David O’Doherty : 2008 if.comedy award winner

August 23, 2008 – 11:14 pm | by Peekay

The winner of the if.Comedy 2008 Award has been announced tonight. The winner is:
David O’Doherty: Let’s Comedy

And the award for the best Newcomer has gone to:
Sarah Millican’s Not Nice

The winners were announced by Clive James at just past midnight, and also included a special award for the person who best represented the spirit of the Fringe - this year it, strangely, went to all the performers, with the £4,000 prize money being put behind various venue bars!

Henry Rollins at the Gilded Balloon

August 22, 2008 – 10:29 am | by Times Online

Henry Rollins is not a comedian – so how come he delivers one of the funniest, most fluent, most inspiring stand-up comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe? Well, the American punk-rock singer may never have torn it up at Jongleurs, but he’s been leading a parallel career with his spoken-word shows for 20 years. He knows how to tell a story. And he knows how to go out and find stories that are worth telling.

Read more

4 stars (out of 5)

Clive James, Britt Ekland and Roy Walker

August 22, 2008 – 10:27 am | by Daily Telegraph

An alarming thrashing and crashing sound could be heard at the first encounter between Clive James and a celebrity guest at the Assembly Rooms. It was the sound of prehistoric big beasts - dinosaurs, in fact - engaging in a noisy ritual of mutual back-scratching.

Launching his Fringe In Conversation series, the veteran Australian polymath was talking to Roy Hattersley and really, it was as though Jeremy Paxman had never been invented.

Hatters was allowed to get away with one party political broadcast after another on behalf of his and Labour’s contributions to the nation: the NHS, the glorious achievement of comprehensive education and so on.

Read more

Observations: Comedy isn’t killing The Fringe

August 22, 2008 – 10:25 am | by The Independent

The Festival Fringe has grown to be the largest of Edinburgh’s festivals due to its free spirit. Anyone can take part, perform and open a venue. Yet, when four venues within the Fringe combine to create a single entity to present The Edinburgh Comedy Festival, the very people who claim to hold fast to the roots of this freedom object.

The refrain is that we are damaging the Fringe. How so? The four venues, Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly, make up over 50 per cent of the Fringe ticket numbers and account for nearly three-quarters of its box office. We have not left the Fringe, and will continue to use the Fringe Society for a central box office and an overall brochure.

Read more

The funniest jokes of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

August 22, 2008 – 10:23 am | by Times Online

A dig at embattled singer Amy Winehouse has been declared the funniest joke of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

After three weeks of stand-up performances, critics put their favourite jokes to the public vote and comedian Zoe Lyons won.

Lyons’ winning one-liner was: “I can’t believe Amy Winehouse self-harms. She’s so irritating she must be able to find someone to do it for her.”

Read more