Lee Camp Guest Blog

I love performing in Glasgow. I really do. I've always said that comedy is not meant for places with endless sunshine and palm trees and girls in bikinis and miniature dogs with sunglasses on. Comedy is meant for the gritty, rainy, REAL places in this world. And that's exactly what Glasgow is. If you see someone playing Frisbee on the beach, they are not funny, sarcastic or satirical. They are tanned. But if you see someone drinking a pint and mumbling curse words under their breath, they are probably funny as sh*t.

We live in a screwed up world, and my way of dealing with it is to make fun of it. Rough, real cities filled with people who wouldn't know a tan if it slapped them in the face: that’s my kind of place. I live in New York City - a great city for comedy. I do not live in Los Angeles - a great city for drinks with fruit in them. Glasgow is a great city for comedy too. And as far as I can tell, if you put fruit in a Glaswegian's drink, you'll leave with a broken nose. 

Anyway, hope to see you at my solo show where I'll take on this clusterf*ck we're in the middle of. Don't bring your Frisbee. 

Lee Camp IS Yet Another American Mistake is at Blackfriars on Friday 30 March

The Geek (from The Ginge, The Geordie & The Geek) Guest Blog

I’m on the train again! Travelling down to London and have a spare 5 hours so I have decided to write a wee blog for the Glasgow International Comedy Festival. This is our 3^rd year at the festival! And we love it!

It’s been an amazing year for us, we have performed with Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr, James Corden, appeared on Dick and Dom with Catherine Tate and also sold over 7000 tickets at the Edinburgh Fringe. But I suppose the highlight is the BBC have commissioned us for a half hour comedy pilot… you see your TV licence does go to good use (we promise not to waste it). 

We are currently filming it just now, which is amazing but means I have travelled up and down to Glasgow seven times in the last four weeks; I’m starting to know the train staff by name now. Trevor is my favourite ticket collector, when he is checking tickets he just says to me ‘You all right big man?’ Everyone on the carriage looks at me and I feel special.

Anyhows we are doing our 2011 Edinburgh sell out show this year with one or two sneak previews of our 2012 Edinburgh show, which due to popular demand or insanity, we are performing twice a day this August! (God help us, god help us all!)

Right I’m off to see Sandra, she works in the train canteen and always gives me a wee free bar of chocolate. I don’t have the heart to tell her I don’t eat chocolate, but I give them to the Geordie when I see him! He loves his sweets, every year those pants are getting tighter!  

The Ginge, The Geordie & The Geek perform at the Tron Theatre on Tuesday 27 March 

Adam Kay Guest Blog

Much as I realise the laziest comments an English comedian can make about Scotland relate to the currency and the cuisine, I’m going to press ahead and write a blogpost about the food in Glasgow.

Getting my defence in early, I dearly love Glasgow – I live there for two months of every year, my boyfriend is Scottish and the Ubiquitous Chip is one my favourite restaurants in the world. But crucially to my defence, this story is about being served up a dead crow.

Staggering back from a pub in the Southside last October, talk naturally turned to buying fried foods, and we found ourselves in a chicken emporium. Shortly into our journey home, our friend Danny was spitting feathers. (Thick black battered feathers.)

There was some degree of discussion as to whether they were chicken feathers that had blackened as a result of the frying process, or if they were a different bird altogether. By the time we were back in the flat, we had decided to perform a CSI: Glasgow autopsy on Danny’s food. Happily for the investigation, we didn’t just have wings to work with – one of the other fried chunks contained a beak. Reference to the RSPB’s very helpful Bird Identifier website allowed to narrow it down to a Carrion crow, a Jackdaw or a Jay. Danny went off to be sick.

It’s worth pointing out in fairness to the place that only one of us ended up being served a dead crow – four of us received precisely what we ordered. But we all learned a valuable lesson about late-night fast food in the Southside. Needless to say, it’s a lesson we completely ignore when we get drunk enough and fancy some chicken.

From Amateur Transplants: Adam Kay's Smutty Songs is at the Citizens Theatre on Saturday 31 March

Michael Winslow Guest Blog

Every time I think about Scotland wonderful and colourful pictures and memories overwhelm my head. That's the very reason why the Americans built a Harry Potter theme park, complete with Hogwarts Castle to size, in Florida. It still does not compare, even though it is huge.

