Omid Djalili

By Richard Hogg

I have always found it hard to state an opinion about Omid Djalili (not an ideal start to a review I grant you) When I’ve talked to friends about stand up I do recommend him because there is plenty to admire. He leaves observation of the everyday to McIntyre, the one liners to Tim Vine and Stewart Francis. Instead he bounces between the ridiculous and the challenging.

His comedy ranges from taking the mickey out of regional accents and stereotypes e.g. Geordie girl = easy, to making jokes about solving suicide bombings. Simply promise to look after the bombers family and fly them out for a decadent, party loving life in the west if they promise to blow themself up in a desolate spot where no one and no property will be at risk.

With decades of stand up experience you might expect a certain degree of weariness but he still bounces around the stage with an infectious grin and a manner that allows him to get away talking about subjects that others may fear to tackle.  As one of only a few Middle Eastern comics of note on the stand up circuit he can speak about cultural differences and challenge perceptions. He can say what is wrong with the Middle East as well as talk with authority about the misconceptions we may have of his parents homeland and he leaves us in no doubt of his love for the people of the region 

The main problem I had was that he seemed to bounce around from theme to theme with inconsistent jokes linking the strands that ranged from perception to control. I came away remembering his clever use of the oversized mobile phone display, his talent for the bongos and his energy but I think I prefer the belly dancing zaniness of his 2006 tour.

Bristol Slapstick Festival 2012

By Richard Hogg

There is something about watching good comedy with a large group of strangers. Action films may leave the audience gasping; romance flicks may have everyone reaching for the tissues but comedy unites everyone in laughter – making us forget the troubles of the day for just a few hours. 

And if there was ever a film designed to create this feel good factor it is Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. Such was the level of affection and familiarity with the film that a constant chuckle could be heard; purring in the background as everyone slowly remembered which bit was coming up. Bigus Dickus, the People’s Front  of Judea, he’s not the messiah….all were preceded by a titter before the explosion of laughter.

The film itself needs no introduction but it got one anyway from the director, actor and Python member Terry Jones. Dressed casually he spoke with humour, warmth and a degree of humility that was refreshing for someone who has achieved so much. After the brief introduction the film started with English subtitles which were quickly cancelled thanks to a technician with the DVD control.

 After Michael’s Palin’s corpsing in the Bigus Dickus scene I found my jaw beginning to seize up thanks to the permanent and slightly inane grin I had been holding for the last hour. The end song allowed a few of the more mature viewers to express their admiration through a sing-a-long with Eric Idles classic ‘Always Look on the Bright side of Life.’

After the film Mr Jones returned for a chat with Sanjeev Bhaskar and the audience. Again he was modest and disarming in the simplicity of his explanations of how one of the funniest ever films was made. For example, how Spike Milligan became involved because he was on holiday and happened to be staying in the same hotel as John Cleese.

This remains at the pinnacle of film comedy and I heartily recommend you watch it again at the earliest opportunity.

Omid Djalili

Omid Djalili is one of Britain’s finest stand-ups. He is a rare comedian capable of provoking huge laughter and profound thought at the same time. And yet he has not toured for three and a half years. But all that is now about to change. Omid is hitting the road with a new show, “Tour of Duty,” which stops off at the Colston Hall in Bristol on Sunday.

So what gave this brilliant British-Iranian comic the urge to hit the road once again? Funnily enough, it was a corporate gig. “Last Christmas, I did a corporate gig, which can be notoriously difficult and I was so nervous I couldn’t go on,” he said. “I hadn’t done a gig in about a year. The event organisers were getting nervous that I wouldn’t go on so they cited all kinds of legality at me if I failed to perform. As I took to the stage my mind was telling me, ‘You’re going to die. You’re just a fat, needy man pleading for attention. You have no integrity and the act has no artistic merit. That’s why I’m here, for the money, not because I care or they care. They don’t even like me’.

