CANCELLED -The Wonder Room, voco Grand Central, Glasgow. Friday 1st May, 2026

Event refunded.

Good afternoon.

Due to the ongoing impacts of the Union St fire, Voco Grand Central Hotel is still closed. The hotel is within Glasgow City Council's exclusion zone and cannot reopen.

Unfortunately, this means we are unable to host The Wonder Room and need to cancel all upcoming shows in April and May. This is a difficult situation that's outside my control or the hotel's.

I appreciate that some of you will have waited a long time to get tickets for the show and will be disappointed that the shows have been cancelled.

Once we have confirmation from the hotel that we can reopen, you will be contacted with a private link to buy tickets for future public show dates before they are on public sale.

In the meantime, refunds will be issued to all customers via Evertbrite. You do not need to do anything. This may take a few days to process as per Eventbrite's Terms & Conditions.

I'd like to extend a massive thank you to everyone who has bought a ticket and supported the show. It really means a lot to me. Hopefully, we'll be able to welcome you very soon.

Cheers.

R x

Overview

An intimate magic show performed in Glasgow.

The Wonder Room is Glasgow magician Ryan K. Davidson’s new one-man show in residence in one of the city's most historical and iconic venues, offering a unique, up-close experience of magic and storytelling to a strictly limited audience.

Set in an intimate, purpose-designed suite in the luxurious voco Grand Central Hotel in the heart of Glasgow, The Wonder Room opens its doors every week by ticket or invitation only.

Each show is limited to 20 tickets, ensuring everyone in the room is a participant and not merely a spectator.

WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY: Ryan K. Davidson

RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 50mins without interval

AGE RESTRICTION: 16+

Ticket Price: £50.16 for two from Eventbrite.

Tim Key "Loganberry", Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh. Monday 27th April, 2026

 

I am struggling to find the words to review this show. Tim's unique take on comedy encompasses outrage, shouting, stamping his feet, reciting poetry and stressing parts of words in an unusual manner (e.g., scroTUM), all under the guise of being an underdog who's award-winning and artistically famous.  

The show is about what happened while he was writing it. Sitting in a cafe, with his special pen (blue, green, red, AND black), he sets out to write his next award-winning opus. He's distracted by the waitress, by the unexpected appearance of Greg Rusedski (why not?) and by the invitation from Gabby Logan to appear on her Midpoint podcast, triggering a rumination about his life - at 38, half of 76, he might be regarded as middle-aged, so what does that mean when he's actually 48? {he's actually 49, but not when he wrote the show}

As we enter the performance space, he's already on stage, in his dishevelled suit, shirt open at the collar, wearing a white baseball cap. He acknowledges our arrival with a nod as he paces slowly around the tiny stage, sometimes facing the wall or grasping the microphone stand. He pulls nervous smiles like a child. He does this for nearly twenty minutes while the audience fills the sold-out venue. 

I'm sitting at the side, right against the wall, probably one of the worst views in the room. The bloke behind me is standing up, chatting with his female company. Suddenly, I feel a wash of beer slap against my head, splashing inside my glasses, soaking down my front. 

"Oh, sorry, mate," he quips casually. 

An innocent accident, but I feel rage boiling. I've got beer blotches expanding across the front of my lime green shirt. Nothing I can do, though, much as I want to confront the bloke and retaliate by chucking the remainder of my Irn Bru can across his face. I use my shirt tail to dry the inside of my spectacles. Fucker! Now, my drive home from Edinburgh will be stinking of beer. Yuck!   

Eventually, Tim steps off the stage and wanders to the back of the room. A spotlight hits him as he recites a poem, beginning the show. He ambles towards the stage, kicking a carrier bag forward. He lifts it and throws it from a distance onto the stage, joining it shortly afterwards. He puts on a tie (he's not a barbarian) and opens the bag, taking out a can. He pulls the ring. Lager sprays in the air like a fountain, which he struggles to stem using his hand and jacket. He's got it all over him. He blows the foam off the top of the can into the audience, reaching the third row, then takes a drink. Suddenly, I'm not the only one in the audience beer-infused, but at least when it happened to them, it was part of the show. He passes the can to a man in the front row to look after (he'll request its return several times throughout the show).  

