» A laughing matter
Victoria Nangle picks out the best of the upcoming Magners Paramount Comedy Festival
One of the advantages I’ve got this year at the Magners Paramount Comedy Festival is that I went to the Edinburgh Festival earlier this year. Now, the advantage I’m stating here is not one of smugness at collecting as many festival badges as possible, although that is a good and worthy past-time. The advantage is that I managed to catch a snippet – or a show – from a lot of the acts coming down to lovely Brighton to make us all laugh, and I can see clearly that they were cherry picked from the established and the newly hatched. Giving you the benefit of my sleep depravation in Scotland – we’ve got the cream.
As well as the huge names everyone’s clamouring to see, like Richard Herring and Frankie Boyle, you can show a little more adventure and try a couple of those that have blipped on your comedy radar and then gone off touring. Among these you’ll find Russell Kane – he who keeps turning up plugging Five’s CSI, examining bodies and auditioning for bit parts. You’ll also find BBC award-winner Nina Conti with her constant co-star Monkey, the highly articulate foulmouthed stuffed puppet that steals all of her lines. All of her shows sold out up north, even when it was raining really, REALLY hard.
Robin Ince has constantly popped up in the BBC’s Comedy Cuts, and some may recognise him from a role he picked up in a small telly comedy you may have heard of called The Office. Although, he is best known in stand-up circles for supporting Ricky Gervais on tour throughout his recent Fame show, and on a previous tour – Politics.
Hits from Edinburgh that are well worth a gander include Jarred Christmas, who I caught compering a So You Think You’re Funny heat. No wonder I thought he was good at it, turns out he was nominated for respected comedy website Chortle’s ‘Best Compere Award 2007’.
“The acts were cherry-picked from the established and the newly hatched”
To get a true mix’n’match of comics – a little bit of this and a little bit of that – you can always dip your toe in and collect your selection at the weekly Best Of The Fest shows. Every Friday of the festival, presented by one of the leading comics of the festival (Russell Howard, Ed Bye and Frankie Boyle) you get a smattering of some of the other leading lights, giving us a taster of their shows. Miniature previews if you will.
If that’s what tickles your fancy, don’t forget the Intelligent Finance Awards. Doesn’t sound all that, until you twig that they’re the bods behind the if.comedy Awards, the ones that have taken over from the Perrier. Both the winner of ‘best newcomer’ (Tom Basden) and the overall winner (Brendan Burns) are here with their shows, as are a number of the other nominees, including local brilliance Zoe Lyons and BBC6 comedy host Jon Richardson. Nice one. Now, get your tickets.
4–21 October 2007. 01273 709709
www.paramountcomedyfestival.com
