latest hate-ridden tome'.

The first comedian on was Stephen Hill who, hailing from a small corner of Hampshire performed a 15-minute set which held a lot of promise. A skit about the band Busted initially filled me with dread but Hill managed to construct an excellent five minute semi-rant about his hate for the band while his piece on exercise was similarly well constructed.

Other acts from the evening included Kat Brown, Kelly Kingham, Patrick Lynch and Francis Foster, however the other pre-headline highlight (for me at least) was a short set by Mr Susan, whose improvised jokes on the venue's décor allowed him to ease himself into a quirky routine which took everyone by surprise.

However the main plaudits should be saved for the headline act. Walking on stage like a force of nature Naz Osmanoglu is an act who is almost destined to be a household name before the decade is mature enough to enter pre-school.

Having seen his show 1000% awesome at the Edinburgh Fringe I was already aware of most of this set however, with time running low and an audience already shifting in their seats by the time he took to the stage  Osmanoglu took apart his well crafted set as and when the need arose, dipping into his material whenever the audience allowed while spending the rest of his time ad-libbing a better five minutes than many comedians could write.

If anything the only criticism is that the night tried to pack too many comedians into the show and by the time Osmanoglu had taken to the stage most of the audience had already had their weekly fill of mirth.

It was a fitting end to a gig which held some genuine surprises, if compere and organiser Gill can unearth comedy gems on a regular basis then ABC could in time become a stalwart of the South London comedy scene.

Always Be Comedy is appearing at The Tommyfield this Thursday (20th October) with Michael Kossew, Lucy Jagger, Scott Merrington, Leo Kearse, Rachael Firth and headliner: Rob Collins

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Big Fat Gypsy Gangster is, on paper, a pretty ropey proposition. It's a British comedy. Worse, it's a spoof East End geezer film. It focuses on a claret-spitting man mountain called Bulla who's leaving prison and re-entering the real world. And it co-stars Tulisa from N-Dubz and Rufus Hound.

The film suffers from all the problems this description would suggest. But dig between the clichés, the often directionless plot and the sprawling cast, and there are some very funny comedy moments. 

Both the good and the bad appear to spring from the fact that this is very clearly a project of one man: Ricky Grover. He menacingly plays Bulla, and the best funny moments come when the film focuses in on him. His rambling description of his mother is a laugh-out-loud highlight (“She worked down the market pulling stalls. She was seven foot tall”; “I was born on a snooker table...she was two weeks in labour”). 

And there are other little touches that betray Ricky Grover's comedy eye. During the opening credits we see him throw his dwarf henchman through a van window to get in the vehicle in a hurry. It's a two-second shot hidden amongst a dull hard-man montage, but it nicely represents how there is the odd nugget of comedy gold in here.

So there are great lines and moments in the film, but the project also comes across as a singular vision that a script editor wasn't allowed near. The film is framed as being about an American documentary maker who is obsessed with East End gangster films, but it comes off so sneeringly about Americans that it acts more as a study of post-Empire attitudes than a comedy. It could easily have been ditched without taking anything away from the film.

There is also little direction to the story, with an awful lot of telling the audience about Bulla without actually showing us that much about him. Once you've seen one scene of cockney hard men shouting at each other like an episode of EastEnders, you've frankly seen them all. 

The sprawling cast, too, doesn't do the film any favours. How can Rochelle Wiseman, a member of The Saturdays, be unable to convincingly act as a girl band member? Why are Derek Acorah and Rufus Hound here? With an absence of any comic talent, they add up to the distractions rather than the presumed intention of providing a kaleidoscope to Bulla's personality. Even the two most high-profile names in the cast don't bring much to the table: Steven Berkoff's appearance as Bulla's guru is unmemorable, while Peter Capaldi's turn as his therapist doesn't bring much to the table.

The two noble exceptions are Omid Djalili's money man (usefully letting us know that Bulla's assets include a “fish and chip shop stroke shoe repair place”), and Laila Morse, better known as Big Mo off the EastEnders. Her role as Bulla's Aunt Queenie is like seeing Mo let off the leash in some post-watershed version of the soap.

All in all, it's a mixed bag of a film. The irony is that while this film feels like the untampered vision of one man, it would have been better to focus in tighter on the central character himself. But if you can stand the filler, there's some good ideas bubbling around. 

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34 is a strange age for a man to be as angry as Michael J Dolan, and the audience in his show last night certainly seemed to take a while to get a measure of him. 

He's not angry in a juvenile sense, although he certainly rages against the entire world; he doesn't exactly have the world-weariness of an old grump, although there isn't anyone or anything that escapes his anger. 

