Drawing: Sofie Hagen in Bubblewrap

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Sofie Hagen’s intro on her website reads, ‘Welcome to my website. If you don’t know me, I’m a Danish stand-up comedian, writer and extraordinarily nice person.’ All true. The 27 year old, Copengagen-born, London-based comic made an impressive debut at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, winning the Best Newcomer Award with BUBBLEWRAP, an engrossing, entertaining and candid romp through her life that had its foundations in a teenage obsession with Irish boy-band Westlife.

It touches on the themes such as body issues, mental health and feminism, that have become de rigueur in contemporary comedy, dragging the once taboo into the mainstream. The Guardian described her as having “an easy charm and an ability to combine delicate subject matter with accessible laughs.” It was early last year that she had her ‘awakening’, where her long-held insecurities faded away and she finally learned to accept what she thought were flaws and love herself for all her quirks. She said she became a happier person and a better comedian. Her epiphany came when a man asked her to urinate on him during sex in the shower. I believe social anthropologists would include Sofie in what they have termed ‘generation overshare’.

This month Sofie bought BUBBLEWRAP to London’s Soho Theatre, where I caught up with the ‘extraordinarily nice person’ after Monday evening’s show. The audience clearly enjoyed it. One woman remarked that she was very brave, dealing with the difficult themes. Dealing with stalking, signature-hunting, scribblers may be added to that list, but since she stated that, “comedy is the one thing that makes sense in her life” I was confident she would see the funny side and happily sign the sketch. I was right.

Drawing: Nish Kumar

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Nish Kumar

Nish Kumar is one of the funniest guys around. Even the Guardian… I think it was the Guardian, said he has sealed his place at the top table of UK comedy. His show LONG WORD …LONG WORD… BLAH BLAH BLAH … I’M SO CLEVER (yes that is the actual title) was the hottest ticket at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe and was nominated for the Best Show Award.

This month he’s taken up residency at London’s Soho Theatre. The publicity blurb describes the performance as “This is a stand-up comedy show for people who like stand-up comedy by a man that does stand-up comedy.” Succinct. It goes on to say the “depending on your opinion, the man is either ‘a comedian on the up (The Times), ‘a comedian I’ve never heard of’ (Audience Member) or ‘a very clever boy’ (Nish Kumar).

After last night’s show he was perched in the packed bar signing copies of his DVD and I was perched anywhere near him but was slowly wading through the throng and held my sharpie up indicating I was heading his way. When I showed him the sketch he probably thought ‘missed sale’ but politely said, “You’ve made me too handsome”. I apologised and he signed it.

So (Ho Ho Ho) if you’re in need of some festive cheer, pop along and catch Nish… oh and buy his DVD. Say Mark sent you.

Drawing: Bill Bryson

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Bill Bryson

My wife Frankie is a big fan of Bill Bryson’s books. She casually mentioned to me sometime ago that if our paths ever crossed, a signed sketch would be nice. Her first request. I did this drawing and filed it away in case our paths crossed.

A casual text this week let me know that the paths could cross yesterday – 5 November – when the UK’s highest selling author of non-fiction would be signing copies of the sequel to his hugely popular book Notes From Small Island.I did not acknowledge the text, but did hatch a plan. A quick search confirmed that indeed Bill would be signing at Stanfords in Central London. The 5th of November also happens to be our wedding anniversary, a good reason to fulfil Frankie’s request.

Born in the US, Bill has spent a large amount of his life living in the UK and was eligible to become a British Citizen many years ago but didn’t sit the citizenship exam because he “was too cowardly to take it.” He eventually plucked up enough courage and recently passed to become a dual-citizen. He even wrote about it in his latest publication The Road To Little Dribbling: More Notes from A Small Island, the very book he was signing and the very reason I went to the famous Long Acre Street bookstore for our paths to meet.

Besides we now had something in common, writing wise. We both wrote enough right answers in our citizenship tests. That’s where the similarity and writing comparison ends. I’ll stick to sketching… oh and reading Bill Bryson.

Bill looks like a really nice fellow, and I’m pleased to say he’s even better in real life. He loved the sketch, which I said was part of my anniversary celebrations, and signed for the both of us. Frankie knew something was up, because I never acknowledged her text so she thought I was on a secret mission to surprise her. There’s no fooling Frankie, but there are ways to remember, remember the 5th of November.

Drawing: Number 1, The Plaza at The Soho Theatre

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

1 The Plaza

Shit happens… particularly at Number 1, The Plaza, a luxury London apartment and the title of an unconventional 75 minute performance by experimental theatre duo Lucy McCormick and Jennifer Pick which ran at the Soho Theatre this spring. The pair playing narcissistic drama queens let it all hang out. It’s excrement entertainment, literally and metaphorically.

