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.

The compere for this first night was Charlie Baker who warmed the crowd up with some fairly gentle interaction and a great routine featuring  his jazz vocal skills, including a hilarious version of “The Lady Is A Tramp” and his own take on updating jazz for the MTV generation.

The first of the featured acts, Gary Delaney, fired off a stream of edgy  and often surreal one-liners (or two-liners if we’re being strictly accurate) which generally stayed just on the right side of the audience’s acceptability line and confirmed his reputation as a great gag writer (he also works with Tom Binns on the Ivan Brackenbury material) .

The next act to appear was the unbilled George Ryegold, delivering a highly original set in the character of surgeon (maybe he is, maybe he isn’t – it doesn’t really matter either way) featuring the kind of dark medical humour which helps keep doctors and nurses sane.  You have to admire someone who can get laughs from a routine about impersonating the ghost of Harold Shipman and the audience did, despite the abrupt ending to his set.

Josie Long is a performer who is admired by many comedy insiders although this doesn’t always translate into success in a club.  This set contained some material from her Edinburgh previews from last summer plus some new material including a perfectly-pitched parody of a Blitz survivor interview (that’s the  WWII Blitz, not the ‘80s club).  The set was generally well received, although some of the more esoteric material seemed to miss the mark with a Saturday night (Tim Vine) crowd.

Is it a hurricane, is it a whirlwind?  No, it’s Tim Vine delivering punchlines at breakneck speed.  As each punchline arrives, the audience is still convulsed from the previous one.  The audience is very partisan (the intro to the “Pen behind the ear” routine gets an ovation) and they aren’t disappointed.  The influence of Tommy Cooper is obvious but this isn’t a tribute act – Tommy Cooper could never have worked at this speed.  Strangely enough, the highlight of the set isn’t a one-liner; it’s the extended ventriloquism routine which is really well put together and ridiculously funny for a mainly visual gag.

As a whole, the night gave a really good representation of the current live comedy circuit: an all-rounder compere, 2 quick-fire gag merchants (Jimmy Carr – Jimmy who?), a dark special interest act and a performer’s (or insider’s)  favourite.  The only (minor) criticism of this first night in the new venue is that the timing of the intervals could have been a little tighter.  The second interval seemed to go on forever, losing the atmosphere which had been carefully created up to this point and almost forcing the acts to start from scratch.   Otherwise, a  great night.

Into the Wild Green Yonder is not a good start for a Futurama newbie as we are not given the background to how pizza delivery boy Philip J. Fry made it from being cryogenically frozen as 2000 began, and then brought back to life on New Year’s Eve 2999.  That sort of info would be useful to any stranger to the Futurama world.

In this film mankind stands on the brink of a wondrous new Green Age, but ancient dark forces, “three times older than time itself”, are determined to wreak destruction.  Which sounds more dramatic until you mention the universe’s largest mini-golf course, Bender’s trysts with a fembot married to the mob, and Leela turning eco-terrorist hunted by Zapp Brannigan.

All in all it’s a good episode of Futurama that just about stands up to being spread into a feature.

The fourth and final Feature-length Futurama hits the DVD and Blue-ray shelves packed with bonus features such as an audio commentary by creator Matt Groening, a making-of mockumentary, and “Zapp brannigan’s Guide to Making Love at a Woman”.

If you’re not British and are easily offended, it’s probably best to stay away. The Pub Landlord is a stereotypical working class British nationalist, with a strong dislike for anything “un-British”. The award winning show can be hilarious, but also borders on the extremes of taste.

At the beginning of each show, Murray interacts with the large studio audience, especially those sitting in the front row. He usually remarks about their “beautiful British names”, even if the name is clearly not British, such as “Ming Ming” and “Dominique”.

During the opening part of the show Murray also has a bit of fun with the audience, saying something along the lines of “You see, Britain is all about rules. If we had no rules where would we be?” the audience then shouts out ‘France!’ “If we had too many rules where would we be?” ‘Germany!’

After his outrageous stand-up and fun with the crowd, Murray gets down to business with his guests. In Episode One he kicks off with Australian actor and singer Jason Donovan, and I can safely say it’s one of the most awkward interviews I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. Murray grills poor Donovan and makes constant jibes about his Aussie roots, leaving the former Neighbours actor literally squirming in his chair.

Olympic gold medalists Ben Fogel and James Cracknell also stand-out as an enjoyable watch, as they face a more friendly inquisition, where Murray literally treats Fogel as a dog, bowl in toe, and the rower plays along amicably.

Other guest throughout the series include cricket legend Shane Warne, Martin Kemp, Jerry Springer, Abi Titmuss and Louis Walsh, all who get vigorously quizzed by The Pub Landlord. It’s fair to say that the British guests get less of a grilling, while some of the ‘foreign’ stars get ripped to shreds.

Murray’s banter with ‘Big Bob’, a regular audience member, is also a good laugh. He points him out at some point in every show, and the audience joins in with the song: “Big Bob, Big Bob, Big Bob Big Bob Big Bob”, to which Big Bob dances around in his element. Al also makes a passing joke about Big Bob’s weight, usually suggesting excuses other overweight people use. Examples include “It’s a slow metabolism, isn’t it, Bob?” and “It’s big bones, isn’t it, Bob? Yeah – big bones covered in fat”.

Overall Al Murray’s ‘Happy Hour’ is worth a watch, and it will have you squealing in your seat, although maybe for different reasons. If you’re easily offended, just don’t watch it, if you’re not, this could be the chat show of all chat shows for you.

If you like Harry Hill and “TV Burp”, you’ll like this DVD.  If you don’t like Harry Hill or the show, then this won’t change your mind – that was nice and easy.

The main content of the DVD is structured like a normal weekly show featuring all of the regular Harry Hill send-ups and routines in the form of highlights from the series.  The extension of the idea of the viewer shouting at the TV (don’t we all do that?) works well, particularly when it continues logically into Harry actually taking part in the clips he satirises.  So far, so good.  

For me, the comedy wears little thin when Harry takes a good idea (ear cataracts, for example) and bludgeons it to death to milk every last sliver of a laugh out of it. Maybe that’s what fans of the show really love – if it is, then they’ll love this DVD.

The extras on the disc also work best if you’re already a fan – if you haven’t seen the series, then the “Freaky Eaters” and “Fights” sequences probably won’t do anything at all for you, while the out-takes and unseen sections might appeal to the casual viewer.

If you’re already a fan of the show and you’ve got some Christmas money or vouchers to spend in the sales, then this is a pretty good investment.  If you’re not a fan, then the guys mentioned above all have DVDs out which are well worthwhile if you haven’t already seen them on tour this year.

Happy New Year.