The Week in Comedy: The Comedy Hullabaloo, Russell Brand & Fresh Meat
Underbelly have teamed up with the Royal Shakespeare Company to stage The Comedy Hullabaloo, a new comedy festival in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Russell Brand is bringing his US talk show, Brand X Live, to Britain. He’s coming to London next week for the first of two recordings at the Duchess Theatre on March 7.
The cast of Channel 4 sitcom Fresh Meat visited redbrick universities across the north on Friday. They completed a variety of challenges to raise cash for Comic Relief, from lecturing to making breakfast for students at the redbrick universities.
Fresh Meat was named Best TV Show in the NME Awards last week.
Ant and Dec on plans to write a silent sitcom: “If you do it well, it can leave a legacy, whereas most of our live work never gets repeated because it’s final, it’s done, you start again.”
Elsewhere, Miranda Hart will attempt a series of “madcap challenges” for Red Nose Day. She visits Newcastle on 11 March.
As Giggle Beats reported on Monday, Millican is also getting involved with fundraising – with the help of her Twitter followers. The former ‘Queen of Comedy’ is asking each of them to raise £50 for Comic Relief, and in return she’ll follow and RT their progress.
Several comedians, including Helen Arney and Peter Buckley-Hill, have penned a 36-track album to raise cash for PBH Free Fringe. The album is £5 and available here. All proceeds go towards helping fund the free shows at the Edinburgh Festival.
Jasper Carrot says comedy is a young man’s game. Carrot was speaking to the British Comedy Guide.
Hugh Dennis is writing a ‘humorous and insightful exploration of the changing image of Britain and Britishness’ called Britty Britty Bang Bang.
Phil Cool: “I was in Gateshead Central Club and a local lad come up to me and said, ‘Are you the comedian, like?’ and I said, ‘Yeah…’ He said, ‘Ooh, we don’t like comedians up here. You’ll die. You’ll die.’”
Chris Ramsey has announced more dates on his spring tour. He has two dates at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, on 7 and 8 June.
ITV have shot a pilot episode of panel show Good News, Bad News, with Jason Manford as host. Frank Skinner and Gabby Logan are team captains.
Elsewhere, Manford has made the front pages again this week, as he become involved in another sex scandal.
Joan Rivers on the E! show Fashion Police: ‘The last time a German looked this hot was when they were pushing Jews into the ovens.”
Finally, the porcine star of BBC comedy Blandlings has died. The Empress suffered a fatal heart attack. BBC executive producer Kristian Smith said: “We were very lucky to have found such a characterful and humorous pig.”
That’s all for this week, folks. Check back every Sunday morning for another brief round-up of the week’s comedy chatter – or get your daily dose on Twitter: @GiggleBeats.
