Prophet Sharing

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Two great religions. Two great comedians. The descendants of Abraham may have gone their separate ways, but now stand-up comedian friends Ashley Blaker and Imran Yusuf are joining forces in the most-unlikely double-act since Kermit and Miss Piggy, the pair are travelling the UK uniting people of every faith and none for an evening of laughter and come to South Street Arts Centre this week. Peter Anderson caught up with the pair to chat about the show and their love of comedy.

With the current divisive nature of politics, it is nice to see comedy trying to bring unity, where did the idea for the show come from? Ashley replies “: I had thought for a while about doing something like this and then Imran came to see my Edinburgh show and really enjoyed it so I thought it would be worth asking him”. Imran agrees;” The show was Ashley’s idea I went to see him in Edinburgh last year and afterwards we got talking and he pitched this format.”

Speaking of the format, what can audiences look forward to? “Authentic experiences of two people from religious backgrounds who actually know what they are talking about.” Imran explains, whilst Ashley entices us “We perform separately and then do half an hour together. Thereafter I don’t want to give too much away.” He smiles.

Would there be the possibility of a sequel, together or perhaps with comedians of other faiths following your splendid lead? Imran replies “I hope this inspires other comics to explore something similar. Ashley and I are both quite well read into our faiths with some hardcore experiences, I hope to see more of something like this rather than the pedestrian narratives that are well worn out now.

I’m already working on another solo show and have vowed to read every major religious book over the next few years to help understand the multiple world views we are all so devoted to.” While it seems, Ashley has a partner lined up for 2020! “I have asked Tom Cruise if he’d like to do a show with me – orthodox Jew and Scientologist. Not sure how funny he is but I thought he would probably shift a lot of seats.”

You are coming to Reading, is this somewhere you have happy memories of? Ashley replies “Yes I’ve performed my last two solo shows in Reading, so I am very much looking forward to coming back.” Imran has also performed here “Yes, I’ve performed in Reading a few times before. At the Uni and for two previous solo shows”.

For your chance to see them together, they are at South Street Arts Centre on 4th June.

  For information go to Reading Arts.

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Child’s play: comedy with Sam Avery

Round & About

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Sam Avery will tackle parenthood at Aldershot’s West End Centre on Thursday, 28th February. Peter Anderson quizzes him on how he devised the show.

Parenthood is a crafty beast. The second you master something, it changes the game, so you are rubbish at it again. So says stand-up comedian, viral blogger and best-selling author Sam Avery (aka The Learner Parent) and he brings his tales of twin toddler tantrums, and the sleep-deprived route from first-time parenthood that got him there, to Aldershot this month.

As to how Sam discovered his love for comedy, we have to go back to his own childhood and of course the paper round. “I always liked comedy and making people laugh as a child. When others were doing their paper round listening to the pop songs of the day, I was listening to comedians like Ben Elton.

“I was shy when I first started, I was 25, the first gig was rough, then the next two were good, I thought I was getting the idea then I bombed again.

“Afterwards, one of the more experienced comedians came up and said – don’t worry it’ll probably take you five years to get the hang of it”.

So, who was his inspiration? “My family definitely, all of them are funny. But then probably Richard Pryor; I saved up about £90 I think for a CD box set of his career, from when he was starting out very much in the Bill Cosby mould to when he had created an identity of his own.”

What can audiences expect from Sam’s show? He tells me it was a kind of pseudo-sequel to the book, covering the twins so far. It’s an old chestnut but I wondered if he had struggled to tell them apart? Initially he had been saved the embarrassment, as he tells me…

“When they were born it was actually easy because one of them had to have an operation so had pipes and then a scar. Now they are three years old and most of the time I can get it right, but if I get it wrong, they happily correct me.”

Was writing the blog something that helped him through the lows of that first stint of parenthood?

“I really did find it useful because through doing it not only was I able to pick up good advice, but it helped me realise I wasn’t the only person going through these things.

“Perhaps what was the nicest thing was that some people rather than giving advice were getting the same strength and support that I got, and they said it was really useful for them.”

  For your chance to hear Sam’s tales of bringing up the twins, he is at the West End Centre on Thursday, 28th February. For details visit www.hampshire culturaltrust.org.uk/west-end-centre

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Mixing it up! Improv comedy

Round & About

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Expect to be involved in the show in the latest improv offering from The Noise Next Door.

