Alex Marshall, The New York Times Published: 27 Feb 2021 04:41 PM BdST Updated: 27 Feb 2021 04:41 PM BdST Jen Ives, a British comedian, in London on Feb 24, 2021. With opposition to transgender issues regularly expressed by mainstream British figures, the country’s trans comedians, including Ives, are often just trying to assert their humanity. “If you make someone laugh,” said Ives, “you’re at least showing them that you are a person.” Lauren Fleishman/The New York Times Jen Ives, a British comedian, in London on Feb 24, 2021. Lauren Fleishman/The New York Times In an undated photo made remotely, Bethany Black, a British comedian, on Feb 25, 2021. “This is my life,” Black said of being transgender. “This is something that I have to deal with every day, and not as a thought experiment.” Many British comedians made jokes about trans people, Black said though she added they usually avoid those when s
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SIMON MUNNERY: THE MANCHESTER EXPERIMENT: Before Christmas, the comedian put a VHS labelled only The Manchester Experiment, 17th May 2001, into the post with a note reading: I tried this twice, it worked once . He sent it to Go Faster Stripe, the DVD label that has put out many of his shows - and with will tonight stage a one-off screening, introduced by the innovative Munnery himself. Go Faster Stripe s Chris Evans said: I don t really want to tell you any more about it so that you can experience the thing the same way I did. Tickets are available now from Go Faster Stripe, priced £5.
Last modified on Thu 4 Feb 2021 12.19 EST
âThank you all so much for coming out,â is how Prince Abdi greets us at the top of his set. If only it were so! Iâm watching from my daughterâs bedroom, Felicity Ward is joking about the clothes horse in her background and Mo Omar shows us the spilled talc on his bedroom floor. None of us are out, but we all wish we were â in Leicester, say, for the first night of Britainâs second-biggest comedy festival.
The east Midlands, though, is out of bounds for anyone not already in the east Midlands. So here we are in the Zoom room for First Night Funnies, the standup cabaret that launches this yearâs event, a live-streamed festival featuring 300 performances from more than 100 comedians. It probably offers a fair crosssection, of acts on form, acts not quite firing and acts still pining, Iâd imagine, for real-world standup to in-person audiences.