Sir, what say ye with your fat face?
Me thynkith ye shuld bere a very good bace.
To a pot of good ale or ipocras,
Truly as I you say.
Hold up your hede,
Ye loke lyke lede,
Ye wast myche
Evermore from day to day.
Bon jowre …
In this episode we are delighted to welcome back to the show Russian comic, Denis Nikolin.
With pandemic lockdowns and worldwide vaccination drives, it is even crazier in Russia, where there are protest and people being detained over the handling of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Denis discusses how it is getting harder to write comedy when the world decides it wants to get crazier than the punchlines he’s writing.
Denis is also working on some comedy videos released online, you can find him at “Buttfuck Russia“, careful googling that, I wasn’t!
Denis previously featured on the Russian Comedy episode, check it out here!
On this episode we got two Icelandic comedians, Eyvindur Karlsson and Þórhallur Þórhallsson, also just known as Thor as Dave was too confused by the first one. The guys come on an explain how a country as small of Iceland can have a volcano that no one else on the planet can pronounce. They also discuss the state of comedy in Iceland and explain to Dave what a Belly Brother in Law is …
On this podcast we welcome American native, but Cork resident Dakota Mick. In taking a break from discussing cancel culture Mick discusses one of the most formative comedians of his life, Richard Pryor.
Discussed are the man himself, black culture on humor in the United States and are there any gigs running in Ireland at all at the moment. Dave tries as usual to wrangler a gig some where, with the same hilarious results.
Today we are joined by podcasters Simon Cockle and Sam Harriot to discuss the more censorious issues that have plagued comedy and still plague us today.
On this podcast we are delighted to have on American standup comedian, Carter Anderson. Carter discusses what it is like to be a black comedian in America, particularly now in the world torn apart with Covid pandemics, new elections and Black Lives Matters protests.
Carter is based in Texas and also runs his own podcast, Geek’d Out.
This book is set in the period of the 1970s when there was the comedy gold rush which started in LA. Much of this rush was centred on The Comedy Store, located on Sunset Blvd, which was run by the wannabe benevolent dictator, Mitzi Shore. The book details how Mitzi found herself managing her then husband’s business venture and through a combination the luck of timing, having the unique vision to see that there was a real opportunity and hard work to push it through she ended up at the first comedy stand-up rooms that virtually all rooms nowadays replicate.
The book starts with a contemporary scene, the death of a journey man comic, George Miller, in 2003. He never got huge, but was good enough to gig consistently from the 70s. His death brings back together some of the people who were peers of his time. There is serious name dropping, Richard Lewis, Jay Leno, Dave Letterman. At the start one gets the feeling this is just to add sizzle to the steak. However, after the opening chapter, the story falls back to the beginning. It is here you begin to realise that this is actually where all these names got their start, their real start. Mitizi recognised and groomed the talent that arrived at her room and competed with each other to get stage time. No one disagrees with the fact that she had an excellent eye for comics that would go far.
The first half of the book details all the fun and games of being a comic in the 70s. There is of course sex, drugs and rock and roll. It is all fun, but they don’t dwell too much on that part of the scene as ultimately it is not that important to the story. Comedy for some was a job, and to keep doing it they needed to graduate to paying gigs. Anybody that wants to be successful always had their eye on “The Carson Spot”. The 5 minute routine on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. Make it here and doors open. Some get on and it launches their career, a small portion are still in the business all these years later, others get on, but they run a bit flat, maybe they had a bad night. It would be passed back that maybe they weren’t ready. Almost if one had “The Right Stuff” or was a flaming crater in the desert.
The second half of the book changes gears and slows down in some respects. Due to an emergent art having so few benefactors, Mitzi has landed an arrangement where the bulk of the performers don’t get paid to perform. She has convinced them, and sometimes I wonder herself, that she is providing a service to the comics to learn their art and use her room as a showcase to get paying gigs elsewhere. Her room is the first and only comedy university. This seems to play for a while. When the comedy tsunami arrives, first in LA and then the United States, she is riding the crest of it, she literally can make and break anybody and is pocketting all of the proceeds. Comics begin to see the disparity of packed out rooms, full bar services and being unable to buy their own breakfast the very next day. This leads to the first comedy strike, a picket line is put up around the club and friendships are tested and in some cases destroyed, forever! The remainder of the book details the strike and the complexities of that nascent world and how it gave birth to the standup format we see world wide today.
During this time we see Jay Leno, David Letterman, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman all rotate in and out of the story. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that the Comedy Store is very influential on them and the careers they end up having. Jay Leno is actually an integral part of the strike. Letterman is also present, but his own career is starting to take off at the same time. The author mentions the falling out they had later in their careers when it came to Leno successfully replacing Carson when he retired from the Tonight Show in 1991, even though Letterman was groomed as Carson’s replacement. No reason is offered, only a description of how the two had been close friends before either was famous, which provides a context to why some might perceive what Leno did to Letterman as a betrayal.
It is a fun and informative book. It lays out the history and the world of the comedy scene as it was being born from nothing in LA and largely in Mitzi’s Comedy Store. Knoedelseder has done his homework, he was physically present attending and reviewing comedy during the period in question. It is refreshing to go back and see the formation of a world that has become so ubiquitous since then, even though we also get to see it turn from it youthful beginnings to the corporate facade we now see today.
I always was amused by this piece by Bill Hicks, now it has a little more nuance:
This week we are delighted to have on the podcast Iestyn Edwards.
Iestyn discusses his art form, Cabaret Comedy, but we also delve into comedy characters, Madame Galina, woke culture and Iestyn’s book, My Tutu went AWOL, which describes how Iestyn found himself behind the wire in Iraq entertaining the troops while also trying to figure out how to get teas stains out of his tights and not get stuffed in a tank.
There has been some talk recently about comedy being too left wing. This seems to suggest that comedy, like politics is polar, which it is not!
There is an interesting analysis over on chortle on what comedy is and why trying to make it more right wing after complaining of it being too left wing merely highlights the people have no idea what there are talking about.
I am not going to argue today that comedy is or should be apolitical – society is political, and comedy reflects society. What I am going to argue is this idea of balance is erroneous because of the fundamental nature of comedy. Comedy is always counter-cultural and counter-hegemonic – by its very nature, it fights against the dominant culture and works to actively undermine it, regardless of the leanings of its proponents.
On this episode we are delighted to have on Norwegian comedian Pernille Haaland. Pernille is mainly based in the UK, but the Covid lockdown finds her back in Norway.
We discuss performing stand-up in Norway, the fun of being an eternal expat and Dave find out all the cool places in Norway that Frozen was based on …eh for his daugther.
After a hiatus WE’RE BACK!
On this episode we got two Icelandic comedians, 
Today we are joined by podcasters Simon Cockle and Sam Harriot to discuss the more censorious issues that have plagued comedy and still plague us today.
On this podcast we are delighted to have on American standup comedian, 
This week we are delighted to have on the podcast 
There has been some talk recently about comedy being too left wing. This seems to suggest that comedy, like politics is polar, which it is not!