Lightning-quick wit and comedic talent have helped improv troupe The Noise Next Door take the comedy world by storm.

They have sold out the Edinburgh Fringe 11 times with their distinctive brand of off-the-cuff comedy which the foursome have been performing together since meeting at university.

The boys – Charlie Granville, Tom Livingstone, Sam Pacelli and Robin Hatcher – are back with a new full-length adult show, The Noise Next Door – Remix and you can find out what all the fuss and noise is about for yourself when they bring it to Farnham Maltings on Friday, 8th February.

If you’re going along be prepared to be part of the show – the guys take audience suggestions and transform them into funny scenes and songs in the blink of an eye with a combination of characters, one liners, epic stories and ‘explosive physicality’.

They have appeared on numerous TV shows and alongside established British comedy names such as Michael McIntrye, Al Murray and Harry Hill. But their appearances don’t stop there, as they’ve also played to the British armed forces, secondary school students (a tough crowd) and even on stage at Download heavy metal festival.

They have been described as ‘comedy gold’ and as offering ‘a superior kind of chaos’. Remix will see them at their most creative yet with this new cutting edge and hilarious show.

  To book go to www.farnhammaltings.com but if you miss them there or had such a good time you want to go again, they’re at Cranleigh Arts Centre on 15th March.

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Hal Cruttenden: Middle ground

Round & About

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One of Britain’s top comedians, Hal Cruttenden brings his stand-up show to Maidenhead’s Norden Farm this month.

Keen to involve his family in the planning as well as being one of the subjects within the act, he asked his teenage daughters what he should call the tour. Hence “Chubster”, which also gives a clue as to other subjects – his battle with weight! Now Hal’s back on the 5:2 diet and onstage in a hilarious show that not only touches on his usual moans about being a middle-aged, middle class father of fat-shaming teenagers but also introduces us to new problems like his struggles with IQ tests, political zealots and the trauma of supporting the England rugby team.

So, who were the people who inspired Hal in his career that has often seen him nominated for awards? It seems those middle-class doubts needed satisfying as he says his inspirations were people like Eddie Izzard: “He convinced me that you could do stand-up successfully and be middle-class. I thought it was so impressive and it taught me that it was more the joke than the person telling it. I just so love Bill Connolly’s charisma, I just want to sit down and listen to him. Comedians like Frankie Boyle and Kevin Bridges, I think for me it is more a case of jealousy rather than inspiration.”

Having given his family the chance to name the show, do they also get a chance to see their dad in action? “Oh yes, they always see the shows. As to what they think of them, my children are now asking for a raise in their pocket money and calling it research costs!” Hal says. Speaking of research, how easy does he find the writing? Not, it would appear! “I am anything but disciplined, I am rubbish – if I did not have a deadline to work to I doubt I would get anything done. I have the upmost respect for Lee Mack, I have absolutely no idea how he writes all the comedy scripts and stand-up shows that he does.”

Having toured the world, it seems the bright lights of New York still beckon for Hal, he says: “I would really love to perform in New York, I really fancy doing Carnegie Hall or the Radio City Music Hall.” Your chance to see him at Norden Farm Arts Centre is on Friday, 11th and Saturday, 12th January.

  For more information go to norden.farm

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Fighting Talk

Round & About

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Comedian Lucy Porter brings her smash-hit Edinburgh Fringe show Choose Your Battles to various venues Peter Anderson catches up with her…

In Choose your Battles Lucy Porter, with the aid of the audience and a punchbag, works out when she should stick to her guns and fight and when she can use her disarming charm to defuse a situation. I caught up with her and, while ducking the boxing glove, asked her about her life and the tour.

Q. Is your current tour based purely on your life and experience, or observation as well?
“It’s a bit of a mixture. Most of the material comes from my own experience, but my audience are wonderful at coming up afterwards or emailing me and saying ‘that story you told reminded me of something awful my husband did…’ or ‘when my kids were little, I found this was a really useful tip…’ so I get a lot of helpful feedback that finds its way into the show.”

Q. Have your husband or children seen the show?
“Oh goodness, no! My whole act relies on the fact that my husband is looking after the kids while I’m out talking about them on stage. I don’t know what I’ll do when the children are old enough to see my act – I’ll have to change it and just talk about our cats.”

