Kunt and The Gang gave me my biggest Christmas Present…

Sweary top of the pops is a hit for independent comedy!
In 2009’s Christmas Singles Chart, off the back of a huge facebook campaign, Rage Against The Machine caused one of the biggest shocks in UK chart history when they stopped X Factor from having their 5th consecutive Christmas no 1. Sadly this Christmas X Factor were back on top… So the alternative has lost? Well the thing about the alternative is that it doesn’t need to win in order to make a difference and the most interesting and significant hit in the Xmas charts actually fell just outside the top 40.

Kunt and the Gang’s fans got behind “Use My Arsehole as a Cunt” and helped it to reach No 66 in the main singles chart (and No 8 in the independent chart), a feat that is all the more remarkable by the fact that he has no record label, no budget and received practically no press or radio. Read more »

Putting the alternative back into comedy…

In a recent Guardian article – Stand Up Comics Hit The Boom Time – Eddie Izzard’s promoter, Mick Perrin, predicted: ‘There will be a reaction against the TV-slick professionalisation of comedy… there’s a punk revolution brewing…’

Fuckin’ A! It’s been a quarter of a century since alternative comedy turned the industry on its head and it is long overdue another shake-up. Read more »

Give it up Fringe Whingers – Edinburgh in Aug is still a magical place…

In times gone by we would happily throw our turds into the street, that was until those meddling Victorians decided to build a sewerage system that efficiently took our waste away. Sigh… Things just aren’t what they used to be… And so it is in Comedy, everyone from Stewart Lee to Harry from the Fix seems keen to bemoan the fact that the Fringe is not the same as it used to be – No shit Sherlock, things move on. Read more »