“I went out with that devil on my shoulder, and on the other shoulder was another one going “listen to the devil on the other shoulder, he’s right”. Then the opening joke got more laughs than I’d expected. I started thinking “they’re laughing coz you’re famous, not because you’re funny”. It was at that moment I thought “Wow. They’re laughing and I’m not even funny. I’m going on tour”.

Omid has not been idle in the interim – he has made two highly successful seasons of his own comedy show for BBC1, as well as starring as Fagin in the West End production of Oliver!, a US sitcom for NBC The Paul Reiser Show, Howard Marks’ film, Mr Nice, and David Baddiel’s movie, The Infidel.

As always, Omid, a deep thinker about comedy, has worked hard on the structure of the show. According to the comedian, “It’s based on an Eleanor Roosevelt quote about the different levels of thinking. She said, ‘Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds only talk about other people’. In stand-up, you do all those things – you talk about other people, you make sense of events and you elevate lofty ideas. Once you have set up the concept that great minds think about ideas, then you can say things like, ‘Doesn’t Ed Milliband look like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit?’”

The comedian has equally wise things to say about the Middle East. In the wake of the seismic changes that have gripped the region during the so-called “Arab Spring,” Omid says, “There’s an awful lot to talk about. After 9/11, I was saying, ‘Hold your horses. Not everyone in the Middle East is a terrorist. Leave Sikh people alone. They’re being attacked just because they wear turbans! They’ve got nothing to do with it’. I was trying to find sanity in the madness.”

He continues that, “There are so many different levels to what is happening in the Middle East now. With profound transformation in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria and Libya, the people of Dubai have a very British attitude to revolution: marching on the streets chanting “What do we want?’/ ‘Democracy!!’/ ‘When do we want it?’ /‘After Happy Hour!”

Omid also emphasises the significance of social networking sites in the current Middle Eastern turmoil. “People are taking charge – governments can’t get away with it anymore. In fact no one can get away with anything. You certainly can’t get away with genocide in the age of Twitter – or at least I hope not. Alex Reid was trending the other day so you can never be too sure”.  I imagine Sadat, Arafat and Mubarak in the afterlife being asked what killed them: Sadat, what brought you here? Bullets. Arafat: Cancer. Mubarak: Facebook & Twitter.”

As we start to wind up we talk about the philosophy of comedy and he gets very involved and impassioned but checks himself. “Look. Everyone has problems: but for 90 mins it’s good to have a laugh and forget it for a while – or put it into a context. That context being I’m struggling a little less than you are and collectively you should all come together and be happy for me. I’d like the audience to come and give thanks at the altar of the fat one”.

Tickets are still available for Omid Djalili’s Tour Of Duty at Bristol Colston Hall at 8pm on Sunday January 29, priced £19 from www.colstonhall.org 16+ only.

Words: James Rampton

Pierre Etaix (Picture: Martin Griffault)

Britain’s biggest festival of screen comedy returns to Bristol later this month, starring a lost genius who counts Woody Allen, Jean Luc Goddard, Terry Gilliam and David Lynch among his fans.

This year’s Slapstick Festival will comprise 17 different events celebrating more than 100 years of silent and visual humour, from the early exploits of silent stars, such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd to later classics such as Dad’s Army and Monty Python.

Sanjeev Bhaskar, Barry Cryer, Griff Rhys Jones and Terry Jones are among the big names attending, but it is French actor, clown and director Pierre Etaix – who was hailed in the 1960s as the new Buster Keaton – who could be the star of the show.

Etaix’s Oscar-winning work has only recently been freed from a copyright battle which kept his films off-screen for almost 40 years.

Other highlights include a silent comedy gala, hosted by Griff Rhys Jones and featuring the world premiere of a new score by Guenter A Buchwald for Buster Keaton’s The General.

Festival director Chris Daniels said: “We’re confident that this is our finest programme to date and that the laughter it will inspire will be the perfect antidote to the dark days of winter and gloomy news headlines.”

For full details of the Slapstick 2012 programme, visit www.slapstick.org.uk .