He talks about his mother, his father, being single and a celebrity. He should be a catch. He's got eight thousand pounds in the bank. He lets the waitress kiss his Richard Osman House of Games suitcase. He doesn't care. She's allowed. 

Every poem is bizarre, a vignette of truth and humour, a word painting of his world. He recites them from cards the size of playing cards, discarding them onto the floor when they're done. 

His outbursts away from the microphone rail against the injustices of his life. He has no kids. He's frozen his sperm. "No grandmother wants to visit a block of frozen cum," he rails. 

The sixty-eight-minute show takes a turn near the end when a poem introduces us to his malignant melanoma - the C-word. He'll say it. He's not scared. That cunt of a doctor told him he had cancer. The swear word punctures the tension. He had it removed. He's fine. He goes on Gabby's podcast.   

So ends his tale of mortality. We should be blessed for hearing his wisdom. He walks off, with his stick and bindle (he's ashamed he had to Google the word) over his shoulder, to continue his life as a lonely traveller. 

It was an experience unlike any other show I've seen. No wonder it received multiple five-star reviews. I'm glad I made the trip to Edinburgh, even if I came home stinking of beer.

Ticket Price: £46.00 + Booking fees £2.64 = Total £48.64 from Monkey Barrel (Presale)

Craig Ferguson "Pants On Fire" Tour, O2 Academy Glasgow. Sunday 26th April 2026

 

"So you know, this show has been rescheduled from Saturday, 21 June 2025. If you’ve already got tickets, they’ll still be valid, so hang on to them; your ticket agent will be in touch to tell you more.

Craig Ferguson is a multiple GRAMMY-nominated, Peabody and Emmy Award-winning actor, writer, producer, director and comedian with a diverse career that encompasses film, television and the stage. Join him on his 'Pants on Fire' UK tour."

There's a reason John Mulaney can support 13 Vietnamese. His ticket prices were more than double that of Craig Ferguson, Cumbernauld's top international comedian (sorry, Stuart Mitchell). Okay, John brought two more comedians than Craig, but tonight Craig gave us our money's worth: an hour and a half of him telling stories, all of which were true, except for the parts which were not. 

The preshow music was entirely by Talking Heads, from the album '77', tracks so obscure that Shazam found them too tricky to identify. To be fair, the audience was noisy, and the music wasn't, so the app didn't have much of a chance. It even failed to identify Psycho Killer. 

It did recognise:

Don't Worry About the Government;

Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town;

Happy Day;

and No Compassion.

He came on pretending to play the bagpipes in a high-energy opening, marching about the stage, wiggling his ass and showing off his fake skills. When he cut the music, he explained why there wasn't a support act: they cost money. Why fork out for a less good comedian, when he could be less good himself and keep all the money? 

But surely, Craig, you don't need the money? You live in America and have won numerous prestigious awards for your work. 

Yes, this is true, but... look at it this way. He's playing a rescheduled date on a Sunday night in a former cinema in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. How well do we think his career is going?

He pulled out some special memories that only we would appreciate, like when his dad explained to him as a young lad, taking him for his first beer, that any woman smoking outside a pub was really a prostitute. He swore this as fact, despite the evidence to the contrary. "But, Dad, she's my Sunday School teacher".

Craig has perfected the buffering head-wobble/rictus-grin expression to punctuate anything he's said that's slightly dodgy. He admits he's not always been on the right side of right. In 2017, he recorded his Tickle Fight special in July, but by the time it aired in December, the whole world had changed because of #MeToo. Suddenly, using "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" by The Cramps as your intro and outro music didn't seem like such a wise choice. 

He's also not proud of himself for his repeated use of the palm plant over his face to represent the cumshot ending of every porn film. He knows it's wrong, but it makes people laugh, and that's his job.