To get the chance to play Scotland is another one of those ultimate bucket list things people have for those who have never been there. My first experience was to go to Glasgow to the University, where the students and staff are absolute Police Academy and Space Balls fans, and made my visit and show a smash success. Even though it was a one-show stop, I realised that everyone went to great lengths to show my wife and myself great hospitality.

The only issue for me was how to be able to even try to match the quality of the fish and chips and batter that we were served in that restaurant down and around the corner from the university, whose name escapes me, in the building from the 1540s or earlier. It haunts me to the point where I have no choice but to return for more.

I saw a news travel article a while ago where the reporter was picking on Glasgow, and I beg to disagree. I have had such a great time here that I get the reason why people want to make movies there, which explains why Brad Pitt was there recently. Perhaps that unnamed critic should try his luck at the MMA dojos and learn a few things, then join me for dinner.

Glasgow makes you pay attention. The taxi driver was an excellent stand-up comedian himself, explaining why the Scottish accent was better than everyone elses... "Aye, but watch the @!**#% road mate, don't wanna die laughing!"

Thanks for sending us Craig Fergusson. No, really. We Americans watch him every night knowing full well that it is all off-the-top-of-the-head-without-a-net-below. Other stand-ups would kill to be able to do that.

The other thing is, I look forward to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer for my second time, complete with the Castle and 1500s building designs. Walking through the college there, I finally understand why J.K.Rowling wrote Harry's stories that way. I get it J.K. Brilliant. Just one thing though; I am not good with freezing weather, and need to eat more steaks to build up. The coldest winter ever for me was the summer I spent in beautiful bonnie Scotland. Sorry folks, but I got thermals under me Kilt. Keeps my whisky flask warm under there.

Massive respects to ya, Scotland :-)

Michael Winslow: The Man of 10,000 Voices is at the King's Theatre on Thursday 22 March

Julia Sutherland - WRITING IS HARD.

 I love performing comedy. Love it. I love making people laugh, and that great feeling on stage when you feel like you’re connecting with the audience, like you really ‘get’ each other. It’s awesome. I totally love it.


However, I hate writing comedy. I hate it. I find it utterly torturous and difficult.  It’s not something which has ever come naturally to me, and it’s probably my biggest challenge, in terms of cracking it in this game.


For me, most new material will come in tiny little chunks... and never when I’ve sat down in front of my computer with the express purpose of writing new material.  It comes when I’m trying to get to sleep... when I’m half cut after a gig, in a taxi, on the way home... when I’m pushing a buggy down the street, taking my son to nursery ... or at any other generally inconvenient time, when I don’t have a bit of paper, or a hand free to type frantically into the notes of my iphone.


My inner voice is more harsh than any comedy critic could ever be, and I really struggle to silence it enough to just try something completely new out on stage.

But the fact of the matter is that you won’t ever really know if something you think is funny, is also funny to other people, until you say it out loud on stage. And it’ll almost certainly take you a few attempts at saying it out loud on stage, until you find the right words, the right order, the right rhythm.

This time last year, I had an experience in Glasgow which made me chuckle - just as I was preparing for the Glasgow Comedy Festival, in my usual panicked, last-minute style, with my laptop on my knees in a well known chain of coffee shops.

Two guys came up and asked if they could sit down on the seats beside me – and before long were asking me what I was doing on my computer. I told them I was trying to write material, and they expressed surprise that I was a comedian (I am a woman, after all).  It seemed only polite to ask the talker of the two what HE did for a living, and he proudly told me that, by trade, he was a shoplifter.  He went on to brag that he’d only been lifted ‘the once’ in the 50 years he’d been thieving (Harrods, if you’re curious – top security there, and no mistake!) and that he made ‘an honest living’ out of it. 

I didn't really know where to take the conversation at this point, apart from enquiring as to whether his kids had joined the family business (“Oh no hen, ma daughter’s a lap dancer – an' a good wan too!") and tried to get back to writing on my laptop.  After a few minutes, he got up asked his pal if he wanted a drink – and me if I wanted anything to eat... I politely declined, but he returned a few minutes later with a couple of bottles of water and a fruit salad for me. I jokingly asked “Did you pay for this??” to which he, of course, replied – “Oh no, hen, don’t be daft!”. 

