#Kate Copstick

[arichcomiclife]

EPISODE 113: KATE COPSTICK

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-vy62a-156d620 In this episode, I talk to the actor, writer and journalist, KATE COPSTICK. Copstick is one of the best-known comedy critics and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  She was a Perrier Comedy Award judge in 2003 and 2004.  She was also a Malcolm Hardee Award Judge from 2008 to 2015 and she is a regular critic to The Scotsman newspaper. Thank you…

[thejohnfleming]

Vertigo, a stroke, partial paralysis, two heart attacks and an inoperable cancer...

Vertigo, a stroke, partial paralysis, two heart attacks and an inoperable cancer…

Irony upon irony. In the UK, we are in the middle of an extreme heatwave. Irony upon irony. It never rains but it pours. Last Wednesday, torrential rains started in western Germany triggering deadly floods. At the time of writing, the German death toll is 188, with around 1,300 missing and an estimated 31 dead in Belgium. Poor old Belgium always gets forgotten. And let’s not even mention the…

[kevinwilsonpublicrelations]

Edinburgh Fringe 2019 Kate Copstick of The Scotsman interviews  Christopher Biggins at London’s legendary Ivy restaurant

[mikahaka]

Day 2: Edinburgh 2014 with ...Just some of the many oddities I tripped over at the Edinburgh ... Kate Copstick and Mika at The Grouchy Club. This year catch #katecopstick the comedians comedian and mika with #barefeetstreet at MIDNIGHT live at @underbellyedinburgh #theabbatoir Tuesday 21st. Tune in Podcasting LIVE. #godhelpus #whatwillhesaynext #gossip #edinburghfringe #barefeetstreet #aroha18 #yes #lgbt #edinburghlgbt (at Underbelly)

[trialinksters]

@thisisyourlaugh Could Copstick be a midget or is @timfitzhigham sitting at a very high bench? #trialinksters

— Inksters Solicitors (@inksters)

August 1, 2014

[jokebackmountain]

This Week I...

...am too outlaughed to see any more live comedy. Edinburgh has broken me. And somehow, out of what feels like nothing more than extreme masochism, I cannot wait to return next year. I cannot wait to tire myself out and laugh until my ribcage hurts and get tongue-tied in front of comedians all over again.

In the meantime, I will return to being a nerd and have a little ramble about Kate Copstick.

This is an interview she did as part of a web series called Fringe in 5. She says about Sarah Millican that 'if [she] wasn't a Geordie, she'd be told to go away, lose some weight, and come back when you're funny.' 

Copstick never expands on this opinion. So the only way that I've been able to interpret it is that Millican's public appeal comes from her persona rather than from her material. That she's more a character comedian than a straightforward stand-up - which I think is kind of true. A lot of her laughs are enhanced by the cadence of her accent, by her unashamed confessional nature clashing with a voice and a body from which we're not used to hearing that type of material. But that's COMEDY. That's what comedy IS. It's finding a distinctive voice and an onstage character and a way of delivering material that takes it to a better level than it is written on the page. That's what comedians DO. What I really mind is the way that Copstick could clarify exactly what she means - that she feels Millican is too reliant on gimmicks - but deliberately says it in a way that will incense as many people as possible. 

Ok, actually, that's something I mind. But what I really mind is Emily Dean's reaction. That she's heard a woman's weight referenced and decides she needs to get angry. And yet...

1) Every episode of Fringe in 5 starts with Russell Kane's monologue: 'I'm Russell Kane, here's a few wispy physical seconds of me trying too hard to be funny, that there's Emily Dean.' Every episode finishes with 'I've been Russell Kane, that was Emily Dean.' Did she do anything? Who on earth is she? Why is she there? Is she allowed to speak? Is she able to speak? 

2) I genuinely don't know if she was taught to speak along with the rest of her peers. In every episode she says nothing that's not written down on a card unless it's flirting with a guest (not really flirting - she describes herself to a saxophonist named Pedro as a 'pedrophile') or David Baddiel saying she'll be appearing naked in his show. Doesn't she have anything to contribute?

3) And when Kane introduces Dean in an earlier episode saying 'hashtag I would' she doesn't bat an eyelid. She laughs it off, she giggles a bit, but generally doesn't seem to mind. And this just says to me that she has no idea why she wants to be offended by Copstick's comments, because the fact that not once in this whole series does she open by making remarks about Kane's appearance is JUST THE SAME as her claim that the world would be a different place if anyone had told Oliver Hardy to lose weight. 

Kane is irritating in this series but at least he knows how to be funny and gets comedy. There are some phenomenal female comics at the fringe - Best Newcomer nominee Aisling Bea, Claudia O'Doherty, Nat Luurtsema, Cariad Lloyd, Laura Lexx, Lucy Beaumont, THE WINNER OF THE BEST COMEDY SHOW IN ALL OF EDINBURGH BRIDGET CHRISTIE. And yet Kane got put with a piece of window dressing. Why is no one incensed by that?

