Knock, knock...

So. 2011? A poor year for comedy? Discuss. No calculators, no books allowed.......

Of course everyone has their own opinions. They are of course entitled to them but, not on my watch. Write your own bloody thing. Jesus, this IS Twat Bubble y'know...........

I digress, because I feel I have to. 2011 has been something of a frustrating year for those of us obsessed with the gilded, slightly deflated balloon, the clown face with the dagger teeth, the captivatingly haunted smile.

I digress again, because, I'm stuck. I don't know what to write.

One post. All year. On comedy.

Oh, dear.

And yet, salvation did come, in painfully small dribs and speckly coated drabs. Although patchy, 'Limmy's Show' pulsed the way in quietly sinister mayhem. In particular, the 'Dee Dee' sketches - some of which were sublime in their unexpected sophistication, in their ability to induce helpless laughter...



Ian Pattison resurrected his finest creation in a new series of 'Rab C Nesbitt.' By turns, good and excruciatingly bad, it was nice to see Gregor Fisher back - if a little older, a lot fatter and a whole lot more stupid.

'Rab C Nesbitt, Series 10, Episode 1'

Vic and Bob returned. Not to terrestrial screens - 'Shooting Stars,' despite stellar (pun intended) ratings, was cancelled due to, well, why was it cancelled?

Anyway, easily the comedy moment of 2011 was this paeon to war, bollards and environmental damage.



For the first time in a long time, The Fringe at Edinburgh offered little of interest. Stand-Up comedy generally seems to be currently plagued by an innate ordariness of late, where tenth rate comics stand behind eleventh rate material. We seem to have returned to the smug, self-congratulating comedic aggrandisement of the 1980's and, especially worrying, to a comedy landscape where questionable commentary and thinly veiled scapegoatism has replaced real insight and courageous words.

I'm not saying comedy should be the new social commentary - maybe I fucking am.

What I am saying, and what I truly believe, is that in a world where war and terrible injustice is everywhere, when the poor and the disenfranchised are more cruelly marginalised than ever before, and where accountability, integrity and basic human decency is dismissed as being trivial and unimportant, comedy, with all its nuances and in all its guises, can help bring people and more people closer together through the unimpeachable, irreducible gift of laughter.

I digress. One last time.

'Stewart v Armando - Television'