British Comedy Guide

Andrew Lloyd Webber

  • Composer

Press clippings

Humphrey Ker & David Reed pen Sherlock Holmes Christmas comedy musical

Humphrey Ker and David Reed are partnering with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber for a comedy musical about Sherlock Holmes. The former members of The Penny Dreadfuls sketch group are writing the book for Sherlock Holmes And The Twelve Days Of Christmas, featuring the great fictional detective pursuing a serial killer who's dispatching his victims with methods suggested by the carol.

British Comedy Guide, 29th May 2024

Lee Mack to host Royal Variety Performance 2022

Lee Mack will host the Royal Variety Performance 2022. Al Murray, Maisie Adam, Omid Djalili and Axel Blake will also perform on the show.

British Comedy Guide, 8th November 2022

There's a wonderful dig at Sherlock in the opening episode of this comeback series, which sees Alan Davies making his return.

Jonathan Creek finds that he has unwittingly acquired a crime-fighting apprentice - a young man with a scarf and a talent for noticing stuff. It's hilariously done, and later Creek creator David Renwick also pokes fun at Poirot and his imitators in a scene where all the suspects are gathered together. We're also treated to a clever pastiche of an Andrew Lloyd Webber-style musical, but these aren't the only unusual features about this episode.

Ali Bastian guest stars as the leading lady in a West End show with a classic locked room mystery who is later found stabbed in her very own locked dressing room. But what's most striking in this whodunit is that, for once, we are shown exactly how the crime was committed, by whom and how it was covered up. All we have to do is wait and see how Creek will work it out for himself.

Creek's improbably lovely new wife Polly (Sarah Alexander) is still getting used to this slightly bizarre world. But when she finds a secret box of letters in the massive Tudor mansion she has just inherited, she finds out that being married to a super sleuth might come in handy too.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 28th February 2014

Steven Toast as James Bond? Why not? He's only got Michael Fassbender and Nigel Havers for competition, after all. This audition, like so many others, sees Matt Berry's titular luvvie misjudging the mood somewhat. But there are even greater problems in store when a poker game with Andrew Lloyd Webber turns nasty. With Webber's universally feared enforcer Michael Ball (played here by Michael Ball) on his tail and a gay porn voiceover to complete, Toast's on his uppers.

Still, there's always some way that things can get worse... This first series comes to an end with lots of blood and finally, a glimpse of Toast's terrible play. By and large, it's been a delight: a tour de force of virtuosic vocal and physical comedy and the kind of relentless, off-the-cuff daftness that can only be the result of meticulous planning and dedication. Encore!

Phil Harrison, Time Out, 24th November 2013

David Baddiel - portrait of the artist

The comic talks about the mundanity of fame, the difficulty of doing alternative comedy when you went to Cambridge, and how Andrew Lloyd Webber keeps mistaking him for Ben Elton.

Laura Barnett, The Guardian, 29th October 2013

Silly ideas other sketch shows wouldn't consider, written and performed with care and expertise other sketch shows cannot match: that's this series in a nutshell.

Tonight! A time traveller goes back to 1969 to kill Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice before they can finish Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We ask Buzz Aldrin what Neil Armstrong really said when he stepped onto the Moon. Plus, the Amish Sex Pistols.

It's all great, with Kevin Eldon's bold decision to be at the centre of everything giving it an extra bit of authored uniqueness.

Jack Seale, Radio Times, 31st March 2013

Thank heaven for The Sarah Millican Television Programme (BBC2), proof that you don't have to be really horrid to be funny. Good jokes, quick wit, timing, a bunch of bawdiness, that all helps ... though speaking dead funny is obviously the main thing.

Not that it's over-cosy. "On a scale of one to 10, how creepy is [Andrew Lloyd Webber] in person?" she asks Melanie "Singy Spice" C. (Mel C unfortunately is a very dull guest and gives only asinine, on-message answers.)

I'm not sure about Sarah M's impressions - either of Nigella L or of a wolf. That's a bichon frisé isn't it? (I've just learned that one, I'm trying to get him in a lot.) Brilliant idea for a talent reality show, though Sarah - Dances with (actual) Wolves.

As for the voice, I started wondering if you slowed Millican down to about half speed (like when batteries used to run down on tape recorders), whether she would turn into Brendan Foster off the Olympics. So I did. I even learned the Garage Band programme on the computer especially, took me ages. And you know what? She doesn't. She just sounds like Sarah Millican, after a few drinks and a sex change.

Sam Wollaston, The Guardian, 16th January 2013

If you had to decide which of Jonathan's guests tonight should be showered in glory for entertainment titanhood, much would depend on personal taste. Cheryl Cole is a fashion figurehead, proud guardian of regional accents and singer of countless hits, one of which she'll be performing tonight. Andrew Lloyd Webber is a composer of much-loved musicals, owner of six grand theatres and the perpetrator of TV casting shows like Superstar.

They both do charitable work and have carefully styled hair. Happily, Ross is the kind of chat show host who's got enough bonhomie for both Cheryl and Andrew to leave the sofa having been thoroughly coated.

Emma Sturgess, Radio Times, 8th September 2012

Dawn French joins search for Jesus music star

Dawn French and Jason Donovan sign up as judges for Andrew Lloyd Webber's ITV show to find stars for his musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

The Telegraph, 18th May 2012

Michael McIntyre bounds around the stage like an overexcited circus ringmaster when his roadshow reaches Belfast. He's remorselessly cheerful (a good thing in a comedian) and relentlessly good-natured as he has gentle fun with audience member Christine Bleakley about the incongruities of The One Show ("I saw Andrew Lloyd Webber talking about knife crime"). And redoubtable Olympic gold-medallist Dame Mary Peters gamely plays along when McIntyre does far from dextrous impressions of her winning sports. But really he's little more than master of ceremonies, this week introducing Jeff Green, who gets some mileage out of being newly married and his wife's love of cushions, a chipper Kerry Godliman, who wonders why baby clothes have pockets, and headliner Patrick Kielty, whose best bit is a funny Facebook version of the Middle East conflict.

Alison Graham, Radio Times, 4th July 2009

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