Gyles Brandreth

Edinburgh preview: Gyles Brandreth

It's show-time as actor, author, ex-MP, and broadcaster, Gyles Brandreth, returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 1st to 26th August with his brand-new one-man show, Break A Leg! at the Pleasance Courtyard.

Why Just a Minute hides a far more ruthless reality

Just A Minute has become one of the nation's most beloved radio shows -- but it began as a classroom humiliation, inflicted on daydreamers by a history teacher at Sherborne School in the Thirties.

Stars from comedy's punk past return to Fringe

They were at the vanguard of political comedy. Now Alexei Sayle, Craig Ferguson and Sue Perkins are heading back to the festival, as it celebrates its 70th birthday.

My Edinburgh: Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth began his career as a children's TV show host before going on to become a Conservative MP, starring as a fictionalised version of himself in That Mitchell and Webb Look and often appears in Countdown's Dictionary Corner.

Gyles Brandreth: how the Fringe saved me from politics

He took Shakespeare to Edinburgh and sang in suspenders and stockings. On the eve of a new solo show, ex-Tory MP Gyles Brandreth remembers how his love affair with theatre began.

Interview: Gyles Brandreth

For almost two decades, Gyles Brandreth has been searching for the secrets of happiness.

Every day, in a stairwell at Broadcasting House, I pass by a photograph of Nicholas Parsons. If you haven't seen that photo, you've seen one like it. Down the years, Nicholas must have been photographed thousands of times with timepieces of all descriptions. He is invariably pointing at them, and beaming as if the clock in question is the most wonderful object ever conceived.

And well he might. Since the earliest days of Radio 4 in 1967, Nicholas has presided over Just a Minute with the same glee exhibited in every publicity shot. His cry of "Welcome to Just a Minute!" at the start of each programme is as enthusiastic a greeting as you'll hear on the radio... an enthusiasm that the passing decades have not dimmed.

His cheery and wily chairmanship are the backbone of it all, with the game's players giving the show new form every week. For a programme obsessed with the passing seconds, time has robbed it of some of its most accomplished participants. Paul Merton is now the mainstay, though he's not here for this first edition of a new series: here it's Gyles Brandreth who picks up and runs with his topics, full of clever word play, boisterous energy and mischief.

As always, anarchy is never far away. In round one, panellist Patrick Kielty accuses Parsons of behaving like a contestant and awards him a point. Never a wasted minute.

Bursting with joy

Former MP, author and comedy performer Gyles Brandreth is on the hunt for perfect happiness.

Up-and-coming TV presenter Michael Grade explains the evolution of a peculiar British cultural institution, in a lightly festive hour that begins with our host in full make-up, wig and tent-like dress. We learn how 18th-century impresario John Rich discovered harlequin shows were ten times more lucrative than Shakespeare; then how the specifics of a man delivering double entendres as a deliberately unconvincing woman gradually fell into place.

Grade chats with Gyles Brandreth, Richard Briers and Matthew Kelly about the demands of damehood. But the star of the show is Berwick Kaler, writer, director and dame of York's famous panto. The future of the art form looks safe with him.