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas
‘Extreme Rambling – Walking The Wall’
Tobacco Factory, September 8, 2011

Mark Thomas is a ball of energy, a sweating, vocal machine-gun of reminiscing laced with humour, anger, pathos and a sense of the ridiculous in an unjust world.

I’ve seen Thomas many times over the years and he never fails to impress. Tonight he goes up yet another level with a remarkable performance.

There’s something noble in the art of a performer who speaks of real experience and puts his actions where his mouth is, so to speak.

Over a two-hour show tonight, Thomas condenses the experiences recounted in his latest book ‘Extreme Rambling’, of walking the 700km wall that the Israelis are building around the West Bank. His tales of meetings with campaigners, soldiers, activists, Israeli lawyers, estate agents and various colourful characters along the way are recounted with the intensity that Thomas always invests in his stories: the humour always at the forefront with the human and political reality also coming coming through powerfully.

He doesn’t club you over the head with it but it always informs his vivid accounts and vignettes in strongly entertaining and informed ways.

There are laughs aplenty – the Palestinian zoo with the erratically stuffed giraffe, the English-learning Palestinian guide, the frighteningly sharp Israeli lawyer who gets him out of scrapes, being tear-gassed on a march in the company of a mime-artist, the child-like soldiers, the eccentric British ambassador, among a kaleidoscope of comedy – but also the reality of the starkness of the situation out there, and the extremity that ordinary Palestinians have to deal with daily.

There are moments here when comedy and acting combine and freeze to capture these extremes, these bizarre situations, and there are moments when Thomas is visibly moved in recounting what he experienced – the stoning of Palestinian schoolchildren by Israeli settlers, the heartrending wish of the Israeli lawyer for peace among uncertainty and fear.

But such is the talent of the comic/actor/activist that Thomas moves from tears to comedy in the flick of an eyeball. It’s a constantly moving picture told by a master storyteller. The beauty of a field of purple poppies alongside the brutality of a concrete wall separating a people from their homeland…

Thomas is and has been our main political comic for years, someone who campaigns and stands up for issues, who confronts the powers that be and spews out the results in viscerally entertaining shows such as this. In an era when comedy really isn’t grasping the nettle and dealing with the big political issues of the day like it used to, he really puts the rest to shame.

Angelos Epithemiou

Bristol Comedy Garden
July 21, 2011

By Laura Williams

You’ve got to commend the organisers of Bristol Comedy Garden for pulling together an exceptional line-up of wonderfully diverse comedians, and the second night of the festival was possibly the most eclectic mix of funnymen yet. The only thing which would’ve made it better would have been the inclusion of a woman on this bill, but hey I’ll put my feminist hat back in the box for now.

First up was our compere for the evening Craig Campbell. The thing about comperes, which he touched upon, is that some people view them as somehow inferior to the headline acts but I (and indeed he) would argue that their have a tougher job. Not only do they have to deal with these preconceptions but they inevitably end up with more stage time, and those times are the parts when everyone’s gagging for a drink or a pee.

Campbell was brilliant. His shouty Rhod Gilbert-esque persona complimented his grumble-led gags perfectly. He enjoyed a bit of audience banter with a fellow Canadian and showed off his local knowledge with tales of Bridgwater, Stroud and South Wales. And with a voice bigger than Snowdonia he was the perfect person to introduce the other acts and gee up the crowd.

Stewart Francis was next up, which I found odd cos he was certainly the biggest draw for me and he proved to be the best act of the night. His one-liners were mostly hit, with just a sprinkling of miss. He employed the fairly predictable subject matters of jobs, relationships and stereotypes all pinned together with impeccable word play. ‘I watched a programme on how boats were put together the other day…riveting.’

But he’s also gone a bit darker with his material and slipped in a couple of jokes which would make fellow Mock The Week panelist Frankie Boyle proud, randomly throwing in the comment ‘my Uncle ejaculated on me once…phew, glad to get that off my chest.’ There was a slight microphone malfunction mid set and Francis proved he’s as good as improv as he is pre-prepared one-liners, joking that the second mic was funnier than the first. His set was more than a laugh a minute, it was a laugh every 10 seconds.

