MY Travels – Innsbruck – Flashbacks to Dr Who, Superfluous Cardies and the Advantage 0f Not Understanding Celsius
Fancy a cheap weekend away? With a bit of culture and some stunning nature on your doorstep? Good food and reasonable prices? Then Innsbruck might be exactly what you’re looking for. When it comes to towns like Innsbruck, the Austrian Tourist Board must not believe its luck. Medieval buildings, along with the obligatory pastel-coloured buildings […]
Continue readingMY Comic Life – Joining the Dots
Not being able to join up the dots at times can have its advantages and disadvantages, but for an intelligent woman, I can’t half be thick at times. My dad is impossible to buy presents for. Most things in his world are “rubbish”. He doesn’t smoke; he doesn’t drive; he doesn’t play golf or read books. […]
Continue readingDie Welt von Gestern – The World of Yesterday
Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday is less an autobiography more an intensely perceptive historical account of fin-de siècle Europe-up to the start of the Second World War. It may also be the longest suicide note in history. In the book Zweig describes how Europe went from being a place of high culture where everything […]
Continue readingMY Comic Life – Bradford Literary Festival, Birmingham Pride and a Bleeding Mouth!
The life of a comic can be varied if nothing else from appearing alongside Frank Sanazi (think Frank Sinatra but a Nazi) to performing at Birmingham Pride and in a kebab restaurant in East London. Unfortunately a dental emergency scuttles my plans to gig in salubrious Stockport! Got quite a few gigs come in which […]
Continue readingFilm Review: Calvary
Calvary is a gem of a film. For starters, it has the eminently watchable Brendan Gleeson as its star, portraying the linchpin of the film, Father James Lavelle. It also benefits from a wonderfully intelligent script by John Michael McDonagh who adeptly deals with complex issues with a great deal of humour and manages to tell […]
Continue reading14 Tips for Organising a Charity Comedy Night
Thinking of organising a charity comedy night? Need to get some comics on board? Then these tips may be of help! 1. Do bear in mind that you’re not the first person to come up with the idea. Comics get asked to do them all the time. One week I had 4 different requests to […]
Continue readingNew Female Comedians Riding The Wave
When I first started running comedy nights featuring all-female line ups around 5 years ago I wasn’t exactly spoilt for choice. Quality wasn’t a problem but the quantity just wasn’t there. Invariably it meant a quick turnaround of comics. This wasn’t ideal and is particularly problematic for clubs such as mine where a large percentage […]
Continue readingMY Comedy – The New Name In Comedy!
The London and Midlands Laughing Cows comedy clubs have now changed their names to MY Comedy. The nights will put to good use my considerable experience garnered from both running and setting up successful shows for Laughing Cows in London, Birmingham, Leicester, Coventry and Berlin. The nights will also continue to provide solid comedy entertainment in a […]
Continue readingForeign Film Review: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
Considered a classic, this 1945 French film, directed by Robert Bresson, shows that when it comes to sex and love the French may seem to be more sophisticated than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts; but that nonetheless no one is more determined to wreck revenge than a woman scorned, even a refined and cultured, Parisian socialite. This […]
Continue readingFilm Review: Behind the Candelabra
If you watch Behind the Candelabra and find it hard to believe that during his lifetime no one seemed to cotton on to the fact that Liberace was gay, then you clearly didn’t live through the 70s. Behind the Candelabra harks back to that seemingly more innocent time and ends at the point in time […]
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