Richard Herring, coming off the success of the previous year’s Headmaster’s Son hit upon the idea of trying to reclaim the Hitler Moustache – or toothbrush moustache as it is properly called. Charlie Chaplin, born only a few days before Hitler, had the same moustache and it became part of his comic look. However nowadays the toothbrush moustache is linked only to Hitler.

So Herring made a commitment to grow the moustache and see what happened to him, how people responded to it and him, and how he would feel with this frowned-upon facial hair.

Amazingly nobody attacked him, the worst that happened was that people laughed at him. Which in a way is what he wanted, to reclaim the ‘tache for comedy.

There appeared to be very little reaction to his moustache, mostly just his own fears, so the show itself ends up just exploring that and concludes with a call for people to actively resist the BNP vote, and to uphold the values in the Chaplin speech from the Great Dictator – where the comedy moustache meets the Nazi moustache.

4/5

Oliver Smallbridge (WIndsor Davies) and Simon Peel (Donald Sinden) are a pair of Antique Dealers who have shops next to each other, and also houses next to each other. And they have one child each, one of each type who, quelle surprise, fall in love and want to get married. Throw in the fact that Peel is upper class and Smallbridge is not, and you have the idea of the set-up.

The question is whether you like this sort of thing, and/or if you have this series as a touchpoint in your childhood. The performances are hammy and the plotlines rickety, but there is something very simple and comforting about the series.

Rossiter’s last sitcom role, Tripper’s Day, is unlikely to have had such an impact as either of those roles. Set in a London supermarket, Supafare, Norman Tripper is the manager exasperatedly attempting to run the store but daily coming up against the uselessness and laziness of his staff.

It may be difficult to accurately and purely judge this sitcom based from our 21st century viewpoint as so much appears to be outdated, from the set to some of the attitudes to, and of, women. Obviously many sitcoms of these times have the same issues, but they seem to be slightly more jarring here.

Rossiter gives the role of Tripper a good go, and if the stories and characters had been able to develop through a 2nd series, then this may have become a much more interesting show.

As it is it is only a little more than a curiosity.

Since living in war-torn Lebanon during his childhood, comedian and TV presenter Dom Joly has always been fascinated with travelling to places that are quite a way off the beaten track.  In this highly entertaining book Dom takes us on his journeys to those places on his own “Dark Tourism” list.

We start in Iran, where the supposed Axis-of-Evil country has some amazing ski-slopes and a young people who refer to their illicit alcohol as “Pizza”.  Of course even having the stamp of Iran in his passport gives Joly headaches whenever he enters the US and has to endure the incredulous US customs officers.

Travelling across America Joly gets chased out of the Book Depository museum after taking a picture of where Lee Harvey Oswald apparently shot JFK from – unfortunately that picture doesn’t make it to the book – before touching on Elvis’ house where the toilets are off-limits, and through to Ground Zero in New York.

The Killing Fields of Cambodia are rightly chilling and Joly manages to juxtapose the sickening depravity that once took place in the area, with meetings with those who are attempting to make money from that history.  A visit to Chernobyl and surrounding areas is tense with the dangers of radiation poisoning and poignant at entering towns that have been empty since the nuclear accident but are still recognisable by Joly via videogames.

North Korea is one of the most interesting as so little information is known about the country and it is difficult to work out what of that little information is genuine or just propaganda against another arm of the Axis-of-Evil.  Joly manages to not only convey the otherworldliness of the culture but also the individuality-grinding tedium of the regime.

Eventually Dom journeys back to his roots in Beirut to revisit those beautiful landscapes of his childhood but also to find out more about whether he went to school with Osama Bin Laden.

Dark Tourism is a perfectly balanced book that gives you information, humour and occasional confusion as Dom Joly becomes the High Priest of Dark Tourists.

Pablo Francisco’s present comedy show ‘Bits and Pieces’ is a recording made at a small comedy club. Pablo dances his way on to the stage in a robotic sequence which both bears a resemblance to a certain David Brent (Ricky Gervais) and also leads nicely in to his first routine.

