Keen As Mustard

Here at Channel 4 Comedy there's nothing better we like to do than sit back and swot up on the freshest, funniest comedians. But where do we find out about these ace new laughter merchants, you may ask, well, Channel 4 of course and Mustard Magazine.

Gang Show:
Pappy's Fun Club

Pappy’s Edinburgh show had me doubled over and weeping with laughter, a feat all the more impressive with a show that’s clean enough to take your grandma to. As my girlfriend later observed, Pappy’s are the Muppets made flesh. Wiry, bespectacled Matthew Crosby is their Kermit, ginger permagrinned Ben Clark their Fozzy Bear, affable Brendan Dodds their Ernie and manic Tom Parry their Animal.

They’ve only been going a couple of years but already feel fully formed, with their mixture of sketches and behind-the-scenes malarkey creating a world uniquely theirs and infused with infectious enthusiasm. For me, the highlight is their sublime sketch about a has-been Folk group which starts by evoking genuine sympathy for the characters and then with perfect timing goes wonderfully absurd. I’m trying to avoid spoilers here. Also, their hour long show has an exhilaratingly clever and ballsy finale.

Storyteller:
Terry Saunders

This comedic storyteller won a place in my heart by making me shed a single manly tear at the word “sausages”. This was towards the end of his delightfully melancholic show ‘Pulp Boy’, about a teenager who, dragged on holiday with his mother, stubbornly vows to communicate only in the lyrics of Jarvis Cocker.

I was equally moved by his heart-warmingly whimsical ‘Missed Connections’, the Amelie-like tale of a girl obsessed with lonely hearts ads. Terry is also the co-creator and MC of the wonderful laughterinoddplaces (does exactly what it says in the tin, see the profile in Mustard issue #01). A true artist, the comedy circuit could do with more like him.

Stand Up:
Andrew O'Neill

This heavy-metal loving stand-up has a nice line in surreal musings (“I could've been a towel but I was harvested too soon – hear the lament of the flannel!”) and lists of ‘facts’ such as “Greeks hate plates”. For a while he lived on my floor (inspiring the Mustard article ‘Goth on The Landing’) and I would often come home to find my toilet spray-painted with the Mustard logo or my A-to-Z annotated with facetious notes in red biro.

Andrew has also contributed several Mustard pieces, including the film poster “Honey the Kids are Exactly the Right Size But Their Density’s F*cked”. His Edinburgh show ‘Winston Churchill Was Jack the Ripper’ kept me laughing even after I’d seen it twenty times and I’m looking forward to his next, 'Andrew O'Neill's Totally Spot-On History Of British Industry’.

Sketch Partners:
The Cakes

Writer Roisin Conaty co-stars with Caroline Ginty in this series of darkly sweet two-hander sketches. The long sketches give them time to really get under the skin of convincingly observed characters such as the competitively agoraphobic flatmates (“Donna’s only semi-agoraphobic, she can go in the garden”) and the unemployed suburban husband who talks like he’s in an episode of MTV Cribs.

I remember seeing Roisin at her first ever stand-up gig and being impressed with how unique her material was, and it’s great to see her creating ever more inventive characters that really resonate. I particularly enjoyed her deep-voiced, anguished song (chorus: “this relationship is like Monopoly: nobody ever wins! Nobody ever wins!”) which I found myself humming weeks later.

Writer:
John Finnemore

John has a well-crafted dry wit and writes for shows such as Dead Ringers and Mitchell and Web (the sketch where the evil genius discusses a revolving wall with a plumber was his), so you’ve probably already laughed at his stuff without knowing it.

I recently saw him perform his regular character, Roger Wattis of the Silent Majority: “China produces more rubbish in a single day than I do. What is this, one law for me and another law for the Chinese?”. He also has some lovely tightly-written sketches, including one where the Famous Five bump into each other as adults: “It’s Georgina now. I’ve got eight children. I was eleven, Julian. It was just a phase.”

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