Q. How long does it take you to collate and write material for a show?
“It’s a never-ending process of writing, presenting stuff to the audience and then revising it. It’s 100% my favourite thing about live stand-up; the fact that no two shows are alike. The skeleton of this show was written for the Edinburgh festival in August last year, and some of my favourite bits have stayed in, but there’s always stuff that’s new this week, today, or even on the night.”

Q. As someone who prefers not to make a fuss, and carefully choose your battles would you like to have lived in 1717?
“Ooh, I hope you’re referring here to my play the Fair Intellectual Club, which was set in 1717 and concerned a group of young women who decided to set up a secret society for studying maths, physics, astronomy and all the other things that ‘nice girls’ weren’t supposed to concern themselves with. I hope I’d always have been a mouthy, opinionated and difficult woman like they were.”

Q. You write both comedies and dramas. Is it easy to switch between the two?
“I never had any ambition to write drama, but as I’ve got older I’ve realised my life experience has gifted me some serious points to make. That said, even when I’m writing drama I can’t help playing for laughs sometimes. I hope never to have to take life, or myself, too seriously.”

Q. If you were stranded on a desert island, who would like to be stranded with?
“I love my own company and I need a holiday, so I’d be delighted to be on a desert island for at least a week. If I could be stranded with Dolly Parton and Paul McCartney, I could have the music and good company as well.”

Q. You are appearing at The West End Centre in Aldershot. What memories do you have of appearing there?
“The West End Centre is one of the nicest and most welcoming places I’ve ever encountered. Also, the people who run it have impeccable taste in music (and comedy too of course!).”

For more details visit www.lucyporter.co.uk

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Feel the Byrne

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Jonathan Lovett chats to comedian, actor, writer and dad of two Ed Byrne, 45, who has just embarked on his biggest ever tour to date, Spoiler Alert, following a sell-out success at this year’s Edinburgh Festival

Q. What is Spoiler Alert about…or is answering that a bit of a spoiler in itself?!
“Well, I called it that partly because if there were any bad reviews people wouldn’t read them because it would say ‘Spoiler Alert’ at the top! But it’s mainly because the theme of the show is the notion of how spoilt we are in general and how we’ve become quite mollycoddled as a nation. Stuff like having to push a button to start a car rather than turn a key because it’s such a great drudgery to turn a key these days. And how it’s the trivia stuff we act really spoiled about, whereas with the big stuff, such as politics, we seem to just accept how bad things are. There was a big women’s march after Trump was elected and some people were like ‘Uhhh. What are they complaining about? We don’t live in Saudi Arabia,’ with the implication being ‘Shut up, luv. We’re not stoning you to death, what are you bothered about?!’”

Q. If you had the opportunity to say something to Donald Trump what would it be?
“If I ever did have such a marvellous opportunity I’d have to look him straight in the eye and say, ‘You really are an awful person, aren’t you?’ or maybe I would just scream ‘STOP PAINTING YOURSELF ORANGE…YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS!’”

Q. You’ve just begun an epic tour. Do you love touring this much, Ed?
“If you are really famous you can just go and play the main cities and people from little towns will come into the big cities to come and see you. Whereas if you are just ‘that bloke on Mock the Week’ you have to go to those small towns. People from Evesham can’t be bothered to go to Birmingham to see me. So I have to go to Evesham.”

Q. What was your worst gig ever done and does it still haunt you? “I’m sometimes hired to do corporate gigs and now and it can be a real struggle. On occasions there is just no laughter at all and you’re up there in front of an audience who are just there for their own thing and perhaps you’re just not the right comedian for that particular crowd. I mean, Metallica are a great band, but if I booked them to play at my in-laws’ golden wedding anniversary it might not go down particularly well. I have been on stage in the past and just wished ‘God. I wish I was a stripper’ because I would’ve got a far better response from that audience then I ever would as a comedian!”

Q. I can testify you are very funny on stage. Were you the funniest kid in your class?
“I was the classic case of having to be funny to avoid being bullied, but even at school it was bigger, louder kids that were considered funnier. My humour was a bit nerdier. So at school I would be reciting Monty Python sketches and I would be met with a kind of, ‘What the flip are you on about?’ I was probably a little more ‘niche’ as a school kid than I am now and I used to play Dungeons & Dragons even as a teenager. My cousin and I were proper little geeks and I would go into school with a spring in my stride on a Monday morning having got my wizard to Level 14 the night before.”

