The Skinny: Latest

Letters to a Fringe Comedian: Jain Edwards and Andy Barr

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0100

Jain Edwards and Andy Barr, two comedians who know the Fringe very well, write a note to themselves ahead of their respective returns to Edinburgh

Catherine Bohart on levity, literature and laughs

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 11:57:00 +0000

Catherine Bohart returns to Scotland with her Edinburgh Comedy Award nominated show, Again, With Feelings! We chat to the comic about setting boundaries for her confessional comedy and her literary influences

Glasgow’s Alana Jackson wins So You Think You're Funny? competition

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:05:00 +0100

This year’s So You Think You're Funny? Award – one of the UK’s biggest awards for new comics – goes to Glaswegian standup Alana Jackson

Joshua Bethania wins So You Think You’re Funny?

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 14:56:05 +0100

London stand-up Joshua Bethania wins the prestigious So You Think You’re Funny? award, with Scottish comic Mark Black taking second place

So You Think You’re Funny? finalists announced

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 11:19:45 +0100

The nine comedians competing for the annual So You Think You’re Funny? Competition have been revealed

Heidi Regan @ Voodoo Rooms

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 10:45:55 +0100

Heidi Regan returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a fresh, offbeat and idiosyncratic hour of standup

Edinburgh Fringe 2022: The comedy lineup so far

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:26:00 +0100

Here's a small fraction of some of the comedy coming up at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Liam Withnail's takeover on EH-FM, 5 Aug

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 14:42:49 +0100

Listen back to comedian Liam Withnail's takeover of The Skinny's weekly radio show as the Edinburgh Festivals kick off

Fringe Dog's Glasgow Comedy Festival guide

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 12:15:00 +0000

Fringe Dog runs away from home to give us a guide to Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Fleabag is coming back for a second series

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:12:43 +0100

Phoebe Waller-Bridge confirms she’s making a new series of her comedy Fleabag, but it won’t be with us until 2019

All Killa No Filla podcast: 5 episodes to hear

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 16:30:00 +0000

Comedians Rachel Fairburn and Kiri Pritchard-McLean tour their very funny, shocking and sometimes moving All Killa No Filla podcast this spring. We asked them to share some of the bizarre stories they've uncovered

Tape Face on America's Got Talent, Trump and more

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 11:30:00 +0000

It's been a funny old year for duct-taped mime Sam Wills, aka Tape Face, who made it to the finals of America's Got Talent 2016. He breaks his silence to chat to us about Cowell, Trump, and a certain skit involving oven gloves...

"Is oven gloves my Stairway to Heaven?" Sam Wills ponders. The man behind the tape of ‘Tape Face’, his mute alter ego, is having a slight existential crisis. "When the gloves come out now there’s a reaction. It’s a funny one and I’m very much torn at the moment, because I’ve got a re-edit of that joke that I can do, but also the audience at these shows now are coming because of these fucking gloves." He is of course talking about the video that recently went viral of Tape Face on America’s Got Talent, using oven gloves to sing a love ballad to one another. It has brought him fame and thusly some expectation, but from Wills’ cheery New Zealand lilt you feel that this is the kind of problem he lives for.

You might have noticed the more-than-slight geographical incongruence in that last sentence. Although Wills lives in London and was born in New Zealand, he just finished near the top of America’s biggest talent show. "Some people flagged it on social media but you just have to be eligible as a performer," he says. "It’s a light entertainment variety show, not like I was running for President."

As lamentable as such shows are within the entertainment industry, the Kiwi does seem to have pulled a fast one on Simon Cowell and his chums. "It’s such a dreaded word and it’s thrown around so much in the comedy industry – 'Oh, this’ll be good exposure' – and so much of the time it’s bullshit," Wills says. "I set my goals very clearly. I just wanted to get some exposure and reach the top ten." And reach the top ten he did, becoming a viral internet sensation along the way. "It was an opportunity to use this TV show, just as much as they’re using me. I knew I was making good television. I knew I was going to be the odd character."

