Dave Cohen

Dave Cohen and Steve Gribbin interview

A two-part interview with two comics whose careers goes back to the beginnings of the London comedy circuit. That is, Perrier Award winner and Have I Got News For You writer Dave Cohen and Comedy Store favourite Steve Gribbin.

Interview with Steve Gribbin and Dave Cohen

Steve Gribbin has been around "since alternative comedy stormed the barricades" in the early 80s, and remains a Comedy Store regular. Dave Cohen helped form the Comedy Store Players and was a Perrier Award nominee.

To find myself recommending a makeover of any genre is a first for me. But the 15 Minute Musical is hardly in the same league as those bowel-evacuation-obsessed offerings on television.

In this series written by the sharply pointed comic nibs of Dave Cohen, David Quantick and Richie Webb, celebrities and politicians get a West End revamp, and in timely fashion, following last night's US Presidential Elections, the focus here is on Barack Obama. But that's where all actuality ends, for this is summer lovin' (and loathin') in the style of Grease. Obama is the John Travolta character and his Olivia Newton-John equivalent is Hillary Clinton.

As musicals go, its main attraction is the power to invoke an entirely enjoyable cringe. As song-writing goes, this is the one and only time you'll ever here 'Hillary' rhymed with 'ancillary' and 'capillary'. Genius.

Another six-episode package of pocket-sized feasts of song and dance (not seen, for obvious reasons, but referred to for one of those staples of radio comedy, the cheap laugh) from the fluent pens of Richie Webb, David Quantick and Dave Cohen.

The first is the strangest, as Washington High School Musical depends, for its cutting-edge satire, on the contest for the Democratic nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, so there's a certain air of old news about it. Also old musicals - this is less High School Musical than Grease. So Clinton gets to sing a wistful ballad which goes, in part, Hillary, the lady they tried to pillory/ I am ancillary to you. It's better than that, though. There's a nice anti-Bush rocker with the chorus: Go, Georgie go/ Georgie no good and the Little Richard-esque 'Barackobama alopbamboom'.

Tonic of the week was Westminster Side Story, the first in a new run of 15-Minute Musicals. The pastiche of West Side Story was inspired, and the political jokes were convincing as two gangs, Gordon's Goodies and the Hugger Hoodies, battled to dominate the centre ground.

Written by Dave Cohen, David Quantick and Richie Webb, performed by Webb, David Lamb and Mel Hudson, it was just the thing to blow away gathering clouds of conference-season cant.