Nina Conti

Nina Conti Clowning Around, BBC Four, review

Ventriloquist fails to 'find' her clown, reduced to 'tears of...'

Radio Times review

The brilliant Nina Conti puts herself through the mill here - and produces a funny, sharp documentary about clowning and the way a phobia of clowns has spread to the point where it threatens a whole comic tradition.

Conti is a successful ventriloquist, but decides she should put her skills to use entertaining sick children in hospitals, via a charity that provides "clown doctors". So begins a surprisingly tough process of training, discovering her inner clown and spiralling into an artistic crisis about the wellsprings of comedy.

"How can I go on stage in front of hundreds of people and be fine, but faced with a single child I feel a total fraud?" she asks. As so often, it's her straight-talking Monkey puppet (slash alter ego) that provides the answer: "Because that's all smoke and mirrors, Nina. This is real."

Nina Conti: Clowning Around, TV review

We know laughter is the best medicine, but who knew that comedy's medical ethics could be so tricky?

Preview: Nina Conti: Clowning Around, BBC Four

While Clowning Around isn't quite as personal as Her Master's Voice, it does give an insight into a side of clowning that we rarely see.

Nina Conti's latest comedy project about clowning

Nina Conti's new documentary, Clowning Around, is to be broadcast on BBC Four on March 15. This follows her directorial debut, Her Master's Voice, which won a Grierson Award and a BAFTA nomination. In this new film Conti tells the story of her two year stint as a hospital clown.

Exclusive: Latitude festival comedy line-up announced

Latitude's full line-up is announced tomorrow but we can exclusively reveal the star comedy names today. Stand-ups include Jason Manford, Alan Davies, Jack Dee and, most excitingly, America's Rob Delaney, who has just made a splash in the UK as co-star of painfully realistic C4 romcom Catastrophe. There is also a strong selection of female comics, with pithy feminist Sara Pascoe, storyteller Sarah Kendall, frighteningly frank Shappi Khorsandi and ventriloquist Nina Conti.

Nina Conti: Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival review

Wow, what can I say - I don't think I've ever laughed so much in the space of one hour.

DVD review: Nina Conti, Dolly Mixtures

Edgy and delirious, the Conti spews anxious, razor-sharp madness with laser-like focus; each character is a fun-house mirror held up to its master, with hilarious and ever-inventive consequences.

Jack Whitehall hosts a night of comedy and variety to raise awareness of testicular cancer. It's a nice mix of old and new faces, with the first Men Behaving Badly reunion in 16 years and the return of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. Other appearances to look out for include ridiculously good ventriloquist Nina Conti, the weirdly wonderful sketch duo Cardinal Burns, Angelos Epithemiou's excellent study in idiocy and The Mimic's brilliant Terry Mynott. Not a bad lineup.