Ray Bradshaw "CODA", SEC Armadillo, Glasgow. Saturday 11th April, 2026

 

I saw a £15 ticket offer for this gig earlier in the week. Of course, being Ticketmaster, £15 tickets actually ended up costing £20.80. It was still worth it, though. This was Ray's biggest-ever solo show, and it felt good to support him. I've always found him a disarmingly funny comic with an easy, conversational style that packs a killer punchline. 

He's never nervous on stage because, with two deaf parents, he's always had to be confident from a young age to help them navigate the world of sound. He gets a lot of mileage from his deaf parents. Despite hearing some of the stories before, I couldn't help but laugh at them again, because 1) his delivery is so smooth, 2) everyone is laughing, and 3) the stories are very funny. For example, Ray hears someone using a chainsaw outside his house early one morning. He looks out his window and sees his deaf dad cutting the hedge. He also sees all the neighbours watching from their windows, annoyed at being disturbed so early. Ray makes gestures to try to catch his dad's attention (no point in shouting), and eventually catches his dad's eye. Ray signs to him that he is disturbing the neighbours. His dad looks about, shrugs and then signs back, "That's your problem," and carries on.

Ray performed both halves of the show with his sign language interpreter. She also provided a few laughs, like when she showed him the middle finger (not up the bum - injoke*) after he made a joke about her.

Before the show, Ray watched the audience on the screens backstage. With many deaf people in the audience, he was able to eavesdrop on their signed conversations, the best one being one chap who asked his wife if she thought he had time to go for a shite. 

It would have been brilliant if he could have sold out the venue, but even with the last-minute £15 tickets on sale, the Front Circle was less than half full, with no one in the rear seating or top floor. This was a shame. It was a good night.

Afterwards, on the way back to the car, I persuaded my wife that we should stop at McDonald's. I wanted a Creme Egg McFlurry, and she decided she'd like the same, but the mini version. At the order screen, I raced through the transaction, but the machine had no receipt roll. As I took out my phone to photograph the order number, the screen returned to the start. My wife berated me for hitting the wrong button. She said I had cancelled the order. So I repeated the process, and again it leapt back to the order screen, though this time I briefly noticed the number 97 flash before it disappeared. She was angry now. Why did I cancel it again? She now wanted to leave, but I was determined to order my ice cream. For a third time, I went through the process, taking each step slowly. At the end, I paused to read the instruction she claimed I had got wrong. 'Yes' meant retry. Nothing happened. It couldn't. There was no receipt roll. 'No' meant continue without a receipt. Then we heard 97 being called, just after 95. Two sets of our order were on the counter, with a third on the way. My wife couldn't stop laughing. In the end, they refunded the other two orders. The assistant asked if I wanted a receipt. I said no. I got one anyway.

Ticket Price:
Venue £15 Ticket offer: £15.00 x 2 = £30.00
Service Fee: £2.05 x 2 = £4.10
Venue Facility Fee: £2.50 x 2 = £5.00
Handling Fee £2.50
Total £41.60 via Ticketmaster

* At a wedding, Ray persuaded an American guest to order a 'Finger Up The Bum' at the free bar. Ray credits the barman with the greatest of replies. "Is that a single or a double?"  

Selected Preshow music: 

Pretty Glasgow Sky by Elgin Drive

Midnight by The Lucky Angels

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing by Heavy Weather

College Days by Careo

Revolution by The High Flats

I've never heard of any of them either.

Jason Manford: "A Manford All Seasons". The Pavilion Glasgow, Friday 20th June 2025

The air conditioning is noisily blasting out prior to the show, desperate to lower the temperature in the theatre. Outside, the heat has been incredible. Another warmest day of the year so far. I'm feeling sleepy but excited. I've never been to a Jason Manford show. The drive in was fine, except for the road closures coming off the motorway, with none of the sideroads off Bothwell Street open due to JJ Abrams' film Ghostwriter being filmed in those locations. My wife thought she saw Glen Powell, but it might have been his stunt double. I was too busy watching the crawl of traffic, realising too late that my lane was blocked off.

I didn't know who the support act would be and was delighted when Ray Bradshaw appeared on stage with his BSL interpreter. I've seen Ray many times and never failed to find him funny. He has a conversational charm that belies the sharpness of his jokes. I've heard most of the material before, but it still tickled me because it's so good. He's playing the Armadillo on April 11th next year. 

During the interval, a stage hand brings on a tall chair and a table draped in black cloth, upon which stand a glass and a jug of water, along with a paper folder. The music playing is eclectic, including one of Jason's own, "Assembly Bangers", according to Shazam. Nena's 99 Red Balloons and Hayseed Dixie's version of Ace of Spades also stand out.

The theatre isn't sold out. Sales have been respectable with downstairs and the Circle mostly full, but the Balcony isn't open as far as I can see. Not surprising given he toured the same show last year at the Armadillo. The audience skews to an older demographic.  