Francisco is a star and this is made clear from a very appreciative audience. From a distance, Pablo could be mistaken for Ben Stiller, but that is definitely where the comparisons end.

The strongest elements of the show are when Pablo provides both physical and visual humour that everyone can relate to whether or not they are American. Unfortunately a lot of the material is based on and uses words that are not familiar with those outside of the US.

The comedian appears to be as charming as Michael McIntyre yet is more than happy to throw in plenty of strong language limiting his appeal to a more mature and specialist audience.

Pablo’s imitations are a highlight of the show. These impressions are very important as they form a central focus to the act. Some of the best parts are when he makes imitations of Spanish music and also DJs remarking that they all sound as though they are Dracula. Some of his gags could easily fall flat if they were not handled and present so cleverly, although at points, there seems to be some hostility between the performer and his audience.

Francisco reveals that he has had a new hair-cut which leads on to a strong and developed narrative all about hair-dressers and barbers. Sections of the material work better than others and admittedly small parts could be strung together a little more effectively. However, as the name of the show suggests, this presents a random selection of his best bits and pieces.

The majority of the funniness is quite sexual, subjects such as Viagra, having sex and talking dirty, are all covered in a relatively short and tight show that is less than an hour in length. The most popular sketch is Pablo’s imitation of movie trailer voiceovers. This is then used to great effect to promote a fictional blockbuster ‘Little Tortilla Boy’ which is very amusing and has already become a hit on the online video community YouTube

Pablo is unlikely to take the UK by storm although it is likely that he may find yet another small stream audience particularly if he can work some of his magic on our own society and culture. The show is unlikely to have you laughing throughout but you are sure to find some amusement in the situations that Pablo Francisco has come across.

Of course when you get to the point of being part of Saturday tea-time viewing, nearly every opportunity for merchandising is taken. So last year we had the compilation DVD, this year we’ll get another one of those in November, plus this book released tomorrow (8th October).

Being a fan of Harry and TV Burp I was skeptical of how the humour would translate to the Annual format. I feel I was mostly right to be wary.

The hilarious ideas are still there like the many comic mentions of Paul Burrell, the cartoon Adventures of Ant & Dec, Derek Acorah’s Spooky Tales (in the original Scouse), and Jamie’s Misery of Food. But so few of them have the same impact that they would do if delivered by Harry live or on telly.

So you get a lower laugh count than other TV Burp products, which is a shame as it makes it smack of being just a cash-in despite the list of impressive comedy writers involved.

The RRP of £12.99 is pretty steep for what it is, but you are bound to find it discounted somewhere at which point it’s a personal decision.

Maybe this is the dilemma of the DVD distributor these days – with so much choice on digital TV, and on-demand television gaining ground, what is the selling point of the Box-set?

In the case of the Series 12 of the Simpsons DVD Boxset the selling point is the imaginative and detailed extras, as well as appealing to the Simpsons completists out there. You’ve got episode commentaries, deleted scenes, animation showcase and a whole lot more.

And then there are the 21 episodes – some great, some middling but worth a watch.

So it’s a good boxset, if you like that sort of thing.

The performance is a monologue which leads us through a period of about 18 months in Triona Adams’ life. The starting point is her life as a successful London theatrical agent which she abandons to become a nun, and the main narrative concerns her experiences in a Benedictine abbey (don’t call it a convent or a nunnery) somewhere between Oxford and Swindon. There are no big gags in the show, but the tightness of the script and the quality of Triona’s gentle performance and stagecraft made this a spell-binding show which kept the audience at the Etcetera enthralled throughout.

Triona sets the scene with descriptions of the showbiz scene and parties which explain how she became dissatisfied with her personal and professional life before moving seamlessly in to the introduction to the abbey, her decision to become a nun, her life as a postulant and her eventual disillusionment with the life and decision to leave the abbey. From these bare bones, it doesn’t sound too promising but Triona’s very poetic, moving and gently ironic script breathe life into a potentially dry story. The icing on the cake is the delivery of the story, with every line perfectly delivered, every accent perfectly imitated and every pause perfectly timed.