A boundary-pushing, boozy night of cabaret, live art and stand-up, promoted as a “messy musical trash-fest exploring the relationship between the two women.” Jen and Lucy perform numbers from shows such as Wicked and Blood Brothers smeared in human waste and share too much information and other stuff. It gives a whole new meaning to Dirty Dancing.

Their production company is called Getinthebackofthevan. Need I say more. According to director Hester Chillingworth, Number 1 examines the ‘pornification’ of everyday life, a no holds-barred examination of the kind of shit that we do day to day, surrounded in ‘number 2’s. The company are known for occupying and championing the borders of things, sitting at the crossroads between a number of genres.

Critic Emma Brady described it as “a theatre experience like no other.”

For the alarmed, don’t be. The fake faeces is a mixture of gingerbread cake, chocolate and peanut butter. Ask a front row member of their audience. I was just pleased they used a conventional pen to sign my sketch… I think.

Drawing: Amber Topaz in Storm in a D Cup

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Amber Topaz

Christened Michelle Louise Andrew`-‘Sheli’ to family and friends, Amber Topaz is known by many labels such as the ‘Burlesque Supernova’ and the ‘Original Yorkshire Tease’. Blessed with a natural singing voice, she studied at the London Studio Centre before appearing in a number of West End musicals, including Les Miserables. But the inconsistency of work lead her to develop new opportunities with her songwriting and comedy skills.

While modelling, a photograper, who incidently gave her the stagename, suggested trying burlesque to utilize all her talents. She learnt by ‘osmosis’ she said and for a laugh auditioned for the Whoopee Club in front of a live audience at the infamous Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in 2005. She was an instant hit and immediately signed up with their agents. GQ magazine described her as “an explosion of charisma and stage presence unmatched. Between music and songs. Comedy and seduction.” Recently she starred in Miss Nightengale – A Burlesque Musical, playing Maggie, a northern lass who becomes a burlesque dancer in war-torn 1940’s London.

Amber was at the Leicester Square Theatre last week, performing her show Storm In a D Cup so I popped along with the intention of leaving this sketch at the stagedoor for her to sign. But as good fortune would have it she was doing a photo-shoot outside the theatre which is on a busy corridor between the Square and China Town – home of the good fortune cookie. Needless to say it attracted a… shall we say… person of the perverted persuasion, who lingered back and forth. Added to that I turn up with a drawing, stalking for it to be ‘graphed. This turned out to be a welcome relief for both Amber and her photographer who even took a pic of us together with the drawing.

Drawing: Fern Brady

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Fern Brady

The Rugby World Cup has just started in the UK and my team, the New Zealand All Blacks are the defending champions. They wear the famous silver fern. So what better way to start the week than with a Fern. In this case it’s the enchanting Scottish comedian Fern Brady. A tenous connection I know, but writers have to look for interesting ‘hooks’ in our intros. In fact Fern is a writer. She is a columnist in The Guardian and used to be a comedy reviewer. It was in this capacity that she switched sides when asked by her magazine to ‘fake it’ and write an article from the stand-up point of view. She liked it on stage, and everyone liked her on stage,so she stayed. The second most famous person to come out of West Lothian since Susan Boyle, Fern has appeared on the telly in numerous shows, including 8 Out Of 10 Cats. She finished joint third in the finals of So You Think You’re Funny? at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe and was a finalist in the Piccadilly Comedy Club’s New Act Competition the following year. Fresh from a sell-out season at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, Fern returned to London with her show for two nights at the Museum of Comedy. This quaint, 100-seat performance space is situated in the vaults of St George’s Church in Bloomsbury Way, where I waited to have this drawing signed. With the title of her act, People Are Idiots, and described in ThreeWeeks as “Obnoxious, rude and utterly brilliant,’ who teaches you that the only way to true happiness is to lower your expectations, it was with some trepidation that I waited. When I greeted her underground with the request an expletive or two escaped from her lips….but this was, I think more a astonishment for the artwork and “I thought you were the guy organising the gig” she explained as she signed it and took a photo. Undoubtedly the experience confirmed the title of her show.