He remarked early on that he would be using a "reverse callback" using the word "Ting", explaining that the word would appear in a joke later on in the show. I found that a clever spin on a commonly used comedy convention.     

He told us tales of offloading a $300 classic car to Jay Leno as a present when the host finished up on The Tonight Show, only for Jay to speak to the top people at Ford, who souped up the car so much that it became the most expensive car the company had ever made. 

Craig bought a haunted castle in Ayrshire because the price was about the same as a small apartment in the Hollywood Hills. He lived there for a few years but sold it when he realised the amount he was paying Scottish Power to heat it would fund a large apartment in the Hollywood Hills.

There were other stories, but I'm struggling to recall them now. I think that's because he often veered off on tangents, which were probably scripted, but came across as spontaneous.   

He finished on a joke, a simple one: setup/punchline, one of the first he ever heard. It was one of Bernard Manning's, so I won't repeat it here (because I can't remember it). Then he left the stage to the sound of The Cramps. What a cheeky boy!

As the night progressed, the woman on my left (who had one helluva barking cough) became more vocal, answering Craig's questions at a conversational, not heckling, level, often expressing agreement or chuckling as she repeated his punchline to herself. She hadn't been drinking and seemed normal in every other way. She was with her husband. It must be nice to engage with a comedian on such a deep level, where you think they are talking only to you. Maybe I just wasn't listening properly. I can't even remember the last joke Craig told.

Full Price Ticket: £32.50 x 2 = £65.00
Service Fee: £4.40 x 2 = £8.80
Venue Facility Fee: £1.75 x 2 = £3.50
Handling Fee £2.85

Total: £80.15 via Ticketmaster

John Mulaney "Mister Whatever" Tour, Theatre Royal, Glasgow. Saturday 25th April, 2026

John says this is his first time performing in the UK. Not for him the plaudits of the Edinburgh Fringe. He doesn't covet a 'San Pelegrino' Award or whatever. He much prefers the grimy lanes and haunted theatre of Glasgow. He even manages to pronounce the city name correctly (not so much with Edinburrow).

I've had emails and texts reminding me I'm not allowed to use my phone in the auditorium. To reinforce this message, there are signs blu-tacked to the backs of every other seat, plus ushers wandering about, holding aloft "No Mobiles" boards. 

A souvenir

To be fair, they are quite polite to those who transgress this rule. I see no one being ejected, though a woman in the row in front comes close, her phone screen still lighting up her face as the house lights dimmed, a senior usher bearing down on her. 

Before the show, I wound my wife up that we were in the front row, even showing her the 'Row A, Stalls' ticket. She was unaware that the Theatre Royal has four rows in front of row A. Our seats were great, but not dangerously so.

The evening followed the typical American comedy club format, minus the MC, with an opening act, a feature (middle act) and then the headliner.

 

Mandal is first on. He's a US comic from Georgia. He complains he is fat, even though he's lost 30 lbs. He says people don't congratulate him. They just tell him to keep going. He doesn't like it when people shorten the word congratulations. He doesn't like congrats. He wants his 'ulations'. They don't do it for other expressions. "Sorry for your L'.  

He was a gentle, cuddly start to warm us up. Good comic.

(Photograph by Emma McIntyre, Hair and makeup by Christina Spina)

Andrea Jin is drier. She's a serial immigrant, moving with her family from China to Canada, and then to the US. She asks if it's complicated to move to the UK. We say yes, so now she's thinking she might move here. Writing this the next day, I can't remember any of her other material, but I did like her at the time. 

At the interval, droves of the audience leave the auditorium. I doubt everyone needed to pee or to buy a drink. Most likely, it was phone addiction, craving their next screen flick. We stayed where we were and munched through a tube of Munchies (half a tube is one portion, it says on the pack). I'll admit to feeling a touch of phone withdrawal myself, not being able to Shazam the preshow and interval music. All I can say is it was a jumble of Southern blues. 

