John Kearns (I)

Review: Comedy Garden: Bridget Christie, etc

Thursday night at Bristol Comedy Garden's Apple Top featured a deliriously good mix of comedians all under one roof.

Opinion: what is stand-up?

What is stand-up comedy? I thought I knew, but I'm starting to wonder.

@elevenish - bonkers, biting, brilliant

Offbeat TV comedy has been in the doldrums since the likes of The Mighty Boosh, but a strange new show called @elevenish may just change all that.

This week's new live comedy

Previews of Rob Delaney, John Kearns and the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

Interview: rarely asked questions - Kieran Hodgson

Kieran Hodgson's 2015 Edinburgh show Lance was staged in the same room as 2014's Foster's Award winner, John Kearns. And for a while it looked as if Hodgson might be picking up the Foster's Award too. In the end he had to make do with only a nomination for his brilliant piece, which explored one man's obsession with cycling in general and Lance Armstrong in particular.

TV review: Rotters

Rotters, about a hapless bunch of thieves attempting an antiques heist, couldn't bring the same inventiveness to the silent comedy genre as Sam Simmons, John Kearns and Phil Burgers (aka Doctor Brown) bring to the live field.

Pleasant surprise of the week came in the form of BBC Three comedy Top Coppers which I thought would be another awful offering to match the woeful Crims. Instead this loving pastiche of 1970s and 1980s cop shows offered some big belly laughs and some wonderful observational gags on top. Writers Andy Kinnear and Cein McGillicuddy have employed a high gag ratio but at the same time haven't forsaken the plot of the episode over getting cheap laughs. Meanwhile the cast seemingly realise that the best way to pull off a successful spoof is to play it dead straight and that's what most of them have done. Top Coppers is centred round the Justice City Police Department and more specifically Detectives John Mahogany and Mitch Rust (Steen Raskopoulos and John Kearns). Mahogany and Rust have a strong bond which looks to be tested when the former wants to go out with the new girl in the office rather than enjoy movie night with his colleague. This decision leads Rust to go to some extreme lengths to compensate for his loss which includes trying to recreate certain scenes from the movie Speed. The best recurring gag in the first episode for me involved the fact that gangster Harry McCrane (Paul Ritter) had recently purchased an ice cream factory meaning that the employees now had to produce both ice cream and drugs. Although at times Top Coppers may have been a little silly, I felt that it was one of the more tightly-plotted TV comedies that I've recently seen. More than anything Top Coppers was just very funny and that's more than I can say for most of the British sitcoms I've watched during 2015. I'm just hoping that the enjoyment that I garnered from the opening instalment wasn't a one-off and that Top Coppers will go down as one of my favourite comedies of the year.

Freddie Flintoff to present Foster's Comedy Award

Cricketer Freddie Flintoff is to present the 2015 Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Awards alongside the 2014 Award winner, John Kearns.

John Kearns interview

The eccentric comic made his name at the Edinburgh fringe in a bad wig and rubber teeth - and he just wants to make people laugh. Starting with BBC Three slapstick sitcom Top Coppers.