British Comedy

The week's best comedy on TV, radio and streaming

Benefit gig heads this week's picks of the best live comedy

The week's best comedy on TV and radio

Queer comedy showcase and the best of the week's best live comedy

The best of the week's comedy on TV, radio and on demand

Tickets for Taskmaster star's Wobservations on sale now

Edinburgh Comedy Award winner and Taskmaster star Sam Campbell is to embark on his first UK tour.

Tickets have gone on sale today for more than 20 dayes of the show, Wobservations, in February and March next year.

His promoters say: ‘Basically, we keep him in a metal crate. Once everyone is settled and the house lights go down, we will let him loose on to the stage.

‘It is our understanding that his comedy moments will dazzle you. His prefrontal cortex is larger than you might expect.

‘When he's done/empty we shove him back in the crate and you will be allowed to return to your home. How does all that sound?’

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2863314

Manually copying this over. The bot will be posting these "the week's best..." articles from Chortle starting next week (you'll note it posted the live one but not TV this week - I made a tweak then livened it up, so only the article I fixed came through). They publish them on Sundays, so two bot posts from next Sunday. Feel free to block the bot if you don't want to see them. It should only pick up these particular articles, but they change the wording so they're unnecessarily tricky to pick up. If it posts the wrong thing or misses one or the other, let me know.

The week's best comedy on TV, radio and streaming

As do Adam Rowe and Munya Chawawa in this week's live comedy picks

It’s best to go out while people are still saying, 'It's great', rather than, 'It's not as good as it used to be'

Bob Mortimer has been replaced at the last minute by TV comic Lee Mack for his TV show Gone Fishing as the comedian had fallen ill with shingles

The new season of Brassic will be landing on Sky Max at 10pm on Thursday 28th September.

And if you're wanting to blitz through all the new episodes at once, you'll be pleased to know you can - as all eight episodes of the comedy series will be made available straight away on demand.

Many of the usual cast will be returning for the fifth season, and some brand new faces will also join the Brassic season 5 fun, such as Bhavna Limbachia as Meena and Camille Cottin as Fiona Frank.

Of course, there's a major absence in season 5, as Damien Molony announced he was leaving the show last year. He was part of the series's main cast since it began in 2019 - but after the shock ending of season 4, Molony won't be returning as Vinnie's best friend Dylan.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2698776

Garth Marenghi has announced 18 extra dates in his book tour to promote his latest horror novel, Incarcerat.

Matthew Holness’s alter-ego is publishing the follow-up up to his Sunday Times bestseller, Terrortome, on October 31.

Now promoters Live Nation have unveiled 18 new tour dates in February and March, following the success of an initial 14 gigs, starting in Leeds on the eve of publication.

Speaking to press ahead of the launch of Ghosts season 5, co-creator and star Mathew Baynton said: "It's fair to say there's a couple of backstories that the audience will have been waiting for.

"There are still some unsolved mysteries and this is the final series – and we wouldn't leave our audience with those unanswered questions."

Willbond later confirmed that The Captain's story is one such arc that will see some long-awaited resolution.

Peep Show could have been turned into a stage show, co-creator Sam Bain has revealed.

But he and fellow writer Jesse Armstrong turned down the offer to adapt the long-running Channel 4 sitcom into a play, because they couldn't figure out how to make it he work, he told music magazine NME.

Rhod Gilbert has announced his first tour after undergoing cancer treatment.

He will play more than 100 dates of his new show – called Rhod Gilbert & The Giant Grapefruit – starting in January and running to November 2025.

Tickets for Rhod Gilbert & The Giant Grapefruit go on general sale at 10am on Friday

Bill Bailey has announced a new arena tour entitled Thoughtifier.

The comic will be playing 20 dates in early 2025, kicking off in Dublin on February 9.

Promoters Phil McIntyre Live define Thoughtifier as ‘an intriguing device that can amplify the thoughts of a curious mind using music, channelled through a human instrument, known as Bill Bailey’.

And the promotional blurb reads: At a point in our evolution when it seems as if we’re sleepwalking into a world where humans might be redundant, and much of what we do can be done better and more efficiently by machines, what better time to celebrate our own flawed humanity.

‘And who better a guide to lead us than Bill… To take us on a jaunt through the error-strewn, distracted, crumb-festooned, sometimes magnificent history of human thought and how it might help us survive in this brave new world.

‘A magical, musical mystery tour of the human mind, along with some other pressing matters about whales, biophilia, unrequited love and other thoughts. Amplified with music.’

Bailey will be on The Graham Norton Show on Friday week (October 6) to promote the tour.

The 58-year-old comic – whose previous show En Route to Normal came in early 2022. will be launching Thoughtifier with a New Zealand tour in November.