After he returns from the bar, the chap on my left asks if I've seen John before. I reply no. He then informs me that he got married last year (congrat...ulations) and that he and his new wife saw John perform the following day in Boston. He tells me John was excellent. Andrea had played then, too, but not the first guy. Even though they've seen the show, they came back because they enjoyed him so much. I reckon it's partly to reminisce. His wife, who is beside him, is the right side of gorgeous. They appear still very much in love. 

(Aside: I get the same feelies when I see images from The Angels Take Manhattan - we watched the filming in Central Park on the last day of our honeymoon).

Disclaimer: not my photo. I pinched it from the internet,
rather than trawl through old hard drives. 

John Mulaney was immense. He has a presence that leaves you in no doubt that he knows what he is doing. This was my first experience of him as a comedian, and I was impressed. Whether he was discussing how creepy his son can be, or how he adopted thirteen Vietnamese when he married his wife (her extended family - "how much money you got, John Mulaney?") or his love of horror films despite all satanic possessions being the same (Satan inhabits a teen, make a mess of their bedroom, vomits copiously, says rude words, then gets sent back home to hell by a loud exorcist), he knew exactly the tone to pitch the comedy. A fine mix of writing, delivery and performance. The way he could step out of a routine to relate a funny anecdote and then dovetail back into the joke was so slick. He didn't even need a beat, and we were back where we were. I loved the line "From the moment my son was born, I'd known my now wife for exactly nine months and forty-five minutes" (That might not be exactly how he said it).

The only time he seemed perplexed was during the bit about hiring a religious person for the exorcism when he asked us, out of curiosity, what religion we were. Cue a spontaneous sharp intake of breath from the audience. You could tell John genuinely didn't understand the reaction, ending up nominating one person near the front to describe what had happened. The answer didn't explain, so he continued with the routine, barely referencing it again. A minor blip that the audience enjoyed more than he did.

Despite the high ticket price, John was good value. It was great to see a master of comedy at work.

Ticket Price: 96.40 x 2 = £196.75 including £3.95 transaction fee.

An Evening With Gregor Fisher, The Pavilion, Glasgow. Thursday 23rd April, 2026

 

Well, this is all very jolly. A packed Pavilion Theatre to see one of the nation's warmly respected comic actors. And a fine evening it was, so it was. 

The images from Gregor's life and career
scrolled across the screen in both directions.

Things I learned:

Gregor is adopted, grew up in a working-class family in Neilston and met his wife at RSAMD.

He had a heart attack and collapsed while living in France. He came round to see that he was surrounded by French firemen and thought he was done for; that his wife had phoned the wrong emergency service.

He first met Rikki Fulton at Dundee and does an excellent impression of the man with whom he worked on numerous occasions.

He took the part of Grandpa Potts in the West End version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because he had a massive tax bill. He didn't enjoy the trudge of eight shows a week.

His Cowardly Lion costume in The Wizard of Oz couldn't be washed, so to mask the smell, the costume department used to spray it with Febreze.

While not exactly starstruck by Richard Burton himself, he did acknowledge how others reacted to him: the cast and crew applauded him the moment he appeared on set during the filming of 1984.  

Al Pacino is a great actor, but he does live in Pacino-world.

Gregor was amazed by the power of social media when, during the filming of Whiskey Galore! Eddie Izzard sold out a show in Banff in less than twenty minutes. In Banff!  

He knew that Rab C Nesbitt was class, the moment he read the script. Such funny, truthful and poetic writing. Alan Yentob fought hard to keep it on the air when others thought it was too regional.

The seventy-two-year-old Gregor would tell his twenty-year-old self to be more fearless with his career. He regrets turning down many offers, thinking "It's not for me", such as the RSC.

Spoilers: The next series of Only Child features a scene in which Ken (Gregor) is discovered in a coffin in his living room. Hopefully, not in the last episode.  

Nigel West provided excellent questions to keep the evening on track, wording them differently on occasion from other nights on the tour to keep Gregor on his toes, a detail Gregor was not slow to challenge. The relationship remained warm.

