Tag: comedy

I thought M*A*S*H answered the laughter-track question in the Eighties?

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Apart from the curious fact that Lucille Ball’s mother is the ‘Wilhelm Scream’ of chuckles on US�TV’s�canned laughter track, it still surprises me that the debate about whether a laughter track is a good idea continues to this day in America. Anthony Crupi on AdAge is the latest voice: There’s actually very little research to justify the practice. The last comprehensive study to suggest that a laugh track could precipitate genuine peals of merriment was published in 1974, or a good three years before DeDe Ball chortled her last. A far more recent inquiry into the matter arrived at a

Is musical comedy, comedy?

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 Matt Blair asks… The question is… Would they turn to Bill Bailey, Rich Hall or Tim Minchin and call them cheats? …For some reason, musical comedy has a a reputation for not being ‘proper’ comedy. The way I see it? If it makes you laugh, it’s comedy. Musical comedy is just another genre of comedy.

Kate Copstick’s 20 comedians to catch at the Fringe

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Edinburgh institution Kate Copstick, like many of us, has sat down with the Fringe program and picked out her favourites – although a nod from Copstick in The Scotsman is more likely to appear on the flyers of the twenty chosen acts than "Ewan says we’re quite nice." Unless you follow the comedy circuit, a lot of these names are going to be new to you, but I can’t see a duff name in this twenty. I can see some comics that aren’t my cup of tea, but I’ve been known to drink tea with milk without complaining in the

Best… Unboxing…. Video… Ever?

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I’ll add the question mark, but one of the comments on my Nokia X6 Unboxing Video did suggest the above accolade, which makes me pretty happy. The Unboxing Video is a rather maligned tradition on gadget sites. Its essential function is to be “first” with a review device and get something up to capture traffic on a new device. Not that informative, not that critical, but something which gives page views and ad impressions. It’s also something I rarely do properly, although I do like to subvert the genre both with my “lets go through a conference schwag bag” group

Old Rope, Twitter Secrets and Doing Some Stand-up

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Well I guess the cat is out the bag now (either that or my name is up on the chalk board outside the Gilded Balloon and people are putting two and two together and getting about four). Tonight I’ll be on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of the Old Rope Comedy show from Phil Nichol and Tiffany Stephenson I was in two minds about whether I was going to post this publicly or just let a regular crowd arrive via osmosis, but praise be (I think) to Twitter because the usual suspects are starting the buzz for me.