In her blog yesterday, 2010 Funny Women Awards finalist Lindsay Sharman wrote:

A chap from The Green Party contacted me last week to offer me a 10 minute slot on a bill headlined by Alistair McGowan, for a Green Party fundraising...

Last week, I had a drink with Italian-born British-based comedian Giacinto Palmieri - after seeing the first try-out of his show Pagliaccio which he will be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe in August.

Giacinto is one of life's natural quotables:

"It's a love story," he says, "but it's a...

I have occasionally blogged advice on the perils and pitfalls of staging a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. But it really requires a whole book - which is what Mark Fisher has now done with The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide - How to Make Your Show...

There are a lot of films labelled "the best worst movie ever made" - for example, Killer Bitch.

It has taken me some time to catch up with The Room, made in 2003.

British writer and social commentator Charlie Brooker said after its

British-based German comedian Paco Erhard, is taking his 5-Step Guide to Being German show to the Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival after a one-off at London's Leicester Square Theatre on 13 February. This is an updated version of the show I saw at the Edinburgh...

The Edinburgh Fringe has been described as being like standing in a cold shower tearing up £20 notes. Now is the time when potential participants are asking themselves Should I really take a show up there in August? So, in a spirit of altruism and pomposity, I thought...

For 14 years, comedian Janey Godley ran a bar in the Calton area of Glasgow's East End. These were the Trainspotting years and, at the time, the Calton was as quiet and lawful as modern-day Somalia. You would not want to go there.

Like me, Janey does...

In a recent Huffington Post piece, I wrote about two types of show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

In normal 'paid' shows, the audience pays for its tickets before seeing the show and reviewers and talent scouts for the media/showbiz industry mostly get free tickets because they potentially...

A lot of performers at the Edinburgh Fringe are there simply to get publicity, not to get big audiences. Getting bums-on-seats is a secondary, though still important, aim.

They (quite rightly) assume they will not make any profit. They want to gather review quotes and/or, with extreme luck,...

Throughout my life, whenever I have met people at parties and suchlike, they have always eventually asked that terribly British question: "What do you do?"

I am buggered if I have ever been able to give a sensible answer.

Most of my money has come from producing/directing/writing on-screen TV promos....

Yesterday, someone asked me for advice about their next Edinburgh Fringe comedy show.

The Fringe does not start until next August, but now is the time people begin their preparation.

His problem was that he had a factually-based one-hour show and has fallen out with his on-stage partner. It...

I spent yesterday afternoon at comedian Martin Soan's home.

Martin was in The Greatest Show on Legs comedy troupe with late 'godfather of British alternative comedy' Malcolm Hardee. They were best-known for their naked balloon dance on Chris Tarrant's OTT TV show but, in...

Yesterday was a special day. Because I had a cup of tea with jockey-turned-rock manager-turned-comedian Bob Slayer.

Any day when Bob Slayer has a cup of tea instead of 15 pints of beer is a special day.

The American comedian Louis CK had reportedly just made...

I will be spending a quiet time at home on Christmas Day.

I asked 'Digger Dave', a friend of the late 'godfather of British comedy' Malcolm Hardee if he had any memories of spending Christmas with Malcolm.

Perhaps this was a mistake.

"Most of the stories are still...

Earlier this month, I wrote in the Huffington Post about being on a Storywarp panel which discussed the techniques and nature of storytelling, of telling "Other People's Stories". I have been listening to the tape and, unusually, I managed to be lucid on a couple of occasions.

As mentioned in a previous Huffington Post blog, last century I interviewed Terry Nation, who created the Daleks for the BBC TV series Doctor Who. We talked in 1978, during the Lebanese Civil War, which lasted 1975-1990. Terry Nation died in 1997.

I met him at...

Recently, BBC Radio 4's Today programme had a strange report on 'Bibliotherapy' and the psychologically-positive healing power of reading books. It sounded to me like Californian inmates had taken over the asylum and managed to confuse someone at the BBC into giving them an advertising slot.

There was a report in The Scotsman yesterday which started: "Theatres across Scotland have had their best winter for years as families flock back to the panto to raise morale and spread Christmas cheer during a time of economic crisis."

Who knows whether a recession is good or bad...

Last week, I met Fred Finn, who is officially the world's most travelled person. He has been in the Guinness Book of Records since 1983 and has now flown 15 million miles - the equivalent of 31 trips to the moon. He made 718 trips on Concorde and always...

The Edinburgh Fringe does not happen until August, but performers - and especially comedians - start planning for it now - in late-December.

The big problem, of course, is the cost. I have reckoned for the last few years that, to stage a professionally-promoted show at the Fringe, costs...