Wills was keen to keep his interactions to a minimum and decided early on that he was going to keep the tape on the entire time, on stage and off – a twofold attack that would create further mystique about this already pretty enigmatic creation, and which also wouldn’t reveal his native New Zealand accent and turn a jingoistic nation against the plucky foreigner. "Maybe it’s the street performer sneaky pirate in me," he says. "I got away with that. There’s a part of me that’s thinking, 'Shit, I think I might have got one over them.' Which is quite nice."

Breaking America with America's Got Talent

Wills landed in London about nine years ago after performing on the streets of his native Christchurch, "and I’m still building my way up," he claims. "I’ve always wanted to go over to the States, do some shows over there. To do that again in America I’d have to move to LA, go to the comedy circuit and rise up through the ranks. That’s gonna take eight years, nine years again and I don’t have time for that." The hustler in Wills couldn’t pass up a surefire way to gather that crowd more quickly – much like he would back when he worked that golden lunchtime hour, trying to get world-weary office workers who'd trudged out for sustenance to pass over their hard-earned cash into his upturned hat. With America's Got Talent, Wills managed to do that and more, attracting a bigger legion of fans and even a verbatim copycat.

"It popped up and I was like, 'That’s it, I’ve made it,'" he reminisces of the time when he saw that his act had been lifted, move for move, by an impersonator on a small Brazilian talent show. Rather than flip out at his intellectual property being so blatantly ripped off, Wills tracked the fellow down via his die-hard fanbase and dropped the young Brazilian ‘Rosto de Fita’ a line: "Hello, my name’s Sam Wills, I think you may have heard of me," he laughs. "I ended up having a really lovely chat with him, he’s a clown who works in Brazil and genuinely he just needed the money, and from that street performer point of view I was just like, yeah, if you need the money you do the show."

This laissez-faire attitude to art and commerce marks Wills apart from most comedians, and indeed most artists. He enjoys what he does and remembers all too well what it is like to be a struggling performer. When trying to get a key spot at the Edinburgh festival or in London his familial group of clowns, acrobats, jugglers and more would gather and divvy up times – "but if you were late, you didn’t get a spot. Didn’t matter who you were." He's still got that down-to-earth ragamuffin sense of mischief and glee that would entertain the people of Covent Garden on their limited breaks, even when performing to a packed house with Mel B as a prop.

The joy of live performance

TV has called in the past, most notably with BBC Three’s pilot The Tape Face Tapes, and there will no doubt be offers from further afield after Wills' impressive turn on the world’s most famous talent show. But it will always be live performance that drives him. "I’m always going to be about live performing," he says. "Comedy needs to be seen live. You can film whatever you want and it goes out to a million people, but you go and perform in a room to 200 people that have paid for a ticket and want to see the show – that’s incredible."

The feeling of performing live can’t be captured in a viral video, he suggests. "For me I’m always creating material that I want to perform live. So all the stuff that goes out on TV or whatever is just an advert to come and see the live show."

Live comedy is what Wills does best, amazing onlookers with household items. Folk may come to see the oven glove routine but they stay glued for all the rest – and then they come back to show their friends what this man can do with staplers, a tape measure and myriad other mundane items. The beauty of a silent comedian is the timelessness – and because he isn’t speaking, he’s not having to make mention of whatever depressing disasters might be unfolding right outside the bubble of a Tape Face performance. "It’s a complete break from reality," Wills says. "And for me that’s one of the most therapeutic parts of my show, is that there're no current events. You know, Donald Trump doesn’t exist in my show. It’s quite nice. Whereas a comedian who has to go out there and talk about the current state of the world... Christ, you’d wanna kill yourself afterwards."

By sealing up his mouth and opening the minds of his spectators, Tape Face is able to keep his sanity and provide a very welcome respite from the Armageddon that's developing in the same country where he just wandered into the top ten of a variety show. "I’m trying to remind adults what it is to just remember that feeling of being a kid," he says. "It’s important to look at things in a different way and remember to switch off and play."

At a time when the older generation seems to be consistently punishing younger ones, this may be the most sage advice you can get from a man who doesn’t speak.