Jason's act is proper old-school storytelling. He talks about his family (six kids!) and his parents (his dad never comes to see his show - "I don't go and watch your brother doing his plumbing, do I?"). The chair, on which Jason is perched for most of the show, reminds us that he is a safe comedian, as he puts it—an entry-level comedian—and that description is fair. He knows how to craft a routine, stringing together sequences of jokes that persistently entertain. I don't nod off, despite the heat, though my eyes want to. It takes me a while to shift the idea that he's not Gary Barlow, half expecting him to break out 'Greatest Day,' their accents sounding identical. An hour and a half later, he's done, telling us he eschews the idea that comedy should end on a high note, then undercuts that with a verbally dextrous routine about whether comedy is art.    

After the show, we popped to McDonalds for milkshakes and sucked them down until the paper straws dissolved as we headed back towards Bothwell Street to see if we could catch some Hollywood action. Unfortunately not. They were filming inside one of the buildings, so all we had to show for it was this picture and an aftertaste of decaying paper straw.

Ticket Price: £79.00 (for two tickets) plus Transaction charge £3.95 = £82.95 from Trafalgar Tickets

Frankie Boyle, Work in Progress Shambles and Book Reading, The Glee Club, Glasgow. Monday 14th October, 2024.

This was another treat to myself to celebrate my retirement. Ordinarily, I couldn't have attended as the doors opened at 6 pm and closed at 6.30 pm. I've been to a few of Frankie's WIPs, and they've always been good. He's relaxed, reads the jokes from a clipboard, and the expectations are lower. Generally, the audience is less boisterous. 

Our allocated seating was far enough from the stage to feel safe but close enough to have a great view. A few tables were empty despite it being a sellout. Two loud gentlemen transferred to the table behind us, explaining to those beside them that, as the doors were closed, the people who'd paid to sit there weren't coming. One of them didn't appear to own a volume control for his voice. 

Ray Bradshaw, as the support act, performed a fun twenty-minute set with material about Glasgow, his deaf dad, and attending an American bachelor party, amongst other topics. His style was effortless, almost conversational, as if the routines had just come to him. He was excellent.

Frankie, shorn of beard and dressed in a brown, undersized sweatshirt, looked like he'd come from a gym (without going in), instead choosing to sample the wares of the nearby Greggs (that's unfair - he has been making an effort to get into shape - he just didn't explain what shape). He is carrying a copy of his new book, "A Short History of the Apocalypse", with specific pages tagged. He also has a clipboard with pages of printed material attached.

When Frankie came on, the gentlemen behind us clapped and cheered loudly. This was their statement of intent. They wanted to be part of the show, also known in Glasgow as 'being a cunt'. I cringed. This was not going to go well. 

During the show, a rogue heckle from elsewhere in the room emboldened them to contribute, but their comment didn't elicit a Frankie putdown. What did draw his attention was the guy's laugh, which was so loud and forced that it always finished with him falling into a fit of viscous coughing. Frankie suggested the last time he'd heard a cough like that, it was from his uncle, who was dying of cancer. The cougher thought this was an intro to a two-way conversation, but Frankie wasn't having it and continued with his prepared material. Later, though, the guy's cough became so loud that it prevented the audience from hearing one of Frankie's setups, causing Frankie to interrupt the joke to call him out. I would have liked to have seen the guy waterboarded. 

This was Frankie's second WIP. He did a lot of old material, read a couple of sections from his book (the first was funnier than the second), and tested the jokes he intends to use on "The Last Leg US Election Special" next month. One that might not make the broadcast is "The US is fully behind Israel's two-state approach to Gaza, those states being a solid and a gas." As that show is broadcast live, it'll be interesting to hear what material he uses.

After the show, the two loud guys paused as they left to take selfies with the stage Glee logo in the background, a memento of their excellent night ruining the show for the rest of us. 

Cunts!

Ticket Price: £15 x2, plus £2 x2 booking fee direct from The Glee Club. 

Frankie Boyle: Work in Progress, The Stand, Glasgow. Sunday 11th December, 2022

After a late Saturday night at GUN at the Barrowlands, I enjoyed a lazy Sunday morning knowing I had this to look forward to in the afternoon.

Works in progress, by definition, can be hit or miss but they generally have a more relaxed vibe as the audience is aware the material is being tried out. Today, Frankie was testing the script for the End of Year edition of his BBC2 series, New World Order. Essentially, he read out the entire, printed-out script from a clipboard, including his opening monologue, links to all the clips they might use in the final edit and the end monologue. There was little chitchat with the audience, except to comment when he felt something wouldn't make the cut or to react to our reaction about the joke he just told. As anticipated, the material was dark, brutal and shoulder-shakingly funny. In this unedited version, the band U2 came in for some serious carnage involving the consequence of their helicopter flying over an active volcano. It will be interesting to see how much makes the final broadcast.

There was also a surprise support act, Ray Bradshaw, who performed a lot of funny but familiar material about having deaf parents. His chatty, relaxed style was conducive to big laughs and he set us up nicely for Frankie to do his stuff.

Ticket price: £15.