The Beehive Inn,

Grassmarket,  Edinburgh

Saturday 28th May 

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We arrive early at The Beehive Inn for an evening of Monkey Barrel Comedy… and it’s already heaving. It’s not surprising that it’s sold out; the line-up contains some of Scotland’s most popular comedians. We are shoe-horned into the small attic room above the bar and take our seats among the high-spirited crowd into an atmosphere of excited anticipation,  the crowd primed for a good heckle. As tonight’s compere, Rick Molland, takes to the stage; he finds he has a battle on his hands with a few lively hen and stag parties, one of which is accompanied by a giant inflatable penis that makes its way round the room almost earning a guest spot on the stage. Molland gets interactive with the crowd, finding out who everybody is, getting the banter flowing and warming up the room  for the frolics ahead.

Vladimir MacTavish

Material : Delivery :  Laughs :

Vladimir MacTavish is the first stand up on the bill and his opening line “I bet you are all thinking Philip Schofield has let himself go a bit” gets everyone laughing straight away. Vladimir’s material is a melting-pot of  everything, from current affairs, through sports, to travelling the world. His topical monologues are peppered with quick & witty jokes, while his observational humour is fresh and well received. Alas,  Vladamir sometimes falls prey to the sterotypical mocking of we Scots, but still unleashes a brand of laugh-out loud comedy  we would go to see again.

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Derek Johnston

Material : Delivery :  Laughs :

Comic, Derek Johnston, was probably the most unique act of the night. Taking to the stage armed with a saw, he looked slightly mad with his menacing eyes as he loomed over the audience. Derek’s droll delivery and macabre story-telling was an unexpected surprise; although he may have lost the crowd a little as those stag and hen parties were probably not his target audience. An eclectic mix of anecdotes of family days out teamed with ghostly tales of psychotic dolls, the latter accompanied by creepy sounds supplied by Johnston while playing the saw as a musical instrument.

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Daniel Downie

 Laughs:   Material:   Delivery:  

Daniel Downie is full of energy; bouncing on to the stage with a confident “take no prisoners attitude”. Tonuight’s audience are a feisty bunch, and they challenge Downie – but the fella thinks street-fast on his feet and was quick to hit back with witty responses. He regales us with tales of phone sex with his Spanish girlfriend and the hazards of learning a new language = a lesson to be learnt here is don’t get your nouns mixed up in Spanish, or you could be asking your girlfriend if she wants cock instead of chicken for dinner across a busy supermarket. This, along with Daniel’s up-to-the-minute material had the audience in stitches.

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Harry Garrison

 Laughs:   Material:   Delivery: 

Earning the biggest laughs of the night was Harry Garrison, an instantly likeable character with a cheeky grin and a glint in his eye. Garrison cleverly uses music to deliver his quick witted, dry, black comedy. He starts to play his guitar and confuses the crowd into thinking he is here to perform an acoustic love song, this quickly evolves into the entire audience singing along to a dark and hilarious song about a mail-order bride named Fred.

Harry has a cracking blend of Kevin Bridges’ nonchalant attitude and Bill Bailey’s musical genius; his set is full of belly laughs and inappropriate songs that will stick in your head for days. This is a brilliant value for money night out; where else would you get four well-established, high quality comedians for only a tenner? It’s a great atmosphere with crowd participation and friendly banter in a cosy wee venue. There were maybe a few too many location specific jokes that were lost on our friends south of the border, but overall this a great night out that we will be coming back to and would highly recommend.

Reviewers : Laura and Emma Murray

Drygate Brewery

Glasgow

Friday May 6th

When MC Scott Agnew paced onto the front of the stage at the Drygate, clutching a bottle of the his inhouse ‘bear-faced lager,’ – I knew it was going to be a good night. I’m a big fan of Scott & his in-your-face gestapo-gay humor, such as ‘my mother hoped for one of those decorator puffs, not one daft for cock.’ So, listening to Scott haranguing the two bald-headed stag parties at the front, & drinking my own bottle of the bear-faced – conveniently & regularly brought to my table by the barman – I settled down for what I hoped would be a good night.