Q. We’ve just seen you and best mate Dara O Briain on TV in Dara & Ed’s Road to Mandalay, a follow-up to Dara & Ed’s Great Big Adventure in which you travelled the Pan-American Highway. Where next for the intrepid duo?
“Well, if they do ask us to do another one, we are both quite keen on travelling through the Nordic countries. I think there will be a lot of mileage in that. We have a tendency to think of everyone up there as Swedish but it would be really interesting to get under the skin of these places and go, ‘Swedes are like this, and Danes like this, and the Finnish do this etc’… And, if we could get Abba to reunite, that would be good. I was talking to this guy in New Zealand who reckons he saw them all living and working together in this house in New Zealand and I was like ‘Really?!’”

Q. What’s the best thing or worst thing about Dara?
“I tell you what the most interesting thing is about Dara… he doesn’t know about spoons! If you showed him a spoon and said, ‘Now, is that a soup spoon or a dessert spoon?’ he’d be like, ‘It’s a bloody spoon!’ He knows big spoons and small spoons but in-between he doesn’t know anything about them! He only knows ‘spoon’ or ‘not spoon’.”

Visit www.edbyrne.com

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Vine and dandy

Liz Nicholls

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Liz Nicholls talks to comedian Tim Vine

Q. Are you getting into character as Idle Jack for the pantomime?
“Yes! I always play the idiot friend of the female lead in panto and, being a bit of a moron, I just turn up in character. I’m not a Dame so it doesn’t take me long to get dolled up – I just put on some colourful corduroy and I’m good to go. I’ve never seen Matthew [Kelly, who plays Sarah the Cook] when he isn’t dressed up. It was the same when I did panto with him a couple of years ago. I think it’s such a palaver to put all that make-up on he’s decided to whack it all on once and leave it on until January 16th.”

Q. Are you all having fun?
“We’re getting on… but it’s very early days. Pretty soon they’ll be asking ‘who’s the idiot with all the jokes?’ But, Arlene [Phillips], Matthew, they’re all great and everyone loves everyone… they haven’t told me they don’t like me, anyway. Panto is a happy, silly show for families – we’re not doing King Lear. Although it can be hard work, no one takes it seriously.”

Q. Did you love pantomimes as a child?
“I went to a couple as a kid but I think my parents took us to those very highbrow ones where there wasn’t much audience participation. I do remember seeing Treasure Island with Bernard Miles but I think it was quite serious. My parents are much more into yelling at the stage now that they have grandchildren to take to pantos.”

Q. What are your New Year resolutions?
“I’m planning on marching on parliament… Oh no, sorry I thought you said New Year’s Revolution! I keep thinking maybe I should do more exercise but the sweet trolley always looks too tempting [bites into a cake].”

Q. You’re renowned for your quick wit – were you always into one-liners?
“Thanks and I’m flattered, but I don’t think I am mentally agile! I can’t even say it easily. I’ve always liked short jokes; as a child I loved The Muppets, Morecambe & Wise, Tommy Cooper, people being silly.”

Q. Were you the class joker at school?
“No, I was the class trapeze artist. I was always messing about quite a lot. But I think you should be more worried if you have a child who works incredibly hard and the teachers never have a bad word to say about them. I was always the one looking out of the classroom window dreaming, being silly or showing off. My mum used to say ‘Stop showing off, Timmy…’ I didn’t listen did I?!”

Q. What was your favourite aspect of school?
“I used to write little plays based on Greek mythology – Odysseus, Jason and the Argonauts – and had an amazing English teacher called Mr Moss who used to let me stage them with my mates. The whole school gathered in the gym to watch my Minotaur and I thought I’d written some kind of sweeping epic… and it was all over in seven minutes. But to be encouraged by an adult in something you enjoy is something you’ll always remember.”

Q. You’re turning 50 in March, aren’t you?
“Yes, I suppose I should have a party shouldn’t I? A huge one with 1,000 people I don’t know? I feel very lucky to have got to 50 relatively unscathed. I’ve been very fortunate to have the friends I’ve got, and family – sorry, I went off on one there – I was mentally practising my party speech!”

Q. Do you still love playing darts?
“Yes, I’m part of a pub team in Epsom. They’re all much better than me and it’s quite nerve-wracking stepping up to the oche. My hand shakes and I’m telling myself ‘please don’t all land in the number 1’! It’s a drinking game – well, more drinking goes on in darts than, say, badminton… Or Formula One.”

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