Damned, funny and deadly serious; Opinion - March 2006 The Times - March 31st, 2006

Richard Thomas’s Jerry Springer The Opera, which I directed, is finally on tour. Last spring, it was closed down indefinitely by the Religious Right. Threats from the gay-hate group Christian Voice convinced Sainsbury’s to withdraw the show’s DVD from sale in its shops and prompted a cancer charity to reject proceeds from a benefit performance.…

The War Of The Worlds - March 2006 The Sunday Times - March 12th, 2006

Three decades after its initial release, the former advertising jingle writer Jeff Wayne wants to take his era-defining concept album adaptation of HG Wells’ The War Of The Worlds on the road. The live version of the thirteen-million selling 1978 classic is to be a mixture of stadium rock show and musical theatre, two simplistic…

A Primer To The Fall - March 2006 The Wire Magazine - March 1st, 2006

The Fall made their first appearance on vinyl in October 1977, on a 10” EP of recordings from their local Manchester punk venue, entitled Short Circuit: Live At The Electric Circus (Virgin VCL5003/CDVCL5003). The two spindly songs included, “Stepping Out” and “Last Orders”, gave no indication that, nearly three decades and 27 studio albums later,…

Jerry Springer: The Opera – Tour Diary - January 2006 The Guardian - January 8th, 2006

Richard Thomas’ multi-award winning musical Jerry Springer The Opera, which I directed, is finally on the road. Christian groups scared 1/3rd of possible venues off a proposed tour last year with threats of prosecution for blasphemy, but Plymouth Theatre Royal, Birmingham Hippodrome and His Majesty’s Theatre Aberdeen helped devise a rescue package on a reduced…

The Aristocrats - September 2005 The Sunday Times - September 4th, 2005

The American comedians Paul Provenza and Penn Gilette (?) have made a documentary about stand-up comedy called The Artistocrats, released here next week. It features clips of over a hundred principally American comics telling variations on a joke, known as The Aristocrats, which concerns an obscene vaudeville act. The film becomes an hilarious and often…

In Defense Of Laughter - August 2005 New Statesman - August 1st, 2005

In my capacity as a stand-up comedian, I was asked by the New Statesman to produce a defence of comedy in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The problem was that, like Josef K in The Trial, I was not aware of the exact nature of the charges. Apparently, comics attend Edinburgh only in the hope of…