The result is a spiky hour of laughs that the rambling angry man tag Dolan has taken on doesn't entirely do justice.

Raging comics tend to get a bit boring after a while, and Dolan would be the same were his arguments not so tight. He's a raging id, eloquently giving voice to the bit inside everyone who sometimes really do feel that their friends are energy burglars, or that health-conscious friends have had all the joy sucked out of them.

Even when his arguments seem a bit off-target – the supposed misery of holidays, the pros and cons of Ryan Gosling – they contain enough original material to keep the hour fresh.

This is the sort of show that audience members who have had enough of comedians trying to be upbeat will get the most out of. Having just seen the excellent but unremittingly positive Jason Cook, Dolan was an ideal contrast to provide some rebalancing of mood.

He does lose his direction with his material a few times, and a fairly indifferent audience can't have helped. There does seem to be a lack of self-belief that is leaving him open to getting thrown by people not going with him on certain jokes. 

But there's enough surprising material on offer that he shouldn't be. With more focus on digging up great lines and dumping the less original material – step forward, cat litter jokes – this could be a great hour of anger.

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Robin Ince is something of a quiet giant of the comedy world. He has written for Ricky Gervais and Alastair McGowen and has performed across many formats. He presents a radio show ‘The Infinite Monkey Cage’ with Brian Cox, whom he calls the “sexy face of science”. His show ‘Star Corpse Apple Child’ is similarly all about physics and entropy and stuff...

Ince delivers part comedy tract, part talk about the wonders of science. He encourages us, as others have done, to see the beauty in science. It could be that I merely agree with him, but I liked this show very much.

He muses on the idea that the more you learn the less you know. “You become stupider the older you get”, he says, meaning that with time one comes to realise how small a slice of the entire pie of human knowledge we are aware of, to use his metaphor. Yet he says we should never stop asking questions about everything.

He illustrates his points by quoting Feynman and Sagan straight frombooks, which, as my philosophy tutor once told me, is quite effective. It all sounds very deep and serious, but it isn’t. Rather, it is delivered with professional comedy finesse and witty little stabs at Creationists and their like.

The show had two guests, Jon Ronson, who read from his new book in a very entertaining fashion, and Helen Arney who provides brilliant comedy music interludes. She is very charming (you can also see her filling Carol Vorderman or Rachel Riley's shoes on ‘Comedy Countdown’, another show which is well worth a look, especially if you are a bit of a geek*).

This show is not really like a show so much as a montage of clever comedy entertainments, sort of like Thai food, lots of interesting little bites. However, it is the most enjoyable thing I have seen this year. If you are a thinking man/woman, this is your bit of festival crumpet.

*‘Comedy Countdown’ is Countdown, literally, but with comedians carrying out the roles. It is a bit like being the studio audience for a radio 4 comedy – but clearly Countdown wouldn’t work for radio, unless the listeners wrote it all down... well actually considering the people who watch Countdown... hmmm, I might ask myself why I enjoyed it so much... yes I guess if you are a pedant and like getting a word that nobody thought of you will definitely like this (it’s very funny too).

http://www.robinince.com/

http://helenarney.com/

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Chat shows are tricky things to review because pretty much the whole shebang changes on a daily basis, standing or falling on the guests involved.

The edition of Tom Allen's Afternoon Tea we saw (Thursday 25 August) was a neat case in point. When the guests are up for a bit of a meandering chat about nothing more taxing than cake, then Tom Allen gets to be the consummate host. First guest Sarah Millican was always going to be an easy win for Allen, but the appearance – which ended up running well over the average guest slot – was a masterclass in how to entertain a room while chatting about nothing.

When the guests are keen to talk about something specific – namely, trying to flog their show at all costs – then there's only so much a host can do. Jarlath Regan didn't seem very interested in talking about anything else, which would probably explain why the audience seemed to be more interested in watching Millican go to town on eating her cake. Allen and Millican both attempted to bring some more amiability to the slot, but it's doubtful that Terry Wogan could have tempted Regan into joining in.

These are two opposite poles of chatable guests, but Allen is more than capable of chatting with anyone who is willing to play along. There was an all-too-brief chat with Deanne Smith about international audiences, and despite a slightly odd start with Benet Brandreth (in retrospect, we reckon it could have just been two conversational tigers getting the measure of each other's chat) there were three great guests on offer here.