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Michael Redmond

 Laughs:   Material:    Delivery: 

Dubliner Michael Redmond is in his mid-sixties, but you can’t really tell from this ever-ebullient fella.  His passage as a comedian began in an 80s barrel of deap-pan – well more like corpse-pan – one-liners, which won him a slot on Friday Night Live. It was at that time he created the famous-among-comic-circles ,“a lot of people say to me – get out of my garden”  and “do you ever notice how nervous people get when you follow them up a ladder?”. Stewart Lee writes of the garden joke, retold by Joe Pasquale at the Royal Variety Performanceof 1989 – & Redmond

The joke defines him perfectly as an odd, outsider character and hints at a host of other weird situations as yet unrealised. For once, the audience is made to use its own imagination. There are no clues, or helpful pointers… The everyday phrase, “hey you”, is disrupted and made bizarre by being followed by the unexpected “what are you doing in my garden”. It is, to invoke a now wasted phrase, a moment of pure comic genius. 

Three decades later, Redmond is a looser cannon, chit-chatting along with some terrible jokes which are mystifyingly brilliant. A self-admitted member of the bad-hair brigade, his comedy is something akin to listening to Slovakian humour in translation, but as Redmond himself would say, ‘fair play to ya, it was funny as fuck.‘ The funniest bit for me was when he brought up, as Irish comedians so sardonically do, the potato famine… but adding the disastrous ‘mange-tout’ famine into the mix.

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Julia Sutherland

 Laughs:   Material:   Delivery:  

The Gilded Balloon Comedy Night’s are designed to showcase Scotland’s best talent to the wider world at large, & into every session are thrown the staple albacentric gags, such as the Edinburgh-Glasgow rivalry, & the such-like. To a seasoned comedy-watcher, this can drag a little, but if it is treat like a an artistic distinction, then you really can gauge the competence & quality of a comic through the sub-genre. Weegiewoman Julia Sutherland – who only socialises with people who would forgive her – gets a B+ for her role in putting the tourists at ease with her stabby-Glasga quips, including all the females in the audience with titbits such as the H&M mirror gives a you skinnier image. Watching Sutherland is like going on a logflume – an incessant & rapid descent into her comic universe, which twists into fresh material & insights every few seconds.

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Ben Norris

 Laughs:   Material:   Delivery: 

And so to the night’s headline act. The guys cool, a possessing a sparkingly bright mind, which combined with his wonderfully witty observations of the familial mundane makes for a damn-fine comedian. A real crowd pleaser, we all burst into laughter as one, as if we were an orchestra who had been tuning up & just hit the note of harmony. Among his many great moments, I loved it when he went through the age demographic of the audience decade-by-decade, warming us all to him  the hypnotic, electric chant of his storytelling voice. Towards the end he began to stutter a little, his chit-chat I’d say not quite as strong as his material, but this guy really is what the quintessetial comedian ought to be

The Mumble:  Hello Paul Vickers, or should I say Mr Twonkey, welcome to Mumble Towers, Now, who the hell is Mr Twonkey?

The Mumble: So which installment in the Twonkeyverse is this, & what other incarnations have their been?

Mr Townkey: This year’s incarnation is Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel, & previously there have been… Twonkey’s Cottage (2010) / Twonkey’s Castle (2011) Twonkey’s Kingdom (2012)  / Twonkey’s Blue Cadabra (2013 – but I was also still performing it in 2014) Twonkey’s Private Restaurant (2014-2015) & Twonkey’s Stinking Bishop (2015). This year, alongside Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel I shall also be performing Twonkey’s Drive-in, Jennifer’s Robot Arm – this one’s actually a play, the second part of a double-bill at the Edinburgh Fringe, at Sweet Venues, where I’ll be doing a play with some actors & myself at quarter past 5, & then at nine o clock in the evening I’ll be doing  Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel, which is my solo show

The Mumble: What is the future for Twonkey?

Mr Twonkey: Well, the future is a series of Fringe performances at the Brighton Fringe, the Wandsworth Fringe, the Museum of Comedy, the Buxton Fringe, the Prague Fringe & then finally ending up at the Edinburgh Fringe – so there’s a lot going on this year, I’ve got a lot more gigs than normal. What I’ve done in the past I’ve sort of flipped between two shows, at the beginning of the year I sometimes perform last year’s show & then later in the year bring in the new show, but this year I’m just gonna go all guns blazing with a completely new show from the off. The idea behind that is that’s its easier – I just need to practice one show & make sure I remember that. The hard thing about it is that I’m in the glare of the lights from the word go – so the first performances of Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel in its entirity will be at the Brighton Fringe, where usually I have perhaps a few more little warm-up gigs beforehand. Although I have been doing little spots here & there, sort of under the radar gigs that I haven’t been telling people about where I’ve been trying out the new material.

The Mumble: So what is this latest incarnation of Twonkey all about?