He was genuinely an absolute charmer - and that's one of the things I love about this city - all the beautifully flawed characters you come across. You just need to remember to keep your eyes on your wallet...

Right, so, I’m going to stare blankly at my computer screen for another painful hour or two now, desperately trying to coax some semblance of comedy out of a scribbled collection of words on the back of a bus ticket.  I’m probably not really selling myself here, but please do come and see my show on the 16^th March at Cottiers theatre, at 8pm. Pretty please. Thank you.

Hopefully I will have written it by then...

SHOW TITLE: Julia Sutherland & Friends

VENUE: Cottiers Theatre

DATE: Friday 16^th March

TIME: 8pm

BOOKING LINK: Buy online from TicketSOUP HERE.

BOX OFFICE: 0844 395 4005

Dorothy Paul on Retiring from Retirement

Hello folks,

I foolishly said I was retiring, but a few of my showbiz pals said, "Have you forgotten the unwritten rule?  We don't retire.”  

Then I thought about actors, older than me, who are still working,  still receiving awards.  No matter what you do, while you are alive there are endless possibilities. It's not that I am expecting another award.  I am delighted with   A BAFTA, A GREAT SCOT AWARD FROM THE SUNDAY MAIL and a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP of the TUFTY CLUB.  What more could you ask for?

I thought of my hobbies, like   painting, hill walking,  Pilates,  swimming,  travelling round the globe.  Have you noticed it's getting smaller all the time?   Hobbies are all very nice but every time I go to the Theatre to see a play I can't help saying to myself,  "I want to be up there strutting my stuff, hoping I make people laugh and doing what I was trained for." 

Mind you I never attended the RSAMD, I learned my trade on the hoof starting by studying singing then into the Variety Theatre, comedy, a job as a chat show hostess. 

The clubs, when, after a not too successful performance, a drunken man said "listen hen...you should've quit when you were ahead".  A time when work was so short, I even wrote to the producer of Doctor Who.  I got a kindly reply in which he more or less said that he had no roles  for a Scottish alien at that time.   Then I started to get roles in the straight theatre.  Eventually I got the part of Magrit in the Steamie.   That was a godsend.

Not long after that I decided I would specialise in comedy, many one woman shows later, retiring for a year, but now back where I think I belong.

PERFORMER: Dorothy Paul

SHOW TITLE: Dorothy Paul: Retiring From Retirement

VENUE: Kings Theatre

DATE: Saturday 18^th March, 3pm & 7.30pm, Monday 26^th March, 7.30pm

BOOKING LINK: Buy from TicketSOUP HERE.

BOX OFFICE: 0844 871 7627

Janey Godley on her having the festival at her doorstep

It is with much excitement and pride that I take part in The Glasgow International Comedy Festival again this year, a comedy festival in my own fair city.

My show this year is called ‘Too Old for Telly’ on April Fool’s day which seems appropriate and is at the awesome Oran Mor venue up in the leafy West End and one of my favourite venues.

Having done many international festivals across the globe, having one on my doorstep is incredibly novel, I don’t have to get on a bus, plane or train to attend. I can merely walk out my own door and have amazing top comics at my fingertips and that’s just a cracking feeling.

I remember my first Glasgow Comedy festival show back in 2003 down in a wee bar in the Trongate in a dank basement with about 70 people crammed into tables that made a screaming sound on the concrete when moved. I didn’t need hecklers when the furniture was already making enough noise in protest. I loved it.

So embrace the city come March, stand back and listen to the venues ringing with laughter and enjoy the comedy festival, I like to think our buildings are built on the hard work, sarcasm and laughter of the working classes that toiled to erect them.

As long as the furniture within doesn’t scream in objection!

PERFORMER: Janey Godley

SHOW TITLE: Janey Godley: Too Old For Telly

VENUE: Oran Mor

DATE: Sunday 1^st April, 8pm SOLD OUT, extra show added Sunday 1^st April, 5pm

BOOKING LINK: Buy from TicketSOUP HERE. 