Shooting Stars funnyman Angelos Epithemiou sauntered on next with his high waisted trousers, uber long tie, stained raincoat and plastic bag. I wondered just what his set would entail – thinking there’s a limit to character-based comedy in a stand up capacity but I needn’t have been worried. He employed a mix of basic slapstick (hitting himself on the head with an inflatable hammer), musical comedy (a spoof take on Baz Luhrman’s 90s hit Wear Sunscreen) and some solid jokes (What’s the difference between a Kangaroo and a Kangaroot? One’s a bouncy Aussie marsupial and the other’s a Georgie stuck in a lift!). In the mumbled words of Angelos himself LMFAO.

Last but not least was Irish observational comedian Ed Byrne. He had a tough few acts to follow but he’s a pro and delivered, commanding much of the stage in a frantic Lee Evans kind of way. Much of his set relyied on that white middle class comedy which seems to be proving the mainstay of the British comedy circuit at the moment (Chris Addison/Jimmy Carr/Michael McIntyre etc). He talked about age inappropriate clothes for kids, fatherhood and being a geek at school. One of the highlights was his tales of losing luggage at an airport, where he joked he now asked the airport staff whether they packed his bags themselves or left them unattended. Brilliant.

Bristol Comedy Garden is a stroke of genius. Many of the comedians acknowledged Bristol as a great comedy city and the fact that there were very few empty seats for this £18 a ticket gig goes to show just how receptive we are to a top notch line up of funny folk.

By Laura Williams

While I don’t want to advocate people overindulging when it comes to booze and mind-altering substances, it has to be said that some of the best music, art and comedy is created by drunks and junkies.

Take Dylan Moran. His lovable drunk act has summoned a million laughs over the last decade. His depiction of a jaded old indie book store owner in the UK sitcom Black Books (alongside West Country favourite Bill Bailey) had me in stitches. And last time I saw Moran do stand-up back in 2006 it was hard to distinguish him from his alter-ego Bernard Black.

Five years and two kids later he seems a lot less cynical and much more content with life. And let’s face it, if all is dandy you don’t have much to base your observational comedy on hey?

I’d heard reports from Cardiff (where he’d played the previous night) that he lost his train of thought and had to leave the stage to compose himself before carrying on for a disappointingly short time. Needless to say, I was pretty dubious about this gig. And this show started off pretty slow.

Moran’s pregnant pauses may have been intentional but bearing in mind the reports from Cardiff I put it down to him being out of practice. For the first 10 minutes or so there wasn’t one genuine belly laugh only a few groans and grins hidden among the awkward silences. Then he seemed to find his flow (interestingly it coincided with him taking a swig of red wine). Just sayin…

His repertoire centred a lot on observational comedy about women, Bristolians and the Irish. Each tangent he veered off on comprised a meander through his frantic childlike (yet at the same time grumpy old man) mind. And his two best gags involved seafood. One was referring to the way some women stumble around in stilettos, claiming to “wear them for them” when that can’t be true unless they intended to look like “a shrimp being airlifted”.

The other was about how, now he’s married with kids, he’s expected to go to dinner parties. He mocked the entrees on arrival, dubbing them “what’s this? A prawn pole dancing on a breadstick? Where’s the proper food?!” Laugh aloud funny.

Moran was also battling a chesty cough, unsurprising considering his reputation for smoking like a chimney. He lost his voice at a couple of points in the show but managed to turn it into a joke when someone in the audience mirrored his cough, snapping “you call that a cough? that’s not a cough”, before launching into another joke.

There were also heart-warming moments where he paused to clear his throat or take another sip of wine when the audience laughed, not out of politeness but out of genuine amusement and Moran chuckled at himself. It was these moments which made you think perhaps the whole stand up show was as much of an act as Bernard Black.