The performance demonstrates the power of the art of storytelling in the oral tradition, which is centuries old and was used to great effect by Charles Dickens who regularly toured his new material on the live circuit of the 19th century. Triona was very well received by the Etcetera audience, who were silent throughout the performance, apart from a new sniggers, but wildly enthusiastic at the end. Another one to seek out at The Gilded Balloon.

Long Tooth is the duo Vivienne Gibbs and Trudi Jackson playing the characters of Liz and Julie who live together, play together and perform together. The duo archetype they adopt is the dominant, bullying character and the buffoon who always manages to subvert the process and gets the laughs in the end, a tradition going back through Laurel and Hardy, all the way to Shakespeare.

The theme of the show is a quick-fire journey backwards and forwards in time to Liz’s favourite scenes with onstage costume changes for Liz covered by the magician’s distraction technique of focussing the audience on interludes of singing, dancing, pouting and even body-popping from Julie. The performance looks tightly scripted (or very well improvised) as the duo work their way from Joan of Arc through Walter Raleigh and Marie Antoinette to Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. It’s difficult to tell if the show is loose or under-rehearsed because that’s exactly the effect they’re aiming for and they succeed perfectly as the costume changes become increasingly manic and shambolic.

There are virtually no punch-line type gags in the show, which relies on the script, the interaction between the performers themselves and the breaking down of the conventional theatrical divide between the performers and the audience. In this show, the conventional wisdom of keeping out of trouble by avoiding the front row won’t necessarily help, particularly in a small theatre like this, but at least you won’t be humiliated. The show has a little bit of everything – dressing up, singing, dancing, a Benny Hill-type chase at the end and snippets of great music, including Ike & Tina Turner’s version of “Proud Mary”.

The verdict – if had paid to see this show, I wouldn’t have been disappointed. There’s bags of energy, anarchy, a bit of satire and plenty of subversion of the normal theatrical conventions. The audience on the night I saw it (all 20 of us) absolutely loved it. If you’re in Edinburgh for the Festival, go and see it.

The gig wasn’t billed as a comedy event, more of “An Evening With…”, which is exactly how it played out.  The venue was about half full the majority of the audience seemed to be there to see Jan Ravens rather than to watch whichever artist happened to be performing on that night.

The opening of the performance was an Anne Robinson impression using props which were stripped away symbolically to reveal the real Jan Ravens, giving a first taste of the confessional, behind the mask,  nature of much of the material to come.  The performance covered a variety of areas ranging from autobiography to a potted history of the impressionist’s art via a workshop in creating a Janet Street-Porter impression, light political satire and a lot of Fiona Bruce.  There aren’t any belly laughs in the show, but there are a lot of interesting insights into the art of comedy and impressionism alongside the insights into the mind and motivation of Jan Ravens, including a swipe at the TV producers who relegate female impressionists to background roles, including the Spitting Image decision to have Margaret Thatcher voiced by a man (Steve Nallon).

The main theme of the evening seemed to be that it’s increasingly difficult to be an impressionist today, particularly a female one, because of the increasing pressure on female politicians and newsreaders to fit into a standardised image and persona, using the Blair babes as an example of the trend and Thatcher and Widdicombe as examples of the old school.

The concept of the evening, shining a light into some of the darker corners of the impressionist’s life and work, was reasonably successful and warmly appreciated by all of the audience at the conclusion.  The one element which didn’t work at all for me was the piece at the end which combined all of the impressions previously demonstrated into 1 song.  The song format seemed to dilute the effect of each impression by removing some of the characterisations which would normally allow us to recognise the character instantly and, ultimately didn’t work particularly well as a big finale.

Overall verdict?  If you’re interested in more than just easy laughs and want to see behind the mask for an hour, this show is well worth seeing.