Reviews & features: Comedy

Scotrail announce expanded Edinburgh Festival 2012 train timetable

Additional night services to Glasgow, Dundee, Perth and North Berwick

New late-night train services to and from Edinburgh will make it easier for those outside the city to visit the 2012 festival. In Glasgow, there will be a Fringe box office at Queen Street station from July 27. Tickets bought online in advance can be…

How to visit the Edinburgh Festival

A guide to getting the best from the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe

The phrase 'planned itinerary' might might be at odds with the spirit of chaos and wild abandon you associated with your visit to the Edinburgh Festival. The brutal truth is that shows do sell out, so book tickets to things you definitely want to see.

Bob and Jim - Go

Top-notch buffoonery and lecherous lookalikes

After indulging in some Modern Urges last time around, now the truly big and daft Bob and Jim are imploring us to Go. No doubt deliberately, this is a title which admittedly could be read in a couple of contrasting ways. These classically cockney gents…

Obsession - A Life with Magic

Winning performance Ian Kendall, whose obsession with magic stems from Asperger’s Syndrome

Ian Kendall sits front and centre as the audience files in, greeting everyone in turn and encouraging people to fill up the front rows. He throws in a few neat tricks while people are still entering; it’s this casual attitude to performing a set is what…

Patrick Combs: the man who successfully cashed a junk mail cheque

Combs' show, Man 1 Bank 0, tells the story of how he cashed a fake $95,093.35 cheque

Bankers are being prosecuted in Ireland and hated world-round. The shame of this is that all this evil bank behaviour is overshadowing just how fun bankers are. Or more accurately, funny. Banks are incredibly funny. You just have to know how to bring…

How to find work at the Edinburgh Festival 2011

How to find a job at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011

Thousands of people descend upon Edinburgh at this time of year for the start of festival season and now is the time to begin your search for a job within the buzzing excitement. In a study carried out last year it found that 71% of volunteers had an…

'Pedantic overlord' Stephen Carlin draws out the details of his show

Board Meeting: Stephen Carlin

Stephen Carlin took 25 minutes to draw his whiteboard. It's not a criticism, but symptomatic of a show born from the brain of (and we're quoting) "a pedantic overlord" which has won him high favour on the comedy circuit with its invention and picked…

Reginald D Hunter - Tall tales

Reginald D Hunter is a giant of UK stand-up. But, as he tells Jay Richardson, he’s still trying to escape the sins of his father ‘I have always found Edinburgh intense, in my soul and in my belly. You can’t say there ain’t tension in my shows. It’s…

Hey, Piano Bar Lady!

Musical comedy taking it back to 80s New York via New Zealand

New Zealand singer Linn Lorkin is perched at her keyboard, tousled red hair, whimsical expression and billowing patchwork dress suggesting she’s quite the eccentric dame. Now in its second year at the Fringe, her one-woman biographical show is a…

Laura Solon: The Owl of Steven

A curious show about owls and oddballs

It seems like a very long time ago since Laura Solon popped up to Edinburgh with a hastily rewritten show and astonished the comedy world by walking away with the last ever Perrier Award. Five years on and Solon is getting into her stride with narrative…

Meow Meow – Feline Intimate

The post modern showgirl delivers a unique type of cabaret

With more purr than a panther, divine diva Meow Meow slinks back to this year’s Fringe with her unique brand of kamikaze cabaret kitsch. With sell-out shows around the world and the likes of David Bowie on her fan list, Meow Meow’s hypnotic performance…

Matthew Crosby

Slightly stilted affair from an otherwise very funny man

Given the majesty of this year’s main Pappy’s show, we can surely forgive Matthew Crosby (the small, bespectacled, beardy one of the trio) if he’s not firing on the same number of cylinders that powered his 2011 solo debut. Even so, he is able to…

Magnus Betnér Live

One of Sweden's finest comic exports prefers to look on the bleak side of life

In one shaven-headed, tattooed man appears to be encapsulated the downbeat, morose nature of the Scandic peoples. Letting us know that everything he says on stage is absolutely true, who couldn’t feel worried about his suicidal thoughts? But it’s ok, he…

Panga

Well-acted comedy lacking in subtlety and originality

Lucy’s life is in a rut: she drinks too much, her flat is a state and her dull, grey-suited boyfriend Gordon no longer shares her fun-loving, hedonistic attitude. The strain on their relationship intensifies with the arrival of Panga – a drinking…

Martin Mor: A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday

Infectiously amusing and sociable stand-up show

A tattooed darts player. A hairy biker. A rapist Santa Claus. These are past comparisons used to describe Northern Irishman Martin Mor, which he openly lists with a kind of teasing glee. Snap judgments are the exact reactions Mor tries to dismantle over…

Jim Jefferies talks offensiveness and sobriety ahead of 2012 Fringe show Fully Functional

Aussie comedian on bad reviews, Fully Functional and US sitcom Legit

Jim Jefferies used to do a joke about getting a lift from a ‘tiny, hot, young girl’. He couldn’t believe his luck when she offered him a ride back into Los Angeles after they’d just spent the day working on a film-set. Before driving off in her…

Funny girls Ford & Akram Bamp up the action at this year's Edinburgh Fringe

From Humdinger to Bamp: Louise and Yasmine show their Boosh side

Anyone appearing at the Fringe for the first time, be that as audience member or stage act, might be shocked to discover some of the claustrophobic, sweaty hellholes that we like to call performance spaces during August. One of last year’s comedy double…

First raft of shows from 2012 Edinburgh Fringe programme

Stewart Lee, Jimmy Carr, Rhod Gilbert and more to appear at Fringe 2012

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has revealed around 60 shows to take place at this year's event in August. The announcement comes weeks before the full line-up announcement on Thu 31 May. Comedy shows form the bulk of the latest show announcements…

Music Box

Mash-up improv troupe never hit a true stride

Maybe it was a lack of imagination on the audience’s part (a musical called Fish set in a chip shop doesn’t seem to be in keeping with the mash-up improv spirit), but this troupe never hit a true stride, going round in circles when they chance upon a…

Laura Solon

Impressive but patchy follow-up to almighty glory

When Laura Solon first burst into the Fringe psyche in 2005, it was under the most trying of circumstances. Having just split from her comedy partner, she had two months to come up with a completed script. That show, Kopfraper’s Syndrome, won her the…

David O'Doherty

The Dublin comic has wooed us all down the years and it was only a matter of time before he’d do the same thing to some judging panel or other. And so it was last August when he waltzed off with what has proved to be the final ever if.comedy main prize.

Clever Peter

Rude sketch troupe sticking eggs into the appropriate baskets

Despite a widely praised debut, the thrusting chaps of sketch troupe Clever Peter are back at the Fringe with greater ambition, tighter writing and less sexual gratuity, if not crudity. Dental torture and primate anal rape are the abiding memories of…

Edinburgh Festival comedy highlights for a fiver

Ooh, a Fringe in a credit crunch. It’ll be interesting times for all this year, but if you get in quick you can catch some of the best acts in exchange for a mere fiver. We’ve selected fifty of the finest shows you can see for the price of a…

Russell Kane

Putting the accent on originality

Plucking his theme from a review he received last year, Russell Kane decided to take on criticism and explore the notion of stereotype and cliché in comedy. A risky gambit, as it would be all too easy to simply slip into those stereotypes – the Essex…