Tech It Easy: When comedy meets technology

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 12:00:00 +0100

Technology and comedy can work great together, as a load of multimedia shows at last year's Edinburgh Fringe demonstrated. Here's a look at how comedians are using tech to enhance their sets, plus a guide from very funny, very clever men Foxdog Studios on how to become a total wizard.

As time slips irrevocably into the future, it has been man’s mission, if not to slow things down, then to make things happen faster.

And though this has meant hundreds of technological breakthroughs in the last ten years alone, it has also meant people have a lack of patience. YouTube clips and Facebook videos get shorter and shorter, and TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) has become a given for pretty much anything over 500 words that isn’t in list form (don’t worry gang, there’s a list coming up at the bottom of this article!).

So, holding an audience’s attention for an hour at a time has become increasingly difficult, leading more and more comedians to find other ways of keeping people focussed on their show for the duration. Conveniently, some of those aforementioned technological advances come in handy for keeping the crowd on their toes and off their phones.

Comics using technology for their own whims is nothing particularly new. As soon as Microsoft made PowerPoint simple enough for the layperson to use, standup comedians grasped their clicker for the slow reveal of gags via projector. Of course before this, there was the overhead projector, something Ed Aczel utilised in his show The Random Flapping of a Butterfly’s Wings to great comedic effect last year.

Another of the most talked-about shows at last year’s Fringe was Richard Gadd’s genre-bending Waiting for Gaddot (also featuring Aczel), which relied heavily on the tech side of comedy. Often the unsung hero, the comedy technician can make or break a show as ambitious as Gadd’s; his standup set-cum-play used video, lights, musical cues and presentation software to tell the tale of the young Scotsman facing setbacks while trying to reach the basement venue in which the show was taking place. As a tech, getting the audio and visual cues right requires timing as good as the comedian who's scheduled the jokes.

Being a technician is not only an intricate role; it can also be a way to make money during an increasingly expensive festival every August. Teching shows can put cash in your pocket, and it can also aid you as a performer – something Manchester-based 'IT rock'n'rollers' Foxdog Studios know a thing or two about.

They make and bring to their shows all their own equipment, most of it strung together from household items. It's pretty achievable, provided your household doubles as a workspace for your budding IT troubleshooting company, as Foxdog’s does.

Foxdog Studios' Lloyd and Peter offer interactive comedy like no other, and, as they seem to have conquered both worlds of art and science, we asked them to give us their foolproof five-point plan for technical success.

Foxdog Studios' guide to teching your comedy show

1) Bring your own equipment

There is an old saying at Foxdog Studios: "The only thing you shouldn’t take is a chance." Many venues simply don’t have an electronic drumkit. The safest bet is to take your own. Err on the side of caution: pack your own mics, mixing desk and speakers too. If the car’s full and half of you have to take the train, you’ve probably got enough.

2) Arrive early

Setup time is a precious resource that slips away if you break something ramming it in the car and miss your train. That’s why we arrive 4-6 hours early. Often, the venue will be closed. But by peering through the windows you can start setting up mentally.

3) Take a packed lunch

Since setup takes all day, hunger is a major problem. The venue may be far from a decent food outlet and you’ve already spent your fee on train tickets. So take no chances and pack an all-day picnic; we recommend half-a-dozen cheese and pickle rolls and flapjacks.

4) Use adhesives to customise the venue

To be effective, speakers, lights, and WiFi routers need to be mounted up high. This may require ad hoc modifications to the venue. Most venues don’t allow acts to drill into the walls. However, good quality duct tape can fix even a heavy parcan light to wallpaper. They hardly ever fall off and have certainly never injured anybody.

5) Be polite

Arriving too early, filling the venue with unnecessary equipment, leaving sandwich crumbs and damaging the wallpaper may generate hostility from the venue staff. Counteract this with politeness: "Sorry about the walls. You wouldn’t happen to have anywhere I can store this suitcase while I eat my lunch? Thank you."