Tickets for the UK arenas go on sale at 9am on Friday.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2683474

Writing in his forthcoming memoir TV: Big Adventures on the Small Screen, a follow-up to his best-selling 2007 autobiography The Sound of Laughter, Kay said that he could imagine bringing back Potter for a feature film.

“I still write down ideas. I had an idea only today of Brian getting Young Kenny to paint an enormous letter ‘H’ on the roof of the club so he can advertise they’ve got a helicopter pad,” writes Kay, according to extracts published by The Sun.

“The chance of a helicopter ever landing is, of course, zero,” he goes on. “As the years pass, I’m becoming more like Brian, but if Phoenix Nights rose again it’d have to be for something very special, maybe a film? Perhaps Brian could get visited by three ghosts. Now, wouldn’t that be an idea?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2642865

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5573362

Making this post because for some reason this show has flown completely under the radar for many. I had no idea it existed until it was mentioned on a comedian podcast I listen to (Bud Pod).

Of course, the BBC have kindly deleted it from their catalogue. Not sure of the rules here re pirated content so won't post any links, but I found it on both Internet Archive and torrent (torrent is much better quality). It also features a young Benedict Wong, his character is so different from how we know him today!

Well worth a watch, especially if you're a fan of Sean Lock.

And I'll copy over the note from fellow British Telly mod @Chris@feddit.uk:

The BBC did put it back on iPlayer after he died (it must have expired now), and it’s available on DVD. Please buy it, don’t pirate it.

15 Storeys High : Complete BBC Series 1 & 2 [DVD] by Sean Lock https://amzn.eu/d/aMULZv2

Lucy is one of many female comedians who say the allegations against Russell Brand are just the tip of the iceberg. Six years on from the #MeToo movement, they say there remains a culture of misogyny and male privilege in the comedy industry that emboldens predators and prevents women from speaking out.

In a video on YouTube titled Brand Awareness, the comedian Kate Smurthwaite said the allegations against Brand were “nowhere near scratching the surface” of the wider problems.

“I could probably, personally from my own experience, name 15 to 20 people who have behaved inappropriately with me. And if I then included other women in comedy and the stories that they’ve told me, we could easily get that to 100 to 150,” she said.

“There are so, so many others. And I know some people will say: ‘Well tell us the other names.’ But no, I’ve done it before, I’ve described these incidents and people don’t hear me, they don’t believe me. They say: ‘That’s a very serious allegation, I hope you’ve taken it to the police,’ and ultimately I lose work. And I can’t do that over and over again.”

Ellie Tomsett, a media lecturer at the University of Birmingham who has been researching the barriers to women’s participation in the comedy circuit, said the problem was entrenched in the history of UK comedy.

“Since the days of performances in working men’s clubs in the 60s, comedy has targeted women, and we’ve got this really long hangover from that,” she said. “There might be more women visibly present on stage or on our screens now, but the actual working conditions for comics have been remarkably consistent. That’s what creates that space where abuse can flourish.”

According to Tomsett, the problem is threefold: comedy – in its live and media forms – continues to be male-dominated, it is used to obscure sexually aggressive behaviour and misogyny, and women struggle to speak up due to unregulated power structures and the precarious nature of freelancing.

On top of that, women who do complain are often accused of being humourless prudes, when their careers depend on their ability to “see the funny side”.

“Comic licence makes it easy for men to say: ‘I was just joking, that woman doesn’t understand what comedy is.’ If you make accusations against someone who’s bankable for a promoter, then you’re putting yourself in a very dangerous situation.”

During a preview at the BFI last night (September 19), it was announced that the series will premiere on Friday, October 6 at 8.30pm on BBC One, with the whole series dropping as a boxset on BBC iPlayer on the same day.

Comedian Daniel Sloss has gone on record, speaking to The Times, telling them that female comedians set up online groups to warn others about people they’ve worked with and had difficult experiences with, including predatory behaviour.

Mr Sloss told the times: “I know for many, many years that women have been warning each other about Russell.”

At least five other male comedians have been named in the conversations, MailOnline reports.

They include famous stars of TV, radio and stage - some still working, others who have disappeared from the limelight.

Mr Sloss said there were ‘many stories with varying degrees of severity’.

Comedian Sara Pascoe has also claimed there are two well-known predators in the comedy circuit.

She indicated that there is more than one predator in the comedy industry, including "a man that's assaulted men."

Comedian Stevie Martin disclosed the WhatsApp group existed as long ago as 2020, telling the Telegraph: “A Whatsapp-based blacklist began circulating of predatory male comics and promoters. It’s growing every day.”

Probably the reason I hate him so much is because I'm a dad and I've got this fear that one day my daughters will bring something like that home.