BOX OFFICE: 0844 395 4005

Chris Forbes on the 'Comedy Bug'

I vividly remember the first stand-up comedy gig I ever performed. As I waited to go on, a number of different thoughts were racing through my head; Why am I doing this? Is my whimsical routine on chickens and cows taking over the world actually funny, or is it just funny in my head? Why am I doing this? I don't really know anything about politics, why am I doing a routine about Tony Blair and George Bush, Why am I doing this? What’s my mum going to think? I'll never recover from the humiliation if this goes wrong; I'm going to be famous after this one gig! Why am I doing this? etc etc...All this whilst fully appreciating how doing stand-up comedy seems to work as the best natural laxative known to man.

Where was that gig? Blackfriars Basement in Glasgow! 

Thankfully I survived that experience and was well and truly bitten by the comedy bug. The chickens and cows worked out just fine and my mum finally accepted I was never going to get a "real" job...I still don’t know anything about politics though. Six years later and I am returning to that hallowed ground to perform some brand new experimental comedy with my good friend Antony Murray. We both started out in comedy at roughly the same time and so we are both hopefully a little wiser, a little funnier and a little less neurotic when it comes to performing comedy. 

For the last few years I have been performing at the Glasgow ComedyFestival as either my Gothic comedy alter ego, Damien Crow, or as part of my sketch group, 'How Do I Get Up There?', so it will be a nice change to finally go back to just being myself and talking about the changes and experiences I have encountered during the last 6 years. Getting older has changed my perspective on comedy. Gone are the whimsical routines about world domineering farmyard animals. These have been replaced ruthlessly in favour of ranting bitterly about the youth of today, the difficulties I face in finding a comfortable pair of size 13 shoes and the pressures I face from my friends and family to settle down, get married, have kids etc etc – just because that’s what every other bloody Tom, Dick and Harry seem to be doing!

Anyway, Its always a pleasure to perform in Glasgow. It truly has the best (and often most unpredictable) audiences in the world so I am looking forward to our show at my comedy birthplace later this month. No big thrills. Just a couple of guys in true Glasgow fashion, f#nny#ng about!

PERFORMERS: Chris Forbes & Antony Murray

SHOW TITLE: Chris Forbes & Antony Murray’s Comedy Show

VENUE: Blackfriars Basement

DATE: Thursday 15^th March, 8.30pm

BOOKING LINK: Buy online from TicketSOUP HERE.

BOX OFFICE: 0844 395 4005

Andrew Learmonth in David Cameron Hates Mumford & Sons: The Secrets of Comedy Revealed

It doesn't matter how much of an obnoxious p###k you are, your dog will still love you. It's unfair because we can all see you being a moron. We can see you being worthy of only hate and contempt but your dog is blind to this. He mistakes your hideousness , your obnoxiousness, your inability to wash your mug after your coffee break, your smelliness, your patheticness, for love.

And no matter how much we want to tell your dog that he deserves better and that he can get better it won't matter because he's your dog.

This is why I like dogs but hate p#####s.

It’s also why at this year's Glasgow Comedy Festival I will be performing mostly to dogs I have reared since their birth. It will not matter how awful I am because they will still love me.

You may think that I'm not going to get the intellectual appreciation that a human audience would give me but I would counter that by saying most human audiences are f#####g morons.

Again there are licensing issues: will the corrupt, dog fearing secret society who run Glasgow City Council's licensing department allow this to happen? To this argument I simply counter that if we can't perform the show in front of 37 dogs in the Old Hairdressers on Friday 30th March then we will go on to the streets.  Like a true artist my art will happen wherever I have to make it happen.  It also adds an element of risk because my dogs aren't very well trained and they will probably run off into the streets of Glasgow’s city centre attracted by the smell of kebab and vomit.

I suppose the main attraction of dogs is that they don’t have expectations.  For example Johnny Depp’s dogs would have probably watched the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tide and thought it okay.  Thankfully we non dogs are starting to learn that expectations aren’t worth the hassle.  If we have no expectations then how can we be disappointed?

If you do come to Andrew Learmonth in David Cameron Hates Mumford &Sons: The Secrets of Comedy Revealed on Friday 30th March for the best results it’s best if you have no expectations.  I certainly don’t.

VENUE: Old Hairdressers

DATE: Friday 30^th March

TIME: 7.30pm

BOOKING LINK: Buy from TicketSOUP.com HERE. 

BOX OFFICE: 0844 395 4005