Drawing: Felicity Ward

Posted on September 17, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

felicity ward

And now for a bit of toilet humour. It’s September. All the comedians who took the Edinburgh Fringe hiatus last month are back on the London comedy circuit, including Australian comic Felicity Ward. Leading up to the Festival, everyone was performing work- in-progress gigs in preparation for it, including Australian comic Felicity Ward. I did a quick, ‘young’ sketch of her, based on an old pic but missed getting it signed at the Leicester Square Theatre in the frantic funny foreplay that sums up July. It stayed in my folder for some reason…which became apparent on Saturday evening. Heading home from a successful stalking session, one is apt to have to ‘spend a penny’ or in Central London it’s usually 30p(ee) at the Charing Cross Station lavatory. To avoid such extravagent expenditure, one can detour via certain accessible, user-friendly establishments and go for free. One such haven is The Comedy Pub. Lo and behold, who should have just finished headlining a show on such esteemed premises but the Australian comic, Felicity Ward. By way of a back-story, her Edinburgh run was called What If There’s No Toilet? because she used to perform her sharp, upbeat, self-mocking routine while simultaneously suffering from panic attacks and needed to go to the ‘dunny’ -to use a colloquial Aussie term and it rhymes with funny-four times an hour.”Anxiety can be cruel, but very,very funny.” she said.’IBS is the sexiest of all syndromes” and her show is about irritable bowel syndrome and the search for the nearest toilet. So there you have it. Anyway back to the story. My ablutions sorted I approached a security person and asked if the Australian comic Felicity Ward was still in the house. She was and he asked me if I was a friend. I pulled out the ‘young from an old photo’ drawing, ‘cos that’s what friends do. He recognised the likeness and took me to her ‘Wow…thanks I look so young…thank you for using an old photo.’ I didn’t see much difference, but I said it was the least I could do for a fellow antipodean. Relief all-round really.

Drawing: Aisling Bea

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Aisling Bea

Friends call her ‘a tart for a laugh’ which pretty much sums up Irish actress, comedian and writer Aisling Bea’s motive for doing comedy. ‘I’m just addicted to making people laugh,” she told Alice Jones for The Independent, before embarking on her second Edinburgh Fringe gig with Plan Bea during the entire month of August. The “Irish motormouth with an alarming range of rubbery facial expressions”, as Alice described her, has built up an impressive comic CV over the three years she has been doing stand-up with appearances on all the mainstream shows, including QI, Live At The Apollo, Never mind The Buzzcocks, Would I Lie To You and Celebrity Squares. Last year she collected the British Comedy Award for Best Female TV Comedian after winning the So You Think You’re Funny Award at Edinburgh the previous year. The Irish Tattler even named her it’s Entertainment Women of the Year in 2013.

Prior to her stint in Edinburgh, Aisling did some Fringe foreplay at London’s Leicester Square Theatre, where I left this sketch for her to sign.’Bea’ is actually her stage name, a homage to her late father-B for Brian-which she adopted at drama school because their was already an Aisling O’Sullivan. If you want to catch her live, ‘bea’ at the Leicester Square Theatre on Monday 14 September when she joins Jo Brand, Mae Martin, Kerry Godliman, Sara Pascoe and a host of others in Funny Ha Ha for the Live Life Safe campaign and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust or two days later in the Big Top at the Greenwich Comedy Festival.

Drawing: Rob Brydon in Future Conditional

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Welsh comedian and ‘fully fledged light entertainment personality’ Rob Brydon is currently starring in Future Conditional, the first production at the Old Vic theatre under its new artistic director Matthew Warchus, who has taken over from Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey. The play tackles the challenges of the British schooling system – a subject I have a close working knowledge of- written by Royal Court director-turned-writer Tamsin Oglesby. Rob plays an English Teacher, God held him. And it was the good Lord who was uttered as he saw this sketch when I stopped him whizzing out of the Old Vic stage door on Saturday night. I think it was an exclamation of admiration rather than a call to the almighty for help. “Oh my Lord,” he gasped followed by “Yes,yes.yes.”- the holy trinity of confirmation to my signing request.

Drawing: Alice Marshall in Alice’s Comedy Wonderland

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

alice marshall

“Alice Marshall is a proper actor,” prefaced Martin Walker in his Three Minute interview with her for BroadwayBaby.

In spite of many TV roles, including recently playing Mary Magdalene in The Jesus Mystery “comedy is also in her blood”. Martin’s first question was “You’re an actor, comic and voice over artist. Have I left anything out? Which comes first and why?” Alice replied. “and astronaut obviously. But who isn’t these days?” She said they all “sort of mesh together most of the time and the skills are similar in all facets of entertainment”.

She performed her debut solo comedy show Vicious at London’s Museum of Comedy last month, with the slogan “Life is Cruel. People are arseholes. This is vicious.” Alice takes a long hard look at the world through the eyes of the hurt, the lonely, the angry, the mad, the sad and the completely unhinged.

The Spectator wrote, “she manages to be erotic and extremely funny at the same time without being effortful or cheesy about it. A natural…”

Last year Alice was part of Canal Café Theatre’s long running News Review at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was also part of Alice’s Comedy Wonderland at the Phoenix Artist’s Club in Soho earlier this year, described by Time Out as “going down the surreal comedy rabbit hole at this weirdo gig featuring a collection of comics”. This sketch, which she signed for me, is based on that gig.