At the end of the evening, Gregor received a standing ovation from his home crowd. 

Ticket Price: £24.50 x 2 plus Service fee £3.95 = £52.95 from Trafalgar Tickets.

Selected Preshow music:

Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet

Rhythm of My Heart by Runrig

Real Gone Kid by Deacon Blue

Walking On The Waves by Skipinnish

Tinseltown in the Rain by The Blue Nile

 

Interval music:

Why Does It Always Rain On Me by Travis

Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel

Life With You by The Proclaimers

Roll To Me by Del Amitri

Take Her In Your Arms by Trail West

Far Side of the World by Tide Lines

Stevie Martin "Clout", The Stand, Glasgow. Wednesday 22nd April, 2026

The drive in was fine tonight. Only a couple of wacky drivers couldn't decide which lane they needed to be in. We found a parking spot nearby and walked to the venue, arriving at 7.20 pm. The show was sold out. The queue stretched outside the venue. 

Fortunately, they opened the doors almost as soon as we arrived (they never open on time). Inside, the room is laid out without the usual tables. It's chairs only, in tight rows, stretching to the back of the room (no area curtained off). We sit in the fifth row, uncomfortably close to the people beside us and in front. Sightlines are good, though.  

Recently, I have been fascinated by the music playing before comedy shows, seeking any themes that are being suggested. I almost forgot to note them tonight, so these are the last three before the show started:

Don't Start Now by Dua Lipa

Get Shaky by The Ian Carey Project

Lights On (feat Ms Dynamite) by Katy B

All upbeat, fast numbers. 

 Then this slide appeared on the screen:

That playlist title is genius.

Looking closer at the sidebar, we discover other gems:

This bodes well. I have never seen Stevie live before. I only know her from her TV appearances on Taskmaster, Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helpful and Richard Osman's House of Games. I am aware she is married to comedian Adam Riches. I have only watched a few of her online sketches.

We have an unadvertised support act: Krystal Evans. I know her shtick from her show "The Hottest Girl in Bandcamp", and this material forms the basis for most of this set. Doesn't mean it's not funny. These are her bankers, with a few new ones thrown in for testing. She has grown in confidence on stage since I last saw her. She looks slimmer, too. Divorce looks good on her.

The music in the interval includes:

To Lose a Life by White Lies

Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer

Broken Man by St Vincent

The Hardest Button to Button by The White Stripes.

Then Stevie bounces onto the stage, full of energy, wearing an Inter Milan tracksuit, her ringed thumb poking through her sleeve and carrying her phone and clicker in her other hand. Her long hair is now brown and tied back in a ponytail. She talks nineteen to the dozen, throwing out funny remarks and smiling a lot as she explains who she is for those who don't know. 

She resembles one of my former patients, with her quick mouth, bouncy energy, smart-casual clothing and the way she repeatedly rubs her nose, sniffs and touches her face, her eyes sparkling but glazed. I'm not saying Stevie snorted any illicit drugs before the show. Perhaps this is how she is wired. It doesn't detract from how funny she is. And her teeth are nice.

She has packed her show with detail. She shows us a silly slide. We laugh. She points out a minute detail we missed. We laugh harder. She plays with callbacks, adding to the insanity she is creating. It's all fun stuff.

What is the show about? Difficult to say. She developed as an online comedian, a slave to the algorithm, chasing views and likes, but the dopamine hit she got from an online lol or hahahahahaha comment (or hohohoho from the Christmas worker from Lapland) fell way short of that feeling of performing live on stage in front of her audience. She's thankful to Taskmaster for bringing her an audience (doesn't mention Mitchell & Webb, perhaps as she and the cast not named in the show title have been dropped from the second series). I think, ultimately, she wanted to make us laugh in whatever way she could. 

I don't know how she maintained her high energy level for the hour, but she did. The show felt like a race. My wife thought it was just okay; superficial laughter that she enjoyed but didn't need to experience again. I disagreed. I was thrilled by the show. And I was only on Paracetamol.

