With the great Edinburgh comedy festival looming large, comedians have retreated back into their bedrooms to work on new shows for the season ahead and to tour into the spring.
But while the wife/partner/pals/offspring are always a useful sounding board for new material, there’s no better test for whether a gag works than a paying audience. And it’s for this reason that no fewer than FIVE top comedians are in town in the week ahead to try out their latest stand up shows.
Certainly the most high profile among them is Russell Kane, a master of melodrama and an intense comic with an enviable reputation for his live gigs as well as a string of TV credits on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Unzipped and Live At The Electric to his name.
His new Smallness tour, then, gets a couple of work in progress tester nights at the Royal Exchange Studio in the week ahead (Monday/Tuesday, £12), as the Essex comic ponders why the British like to keep things in curious perspective: “What is it with us and smallness?” he asks. “We Brits love it – being tiny but fierce, close but distant.”
Across in the city’s southern corridor, over at the Dancehouse, rapidly rising star Patrick Monahan (pictured below) tries out his relentless and freewheeling sense of funny for one night only (Tuesday, £10/£7 concs).
He’s a cake loving, huggable soul, and so it’s perhaps appropriate that he’s being double billed with Mitch Benn, a satirical Scouser who will be living out his fantasies of pop stardom in Mitch Benn is The 37th Beatle.
Over at Jabez Clegg at XS Malarkey, then, is Joe Lycett – a comedy panel show regular with credits on 8 out of 10 Cats, Celebrity Juice and Britain’s Got More Talent, and a seasoned radio guest having appeared on shows with Nick Grimshaw and Richard Bacon.
He’ll be trialling his second Edinburgh show, If Joe Lycett Then You Should’ve Put A Ring on It, on Tuesday (£5/£3 members).
And last, but certainly not least, is our one to watch – Tony Jameson, (pictured right) whose confessional Football Manager Ruined My Life preview comes to Prestwich Golf Club on Thursday (£5/£4 members).
The Newcastle lad is becoming an in-demand compere and has so far been invited out on tours with Frankie Boyle, Kevin Bridges and the king of the one-liner Stewart Francis.
Which, coupled with this glorious spell of sunshine, pretty much gives Manchester no excuse for wearing a frown in the next seven days.
Various venues/prices. See comedy picks below.