[arichcomiclife]

EPISODE 113: KATE COPSTICK

[thejohnfleming]

This year's Malcolm Hardee Awards: It all ended in tears and a fight by a bus.

This year’s Malcolm Hardee Awards: It all ended in tears and a fight by a bus.

Highly unlikely to ever want to rest in peace… Yesterday’s blog was about the travails of this year’s Malcolm Hardee Awards Show at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show was cancelled on the day (by the Award organisers) at The Counting House venue and then suddenly moved to another venue, Bob Slayer’s Blundabus: a double-decker bus. No reflection on the highly-esteemed Counting House. Yesterday’s blog…

[thejohnfleming]

Phil Jarvis of Consignia's alternative review of this year's Edinburgh Fringe

Phil Jarvis of Consignia’s alternative review of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe

“If you like fat blokes sweating, futuristic, nihilistic storylines, confusion… and a LOT…” I blogged about the commendably eccentric Consignia comedy group at the beginning of last week. They are currently at the Edinburgh Fringe Their penultimate show is tonight; their run finishes tomorrow. Yesterday morning,The Scotsman gave their show The Flatterers a 4-star review. Critic Kate Copstick’s…

[thejohnfleming]

Consignia: The Flatterers - The end of their anarchy at the Edinburgh Fringe?

Consignia: The Flatterers – The end of their anarchy at the Edinburgh Fringe?

Admirably anarchic comedy group Consignia are performing their show The Flatterers at the Edinburgh Fringe starting this Saturday (6th-14th August). It is a free show – you can pay what you like at the end – and it is not listed in the Edinburgh Fringe brochure. Last year, they got two reviews at the Fringe, both 4-stars: “They actively want you to walk out” ★★★★ (Chortle) “They eschew…

[thejohnfleming]

The Malcolm Hardee Awards and after - President Obonjo to buy Greenland?

The Malcolm Hardee Awards and after – President Obonjo to buy Greenland?

President Obonjo and his fearsome bodyguards attended the Malcolm Hardee Awards last night

I am in London.

The Edinburgh Fringe is, as tradition dictates, in Edinburgh.

Up in Edinburgh, the 2019 Malcolm Hardee Awards were announced and presented last night – well, this morning, because the anarchy started at midnight – in the Ballroom of The Counting House during the traditional 2-hour stage show.

[thejohnfleming]

BBC Studios and Channel 4 risk court case by ripping-off President Obonjo...

BBC Studios and Channel 4 risk court case by ripping-off President Obonjo…

#JusticeForObonjo !

BBC TV has a track record for simply stealing ideas.

Kate Copstick, doyenne of UK comedy critics agrees: “They do have a bit of a rep for being sticky-fingered.”

I mentioned one case in passing in a 2013 blog in which the Beeb tried to rip-off an idea the late Malcolm Hardee and I had. 

Which brings us to the current great rip-off scandal involving BBC Studios.

Monday 12th…

[thejohnfleming]

Kate Copstick's small charity gives poor people a helping hand up not hand-out

Kate Copstick’s small charity gives poor people a helping hand up not hand-out

Kate Copstick… as seen by Joanne Fagan

Following up on the last blog, here is an extract from last Friday’s diary kept by journalist/comedy critic Kate Copstick, working for her Mama Biashara charity in Kenya.

Mama Biashara helps people out of abject poverty by giving them small grants to start their own small, self-sustaining businesses.

Copstick receives no salary and no money to cover her…

[thejohnfleming]

How Edinburgh Fringe virgin Michael Livesley is coping or not with the chaos

How Edinburgh Fringe virgin Michael Livesley is coping or not with the chaos

It is performer Michael Livesley’s first Edinburgh Fringe.

In London last month, he talked to me about his show for a blog before the true madness all started.

He is now staying in Leith, the port part of Edinburgh.

So how is he faring?

Well…. Here he is with an update…

THE FIRST DAY

My first Fringe arrives with all the promise of a funeral in January. I have to say that I have dreaded this…

[thejohnfleming]

Edinburgh Fringe latest - BBC Studios slag-off live comedy + a secret new gig

Edinburgh Fringe latest – BBC Studios slag-off live comedy + a secret new gig

Up at the Edinburgh Fringe, anything and everything is possible…

Michael Livesley – after and before

I am not up at the Edinburgh Fringe, but feedback is starting to trickle in.

First-timer Michael Livesley, Half The Man in a comedy show at The Free Sisters about how he lost half his body weight and much else, emailed me, saying:

“The first night went well. No idea what to expect but my hope is…

[thejohnfleming]

Good advice for performers going to the Edinburgh Fringe this - or any - year

Good advice for performers going to the Edinburgh Fringe this – or any – year

Performers will expose themselves at the Edinburgh Fringe (Photo by Marcos Luiz Photograph via unSplash)

Yesterday, I got an email from a comedy performer I know. It read:

I am finally getting on with the job of writing my show after making reams of notes for months. Hopefully two months gives me enough time to write and learn it, though I intend the thing to be shaped up in Edinburgh more than…