Mr Twonkey: Well.. the overall storyline of Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel is inspired by retail parks, because, y’know, of an evening I sometimes need things like paint, or a screwdriver, or a drill, that kind of thing, so I make my way up to the local retail park. But when I lived in Marchmont, I didn’t have the convenience of a retail park, so we had to go out of town in cars or on busses. It was when I was sitting in a retail park that I started thinking about Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel. The idea sort of stemmed from the new Frankies & Bennys that was being built at my local retail park. And it made me think about Frankies & Bennys & how they’ve started cropping up all over the place, offering sort of New York Italian food, fast & simple. I looked on Trip Advisor & found big variations in the quality of the stores depending on the management of the individual stores. I started thinking about the idea of the boxes arriving with all the vintage black & white photographs of baseball stars from years gone by, & thinking about how they would erect a store from scratch in the same way they do with McDonalds, where they basic look of the store so they almost look completely identical… & of course there’s also the idea of globalisation – none of which is funny. But then I started thinking about if there was a slightly dilapidated run by me & Chris Hutchinson – who’s is my lead puppet – & it was for some reason not achieving its financial goals. A little bit shoddily run, a bit Fawlty Towers I suppose  – but the idea is its under threat – the bulldozers are gonna come – they’re gonna bulldoze it down & then replace it with a Frankie & Bennys. But what’s happened is that its sort of evolved as a storyline & now its told in Miniature Theatre -so I’ve basically got a little doll’s house, a small one, which is now called The Mumbo Jumbo Hotel, & I’ve got some small figurines & starting to tell the story, essentially, so the story is sort of taking place in another place, which is difficult for me to access, so I talk about the idea that I could, like in Alice of Wonderland, I could drink a magical potion, I could shrink to the size of a needle & then I could drop down a chimney and into a fireplace & then I’d arrive in the lobby of the hotel. A lot of it is like I’m the microscope & the show is the paper, so its a viewing vessel & I use my own head to explore the ideas & the possibilities of the characters inside the miniature object. Its working out rather well. There is a positive message about gay marriage as well, that comes across very strongly towards the end of the show, very strongly. There are also a number of murders that take place during the show, & there’s a few people locked in toilets trying to avoid attacks & difficult questions about accountancy.

The Mumble: What does Mr Twonkey have in common with Paul Vickers?

Mr Twonkey: Well, we’re essentially the same beast, of course, because I am Twonkey. But really, Townley is like me if I was allowed to just be a really imaginative, interesting person all the time. Of course I’m not allowed to be that person all the time, its not fair on people. I need to do other things like work a job & provide people with money.

The Mumble:  What is your favorite Twonkeys?

Mr Twonkey: My favorite Twonkeys is always the one I’m working on, because that’s the one where you have all your current ideas that are fresh & exciting to you obviously. But, you know, in time, when I stop doing Twonkeys, if I ever stop doing Twonkeys, I will be able to work out then which are my favorite ones. I think a big turning point for me was Twonkey’s Blue Cadabra, because that was the year that I got nominated for the Toast Award for best cabaret, & it was quite an explosive kind of year & I think the thing was that was the year I became Mr Twonkey because before that Twonkey had been a little small puppet that was half-dragon, half-witch, & also an accountant, but then she died during Twonkey’s Kingdom – we had her death – so I decided that I would continue the show. Originally it was only supposed to be a trilogy – Twonkey’s Cottage, Castle & Kingdom – & that was supposed to be it – but then of course people liked what I was doing, so I decided I had to continue with it, so I did Twonkey’s Blue Cadabra. So, from Twonkey’s Blue Cadabra onwards its been a slightly different show because I’ve been Mr Twonkey, & I’ve embodied Twonkey’s character, well supposedly. That’s partly to do with the fact that during Twonkey’s Kingdom Twonkey fell off a chair & her arms fell off, & then I tried to pick her up, I dropped her again & smashed her belly open & her legs just went flying.

The Mumble: & finally, what can Twonkey fans look forward to this year?

Mr Twonkey: Well, they can look forward to me trying, as ever, to top the last show. I think the way I’m doing it this time is to have, a sort of build with the tension towards the end. I always like the idea of a show which ends on a sinister note, where you’re left with a lot of questions about what you’ve just experienced, & I think that this show has definitely got that aspect to it. A lot of its about finding a good pace throughout the show, you need to feel like you’ve had your dinner, but also you don’t want people to get bored, so that means keeping it a little bit fizzy & whizzy throughout.