Ticket Price: 2 x £20 plus Booking Fee £1.60 = £41.60 directly from The Stand.

Tyketto "Closer to the Sun" UK Tour, The Garage, Glasgow. Tuesday 21st April, 2026.

A Tuesday night gig at The Garage: the queue is down as far as the Gentings Casino by the time we arrive. The doors are due to open at 7 pm, with Collateral on stage at 7.15. The entry process is smooth, and, bypassing the merch room, we make our way to the main hall, where we end up five-deep at the front.

A couple are on my left, the woman as short as the man is tall. Her view of the stage is good until a white-haired pensioner with hearing aids, thick-rimmed specs on a cord, and a walking stick shuffles through the crowd and stops right in front of her. The husband is irate, demanding that the man move, which he doesn't. There's no room. The pensioner brasses it out and stays where he is, forcing the unhappy pair to slide over.

Collateral both look and sound great once my ears adjust to the room. Frontman Angelo Tristan packs charisma with a fine voice. He brings the energy, demanding we raise our game so they can fulfil their role in warming us up. He succeeds. A great start.

However, my photos are shite.

Collateral

It doesn't take long for Warrior Soul to sap that energy. Their intro takes forever before the lead singer joins them on stage. I wished he hadn't. If you're going to copy the look of David Coverdale and the dance moves of David Lee Roth, you shouldn't do it as they are now - vocally strained and arthritic. Any singing voice this man had is long gone. He still bears the demeanour of a rock god, but I quickly grow tired of his shouting into the mic. I don't mean in a death metal way. This is not death metal. If anything, this is the death of metal. The solos the guitarist shreds sound more like instrument abuse than music. If I'd had a magic amp, I'd have rubbed it and wished them to stop. Forever. As I haven't, I close my eyes and wait for it to be over. Interminable!

Warrior Soul - look at us, we used to be middlingly famous

This rather dampens my feelings towards Tyketto. As does the clean-shaven Hagrid in a leather jacket, who uses his heft to push forward to stand in front of the girl beside me. She taps him on the shoulder. He pretends not to notice. She taps more insistently. He turns and fake apologises, edging over slightly. She still can't see. She tells him to do one. He relents and eventually slides sideways to be a pain in front of someone else. (He returned during the set, standing in front of the couple on my other side, but the husband, who was as tall as him, 'encouraged' him to keep going. I didn't see where Hagrid went after this - hopefully home.)

Tyketto frontman Danny Vaughn is a humble soul. He appreciates how the fans have stuck with them for their thirty-five years. He's retained a powerful voice and his sense of humour, and is an easy presence to like. I'm not overly familiar with their music, though I did give the new album a couple of listens (it's a grower). The hardcore fans sing along, while I try to work out what the words are. The talented guitarist keeps playing at the side of the stage, out of the spotlight, which is a bit frustrating. I don't think he realises he's in shadow. 

I don't attempt to shoot any video footage. Too many heads at the same level as mine. Besides, the tall bloke to my right seems to have his phone permanently on record, with an unobstructed view of the stage, so his footage will be superior to mine. Let's hope he shares it on YouTube.

Mr Video

I never managed to snag a photo of the setlist, but noticed a poster of the stage times behind the bar. The barmaid saw me taking the picture, asked if I wanted it, and handed it over. Tyketto never stuck to the 'strict curfew', finishing at 10.45 pm.

The Garage printer needs a new ink cartridge.

Overall, the gig was fine, but I would have enjoyed it more without Warrior Soul's set. 

Setlist:

Rescue Me

Wings

Burning Down Inside

Higher Than High

Strength in Numbers

Reach

Closer to the Sun

The Run

We Rise

Circle the Wagons

Seasons (preceded by the opening verse/ chorus of "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Steelers Wheel)

Harleys & Indians (Riders in the Sky) (Roxette cover)

Standing Alone

Lay Your Body Down

The Brave

Forever Young

Ticket Price: unknown (Bob owes me for tickets, and I owe him. It balances out in the end).