So that's the guests, what of the host? You would expect Tom Allen to have an early Graham Norton sort of vibe – and he does – but it is mottled with an unexpected streak of Eddie Izzard. That's partly in the delivery and mannerisms, but there's a willingness to vanish into his own little world ('all this social interaction is great. I didn't have much when I was younger. I told all the other children I was an emperor') and a real inviting warmth with his audience interaction.

The only quibbles are with timing – while no-one was contesting the triple-sized slot that Millican ended up having, trying to squeeze in three other guests just didn't fit – and with the enforced conversation starters. Allen is best when he is just having a rambling chat, and there was the odd conversational segueway that felt a tad clunky.

That, though, is really nitpicking: the standard of the guests being booked has been high and this feels like just about the most natural format possible for Allen. With a bit more consistency in drawing out the best of his guests, it would be great to see this show return next year. 

Tom Allen's Afternoon Tea is at the Gilded Balloon until Sunday, get tickets here

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We had originally written a five-star review for Men of War, as their show included the funniest and best handled accident we've seen at this year's Fringe. 

Except it would appear to not be an accident. Chortle saw it happen. Two other people we've spoken to have seen the same thing. And acted corpsing – however wonderfully convincing it is – is a hollow business.

It's a shame, but the convincingness of the supposed fail does point out some of the best things about the troupe. They can act, and vanish completely into their clearly-defined characters: Stephen Harvey's rambling retiring headmaster, Cariad Lloyd – fresh from her Best Newcomer nomination at the Fringe awards for her solo work – as everything. They know how to work together for the laughs, without vanishing into sketch troupe mush: a sketch on returning drunks that takes an unexpected turn gives them all clear laughs of their own. And their timing and reactions are absolutely spotless: what could easily have been a non-sketch about how daytime TV presenters introduce their guests was made into one of the show highlights by Lloyd and Gareth Kane's silent expressions to Harvey's speech.

There are definitely well-written sketches here, too: they appear at first glance to be old staples, from shopping channels to crime dramas, but every one has something fresh in it. 

The one sketch that doesn't quite manage to do that is a needlessly recurring sketch about online paedophiles. It's not very funny to begin with (NOTE TO ALL COMEDIANS: no-one under the age of 40 has ever written 'l8' in a message) and its constant reprise seems like the work of a lesser sketch troupe.

But that's one vague dud in an hour of otherwise flawless comedy that whipped by so fast, we assumed they'd early. We're looking forward to what Men of War do next. That just hopefully won't include them finding their work quite so funny.

Men of War at the Pleasance Courtyard until Sunday, but tickets here

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We were rather excited about Jessica Fostekew's debut full-length show at Edinburgh after chatting with her last month. The promoted message of the show – being posh but slumming it – sounded both original for a debut show and also very well-suited to an Edinburgh audience.

But there were two shows going on here. The other show was more familiar for a young comic: how Fostekew relates to the world, and how she is learning to be her own person in it.

Both shows are good, and are rock-solid for confidence, delivery and timing. There's also a particularly fine line in misdirection. But it would have been nice to hold tighter of the rich seam that being a Luxury Tramp opens up, as that was where the best material seemed to lie.

Jokes about her trampy actions clashing with her classy mother provided some of the biggest laughs of the show, headlining a great roster of stories about her family. 

It would have been good to hear more from other such starting points, like the hinted-at dinner combo of Dom Perrignon and a kebab that we didn't hear any more about. It sounds like there's some great anecdotes tucked away that we're not hearing, and Fostekew works best when she sounds like a gossip. Drunk stories with that posh edge could work really well. 

There were a few stylistic annoyances – the frequent impressions punctuating the set seemed to pacify the upbeat audience's mood on a regular basis – but Fostekew is otherwise great at working with the audience and taking them with her.

It almost seems a shame that the great idea of Luxury Tramp has now been used, but if she can find the right theme and have the confidence to do something beyond the standard debut stylings, it's possible Fostekew could do something truly amazing next year. 

Jessica Fostekew is at the Gilded Balloon at 7pm until Sunday. 

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How good is good? And what does it mean to be truly bad? James Sherwood’s show I Fed my Best Friend Her Favourite Cow asks some pretty big, fundamental questions. Its an ambitious undertaking for a mid-afternoon comedy show and one that the comedian approaches in affable i style.

The set itself is enjoyable but a little slow to start, and the premise could use some clarity. For the first ten minutes of the set the performance feels uncomfortable. That said, as soon as Sherwood gets behind the piano a sense of confidence and direction washes into the room.

He looks to the greats and not-so-greats of pop to provide guidance in his journey to understand how to be good. In the process Sherwood’s quirky observations highlight the lyrical silliness of some classic songs, gently poking fun at the pretensions of pop.

