David Sedaris
- Writer and stand-up comedian
Press clippings
Big Laughs: The Skinny's Comedy Picks of 2024
The Skinny's Comedy Team give us the lowdown on their favourite funny moments of the year.
Arusa Qureshi, Emma Sullivan, Louis Cammell, Laurie Presswood and Polly Glynn, The Skinny, 6th December 2024Radio 4 announces a raft of new comedy series
Frank Skinner, Catherine Bohart, Randy Feltface, Christian Brighty, Lorna Rose Treen, Jim Smith, Geoff Norcott, Stuart Mitchell, Sunil Patel, Paul Merton and David Sedaris are amongst those who have got BBC Radio 4 series coming up in 2024.
British Comedy Guide, 15th January 2024Radio 4 2023 comedy commissions
Radio 4 has announced a raft of comedy commissions, including the return of Room 101 to the airwaves with Paul Merton as host. Stars involved in other new shows include Jonathan Pie, Maisie Adam, Chris McCausland and Jordan Gray.
British Comedy Guide, 16th January 2023From the B-word to the Q-word: an alphabet of offence
When the unsayable is constantly evolving, it makes language a minefield.
David Sedaris, The Guardian, 23rd December 2019David Sedaris is one of the funniest writers alive, and a new series of his essays started last week on Radio 4. The shows are simple - Sedaris just reads out his essays and some of his diary in front of a live audience - but they are guaranteed to cheer you up in these fun-free, panicky days. Episode 1, Father Time, is partly about Sedaris's 95-year-old dad, and is hilarious and touching, as ever. (Nerdy fact: Sedaris's sister, Amy, is an actor, and played Audrey Temple in Gimlet Media's Homecoming podcast.)
Miranda Sawyer, The Guardian, 7th April 2019David Sedaris: 'The audience thinks I'm monstrous'
The US writer and humorist talks about his sister's suicide, how he gets shocked by his own writing, and why he hates Moby-Dick.
Andrew Anthony, The Guardian, 7th July 2018David Sedaris: If I come across a man my size I squeak
Elfin, diminutive, bonsai-size - the 5ft 5in author has heard it all. What's the big deal?
David Sedaris, The Guardian, 30th June 2018Radio Times review
I like to laugh. I just don't get enough opportunities listening to the radio. This is where the humourist and writer David Sedaris takes on a heroic status. There was not a single sentence that did not raise a smile, and most of them led to full-on, unadulterated laughter.
Sedaris writes about what he knows: in the case of these three short readings that's a terrifying babysitter called Mrs Peacock, an altercation with a giant human poo in someone else's toilet and a trick that he played upon his partner involving two artificial pistols. He makes the mundane extraordinary and his acute observational powers add a whole new dimension to the everyday experience.
There will be nothing as funny as this on radio this week -- or possibly this year.
Jane Anderson, Radio Times, 30th July 2015David Sedaris is an upbeat listen too, his readings making me laugh along with his very enthusiastic audience. (This series is a repeat, but still worth checking out.) His writing always seems like such airy, inconsequential stuff, and yet it's perfectly timed, wonderfully written. There are some great lines and neatly observed scenes, especially about his family, and his light-voiced delivery is lovely - you feel he wants you to enjoy yourself as much as he does. If you listened to the end, this week, you got a couple of extracts from his diary, and the last ones - about women removing their bras as soon as they can after work - had me howling.
Miranda Sawyer, The Observer, 30th August 2014This week's new live comedy
Previews of Matt Richardson, David Sedaris and Joe Wilkinson.
James Kettle, The Guardian, 21st March 2014