Real Deal Comedy Jam - Joe Torry

American comedian and actor Joe Torry is to unleash his wit in Bristol for the first time, starring in the UK’s biggest urban stand-up comedy show.

Famous for his unscripted stand-up shows, Torry is the headline act at the forthcoming Real Deal Comedy Jam (RDCJ) tour, which comes to Jongleurs in Bristol on Sunday, May 29.

Torry, who has appeared in House Party 1 and 3, Poetic Justice, Sprung, Hair Show, ER and NYPD Blue – and the former host of the renowned HBO series Russell Simmon’s Def Comedy Jam – is top-billing at the show, now in its ninth year.

Nathan Wilkins, co-Director of RDCJ said: “We are honoured to have Joe Torry star in the Real Deal Comedy Jam this year. He is a living legend in both Hollywood and comedy circles.

“We are thrilled that a comedian of his calibre will be bringing his unique style to the Jam and know that audiences will absolutely love him. We can hardly wait to stage the tour.”

The show will also feature US female comic Dawn B, Canadian comedian John Moses and UK comic Funmbi.

Hosting the show is UK stand-up comedian Kat B, whose spontaneous style is a favourite with Real Deal Comedy Jam audiences.

For more information, visit the RDCJ website…

Stephen Merchant

By Philip Bates

Award-winning Bristol comedian, Stephen Merchant will return to his home city this October with his new tour, Hello Ladies…

Though it is his first ever tour, Merchant has previously performed alongside Jimmy Carr, Robin Ince and his comedy collaborator, Ricky Gervais at the Edinburgh Festival in 2001, and has been warming-up for his tour with stand-up routines at small clubs in London.

Stephen grew up in Bristol, and did stand-up at some local pubs in 1997, before meeting long-time mates and collaborators, Gervais and Karl Pilkington at London’s XFM radio station.

Since then, he has gone on to co-write and co-produce massively successful shows, The Office and Extras, but has most recently been seen tormenting Karl in SkyOne‘s runaway success, An Idiot Abroad.

Aside from these, he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for co-starring in the most downloaded podcast of all time, The Ricky Gervais Show.

His latest tour begins in Swindon this September, encompassing the country before a final date — 20^th December — in New York.

“Life can be lonely as a TV writer,” he says, “so this tour is a great opportunity to get out there and meet my fans. And make at least one of them my wife.”

Hello Ladies… comes to the Colston Hall on October 20-22. Tickets are available from colstonhall.org, and are priced £25-30.

Charlie Chaplin

By Philip Bates

The Slapstick Festival returns to Bristol later this week, with a series of events celebrating the life and work of comedic legends like Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd.

The event — which has been running in Bristol since 2005 — will be spread across venues around Bristol’s waterfront: the Arnolfini museum; Bristol Old Vic; the Watershed; and the Colston Hall from January 27-30.

Sponsored by Aardman Animations and South West Screen and hosted by Chris Serle, the festival will centre on a gala held on 28th at the Colston Hall at 7.30pm. Stand-up, Rob Brydon will join I’m Sorry, I Haven’t Got A Clue’s Barry Cryer to present their top ten visual comedy moments, while Dad’s Army’s Ian Lavendar, The Goodies’ Bill Oddie, and former-Doctor Who, Paul McGann introduce classic films: We Faw Down (1928), Neighbours (1920), One A.M. (1916) and Get One and Get Under(1920).

Following last year’s discovery of a 90-second clip from a lost Keystone movie, the event will also highlight probably the most-famous silent film comedian, Charlie Chaplin, in a series of comedies including The Circus (1928) and A Homage to Chaplin (2002).

Stand-up, Shappi Khorsandi will also introduce her favourite film, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) on the last night of the event, before Marty Feldman’s Young Frankenstein (1974) closes it.

Festival Director, Chris Daniels, on the Slapstick website, said: “2010 was the 10th anniversary ofBristol Silents, and so it delights me that we start the next decade with what I believe will be the best Slapstick Festival to date.”