The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Many ways to laugh yourself silly this spring
Various venues
Scotland’s comedic talent are coming out to play this spring with a number of our finest homegrown stand-ups putting on shows. Jay Lafferty says Wheesht! (Webster Theatre, Arbroath, April 4), as she recalls the scrapes she’s been in over the years due to her ability to say the wrong thing at the worst time, while Ray Bradshaw talks about having deaf parents in Deaf Comedy Fam (Macrobert Arts, Stirling, April 26).
Jamie MacDonald’s Designated Driver (Gardyne Theatre, Dundee, April 13) features personal tales from the front line of being blind in Scotland while River City and Gary Tank Commander star Leah MacRae opens up her Big Fat Fabulous Diary (Byre Theatre, St Andrews, May 3; Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, May 10; Webster Theatre, Arbroath, June 1; Perth Theatre, June 2; Whitehall Theatre, Dundee, June 8).
Veteran comic Raymond Mearns is also in heart-on-the-sleeve mode with Confessions Of A Control Freak (Gardyne Theatre, Dundee, April 6) while a bunch of local and UK-wide wags gather together for a filming of Breaking The News (Alhambra Theatre, Dunfermline, April 4) as hosted by the inimitable Des Clarke. Have a good laugh and hear your chortle on the radio some time later.
Phill Jupitus isn’t Scottish, but given that he’s made a new home in Fife, the former 6Music DJ and Never Mind The Buzzcocks team captain is as well placed as anyone to call their show Sassy Knack (Birnam Arts, Dunkeld, May 19; Tolbooth, Stirling, May 25; Dundee Rep, May 31).
It will feature tales of his recent move from the south and memories of playing Scottish gigs in the dim, distant past, with the likes of Billy Bragg.
Stewart Francis continues his final ever (he promises) stand-up tour entitled Into The Punset (Albert Halls, Stirling, May 29; Webster Theatre, Arbroath, May 30) which is as clever as you probably think it sounds and will contain more entertaining puns and killer one-liners than you can shake a funny stick at.
In more serious vein (but no less veering towards the daft at times) is US comic Reginald D Hunter (Webster Theatre, Arbroath, May 31) who is marking 20 years as a stand-up in the UK with Facing The Beast, a show largely about his complicated childhood growing in Georgia.
Winner of the 2018 Britain’s Got Talent competition, Lee Ridley aka Lost Voice Guy delivers a defiantly nonsentimental look at disability with the excellently titled I’m Only In It For The Parking (Dundee Rep, April 3) while Mr Bill Bailey, everyone’s favourite “hippy materialist” or “part troll” or “qualm peddler”, brings us Larks In Transit (Caird Hall, Dundee, May 29).
As ever, he will be mashing up tunes, delivering a stream of surreal-ish observations and smoking on an imaginary pipe to general acclaim and delight.