Foxdog Studios are at the Lantern Theatre, Liverpool, on 19 July as part of Shiny New Festival (16-24 Jul).

lanterntheatreliverpool.co.uk

foxdogstudios.com
@foxdogstudios

UK Comedy Festivals guide: The Rest of the Fests

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 17:40:00 +0100

We look beyond the Edinburgh Fringe to find the pick of the UK's best comedy festivals

Valentine’s Day Gifts for Comedy Lovers

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 09:00:00 +0000

Our resident romance expert investigates Valentine's Day gifts suitable for those whose amorous appetites are activated by their love of comedy.

Christmas Lectures return to The Stand

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 14:12:00 +0000

Andrew Learmonth talks to The Skinny ahead of The Christmas Lectures comedy gigs taking place at The Stand.

Danny Sutcliffe's Advent(ure) Calendar

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 10:36:00 +0000

Last Christmas we asked some of our favourite comedians to submit festive gags. Danny Sutcliffe submitted approximately 1000 jokes and proved himself the most Christmassy standup out there. Here's his stab at an advent calendar. We have no idea either.

Indie sitcom M.U.F.F. set to premiere online

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 16:05:00 +0000

An exciting new self-funded sitcom is set to launch, created by and starring many of Edinburgh's best comedians. Jojo Sutherland takes us into the crazy and grotesque world of M.U.F.F.

An Austentatious Christmas

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Christmas is coming early this year – Austentatious ride back into Edinburgh for a one-off show as part of the festive season in St Andrew's Square. Cariad Lloyd talks to The Skinny about bringing an Austen novel into the world of comedy

The Stand-Up Archive: Interview with Dr Oliver Double

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 15:41:00 +0000

The British Stand-Up Comedy Archive's Dr Oliver Double on archiving something as ephemeral as live performance

Mick Foley: How a wrestler fell in love with the Fringe

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 08:00:00 +0100

Concluding our Foley In Edinburgh trilogy, the man himself writes about how Edinburgh helped him to find his own voice and how a small, teatime comedy show helped him understand the true spirit of the Fringe

In Profile: Isy Suttie

hello@theskinny.co.uk (The Skinny) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:09:00 +0100

Isy Suttie is back at the Fringe this year with her third stand up show, Pearl & Dave. The show tells the story of a couple who meet while on holiday, fall in love, lose each other and then find each other on Facebook ten years later. An internet love story where Suttie plays all the characters, it's a far cry from Dobby, the World of Warcraft-loving IT geek she plays on C4’s Peep Show.

Suttie debuted at the Fringe in 2007 with Love Lost in the British Retail Industry, following this up in 2008 with The Suttie Show, which she admits was a "hard sell, it was a bit forced". Suttie took a break from the Fringe and returned to her old material, successfully touring Love Lost in Australia and the UK until last year. Now she's back in Edinburgh with material that “is ready to be told, it’s more like the first time, more natural." Pearl & Dave is interwoven with anecdotes and musical vignettes from Suttie’s own love life. Is leveraging her own heartbreak for comic effect potentially a bit raw? “Enough time has passed,” she explains, “for it to be funny rather than sad. And besides, I like being honest, it works.” Her candour is reminiscent of Dobby who, Suttie admits, is “quite similar to me: she’s basically more hardcore than what I am.”

Suttie is sweet but not saccharine, earnest but not annoying and, importantly, feminine but not feminist: being a female in the industry “is irrelevant, it’s just not a big deal and a lot of that is down to people like Jo Brand, who did all the hard work for us." There still exists a perception in some audiences that a comedienne's material is only funny if it's based on the crude and debasing aspects of being female - a misperception that acts like Suttie's easily rectify.

Her recent absence from the Fringe makes her return this year all the more exciting, and with only one day off throughout her 25-day run, her survival advice is dietary based: “In 2008, I tried to eat a whole fish every day, but it didn’t last. I think so long as you have lots of fruit and veg, you don’t necessarily need a whole animal a day to survive the Fringe.”

Isy's hot hints for the fringe: watch out for the former Penny Dreadful triumvirate (David Reed, Thom Tuck and Humphrey Ker), Bridget Christie, Josh Widdicombe, Elis James and Matthew Crosby