Sherwood’s obvious musical talent is best showcased when he gets to work on his own compositions. Tender, absurd, lyrical and ridiculous Sherwood’s songs are wonderful character portraits that sit somewhere between Roald Dahl and the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby. It’s a pity that there are only two such songs in the set – more please.

The audience is on side, thanks to Sherwood’s pleasant persona and genial delivery – yet lurking below the amiable bluster are incisive one-liners and some devilishly acerbic asides. This blend of light and dark is highlighted by his enjoyably introspective ’50 reasons why I’m a good person’ and ’50 reasons why I’m a bad person’ sequence which blends personable self-deprecation with audience interaction.

Nonetheless, it feels that the lofty ambitions of the show’s premise are never quite met and the questions raised are danced around, gingerly, and never quite answered. Even the show’s title ‘I fed My Best Friend Her Favourite Cow’ is offhandly referenced, and the gruesome ramifications never fully explored.

 However there may be extenuating circumstances. The show performance reviewed (09/08/2011) comes the day after the worst night of the recent riots, and the shadow of these events looms uncomfortably. Sherwood makes no reference at all to the events – an understandable omission but an uneasy one given the show’s central themes.

Deciding whether or not to reference the events in his set must have been difficult and choosing to go ahead as normal is a valid choice. But the key premise of the set is an exploration of morality, and the mass looting and destruction of the previous night highlights the insubstantialness the set’s content.

That’s not necessarily a criticism of Sherwood as a comedian, but rather of myself as a reviewer who has perhaps allowed the context of the previous night to influence my own perception of the set.

There are however plenty of chuckles and Sherwood really shines when things get musical – particularly towards the end of the set when his Carmina Burana/Sound of Music mash-up hints at a gleefully sinister darkness lacking elsewhere in the set.

James Sherwood - I Fed My Best Friend Her Favourite Cow is on at the Gilded Balloon Teviot @ 3:15pm. For more information click here.

Want to experience the Fringe yourself? Travel with East Coast and you can be in Scotland in no time - visit eastcoast/edinburgh

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Like all the best comedy, Brett Goldstein’s show isn’t just funny, it’s educational. Granted I can’t divulge most of what I learned due to legal reasons and the rest I’m going to keep until I seriously want to put someone off their dinner

Call me naïve but I had never given all that much consideration to the kind of residue a strip club pole might accumulate.

Brett Goldstein Grew Up in a Strip Club sees the comedian relive an eventful year spent running a stripperia in Marbella on behalf of a midlife-crisis-stricken father. Fresh-faced, newly graduated and wide-eyed with naivety, Goldstein is promptly abandoned in Spain and plunged into a world of topless dancers and toilet cleaning.

From observations on strained family dynamics to the cast of grotesque cariacatures, the story provides a rich and varied source of comedy to supplement the inevitable (but very funny) bodily function jokes.

Plus it’s a good yarn, and one that Goldstein has no doubt recounted on many occasions – so it’s a credit to the lively, assured performance that it feels like the first time he’s ever told it. Armed with bags of physical energy and sparkly-eyed enthusiasm, Goldstein has the crowd rapt.

At times the line between stand up comedy and gonzo, confessional journalism all but disappears, thanks to Goldstein’s eye for detail. And the raw material is so compelling that even without the jokes the audience would be gripped.

There are laughs though, and plenty of them. Lurching from awkward giggles to high farce, there’s not a moment on this narrative rollercoaster that leaves you feeling nothing.

But what raises this above an entertaining tale well told is the underlying thoughtfulness. Goldstein may have spent a year among Armenian assassins, Irish gangsters, lesbian accountants and ladies with impressive upper body strength, but he doesn’t appeared to have let the experience numb him to the point of cynicism.

He uses the story as a platform for meditations of the human condition, steering an intelligent course between the potential pitfalls of painful political correctness and arsehole idiocy. He ends the show with a wry reflection on the similarities between strip clubs and the comedy circuit.

Given the show’s title, I had feared an hour of stag-night-friendly boob jokes and that tired ‘ironic’ misogyny that the comedy circuit seems to be cool with these days – but that is to vastly underestimate Goldstein’s wit and humanity. Funny, perceptive and a great storyteller – not to be missed.

Brett Goldstein Grew Up In A Stripclub is on at the Pleasance Dome at 5:30pm. Click here for more information.

Want to experience the Fringe yourself? Travel with East Coast and you can be in Scotland in no time - visit eastcoast/edinburgh