GICF: BBC "Breaking The News" Recording, Drygate, Glasgow. Thursday 19th March, 2026

Host: Des Clarke

Panellists:
Raymond Mearns

Alexandra Haddow

Madeleine Brettingham
Ignacio Lopez

Audience Question: 

What is the biggest lie you've ever told, and why?

Topics:

Trump is demanding support from the Allies to protect the Strait of Hormuz

Inverness has been nominated for City of Culture 2029

Friends of the show: 

Phil Goodlad - Weather apps ruin attendance at Edinburgh Zoo - "just wear a jaiket". 

Nicola Meighan - Babies have learned deception before their first birthday. "Babies are liars".

Mystery Persons

Angela Rayner - warning that Labour is running out of time to make significant change.

Barbie - about the exhibition coming to Glasgow in the summer.

Final Quickfire round - 48% of workers say they want what?"

Klaxon - Martin Guissler "Shepherds Pie, cottage pie, what's the difference?"

On the way in, on the train, the youth sitting opposite snorted so often, as soon as the approaching platform message was announced, my wife made for the door, not even waiting for the train to stop. His disgusting behaviour was making her feel sick.

Ignacio's Spanish accent is so smooth.

Ticket Price: Free from BBC Tours and Shows. 

Edinburgh Fringe, Tuesday 5th August 2025: Larry Dean (WIP), Glesga Da F**ks Off, Ray O'Leary, Alasdair Beckett-King, Rhys Darby

Bob and I took advantage of the '2 for 1' day at the Fringe, seeing the following acts:

Larry Dean WIP £12 (12 noon) Monkey Barrel 3

A reliable start to the day, with Larry working on a set about his recent marriage. Some banging punchlines. It is going to be a brilliant show when he's finished working on it. 

Glasga Da F**ks Off £10 (15.40) Hoots @The Apex Hoots 2  

Stuart Mitchell and Raymond Mearns sign off from their podcast with a run of shows at the Fringe. An improvised hour of chat, with the veteran Mearns providing most of the banter. I was surprised by how little Stuart contributed. Lots of fans of the podcast were in the audience and were very much up for a laugh. The seating layout was a bit awkward, with entry to the rows only from the side nearest the door and hardly any room for people to get by. After the show, on the way out, I got to shake Raymond's hand as he thanked everyone for coming. 

They've ended the podcast because it made them no money. Any income they made went back out to pay for the studio, the producer, and the techies.      

Ray O'Leary: Laughter? I Hardly Know Her! £15 (18.05) Pleasance Beside

As we stood in the queue, we were informed by the ticket checker that this show would start twenty minutes later than billed. I'd left a long enough buffer between shows that this didn't matter, but others were annoyed. The previous show had started late.

Ray gave a good performance, opening with a bit where a stranger accused him of being a good role model for autism. Only he hasn't been diagnosed as autistic. Not that you'd know from the way he constantly touched his hair, face and glasses. His deadpan hour was humorous, using his slow speech pattern to good effect. When he left the stage at the end, following a scripted section involving audience participation, the girl speaker was left holding her microphone. When she looked behind the curtain to return it, Ray was already gone. 

Alasdair Beckett-King "King of Crumbs" £17 (20.00) Pleasance Dome - King

This was a fine hour of left-field humour, utilising clever sound effects, PowerPoint and stage props. Alasdair has a unique view of reality and takes us into his world. The jokes are insightful, clever, obscure and very funny.  Highly recommended.

Rhys Darby "The Legend Returns" £19 x 2 (21.20) Pleasance Courtyard - Grand

One of the finest shows I have seen at the Fringe. Rhys is concerned about AI and the imminent rise of the robots and takes us on a journey into the future, masterfully making all his own sound effects to illustrate it. The stories he physically acts out are hilarious, and the way he ties them all together at the end is brilliant. 

My only problem was seeing over the full head of hair in front of me. When Rhys stood centre stage, my view was blocked by the lush, spiky locks of the youth in front. I'd recommend getting there early to snag a seat nearer the front. 

All in all, a fantastic day at the Fringe, with five top shows for under fifty quid each (excluding transport and sustenance). 

The Big Comedy Roadshow, Barrfields Theatre, Largs. Saturday 24th May 2025

When the best thing about a night out is the drive home, you know you've not had a good time.

I had such high hopes for this show. It featured a couple of established local acts, two others with high-profile TV experience, and a superb upcoming comedian. Even with Liam Withnail dropping out, Chris Forbes should have been a good replacement. 

A quick check of ticket availability the day before showed 50+ still available. Fifty tickets wouldn't be much of a gap, though, given the room capacity was 440. 

The portents were not good, though. When I arrived at the venue, I found plenty of parking spaces available. Inside, the front-of-house staff announced that the ticketed reserved seating had been suspended as they had had to rearrange the room into tables. The intention was to give the place a club vibe, but this was going to be difficult given the critically low sales. There were maybe only fifty punters in attendance.  

The staff wanted us to fill up the front trestle tables first, but we ignored that suggestion, leaving the latecomers and the Gen-Zs to sit there. The way the seats had been arranged perpendicularly to the stage felt too much like a work conference, with half the room sitting with their backs to the speaker, in this case, the comedian. It might work for bingo, but not for comedy.  

Chris Forbes kicked off the evening as host, conducting some low-key audience work to establish where people were from (local mainly, with a few from England and one from Wales). The interactions were warm but rarely comedic. I don't know if he used any prepared material before he brought on Raymond Mearns.

Raymond is an established comic who is more intelligent than he appears to be, not that it shows often. He ploughed through his material about young people not talking to one another, likely leading to an extinction-level crisis, despite the lukewarm reaction from the crowd. He did okay in the circumstances.

Desiree Burch was up next. The inaccuracies in her material killed my enjoyment of it: Pointless contestants cannot win only £800—the prize money starts at £1000. She should know this as she was Xander's sidekick for ten shows. She complained about how thick Blankety Blank contestants are, then told a story about this one girl who struggled to come up with a famous Scotsman, despite hints from the celebrities. The problem here was Rod "Do You Think I'm Sexy?" Stewart is not Scottish. So, who's the idiot? Her suggestion that the success of ABBA Voyage was due to the band being dead finished me off (not in a sex act way). She rescued it a bit at the end with her bald, bearded Greek boyfriend material, but it was too little, too late. I felt she was not gig-fit. She spoke fast but stumbled occasionally over the words. 

Jin Hao Li didn't have that problem. His delivery is deliberately slow. His material is brilliant, full of comical misdirection, so even though I was familiar with the routines and could recite the lines as he spoke them, I still enjoyed his performance. He giggled more than usual, which was odd for him, as he's usually so controlled. 

The headliner, Jayde Adams, died on her arse. Her act was flabby with very few jokes. Instead, she went on and on about being on Strictly (it was 2022), going viral and being ever so popular. She berated us for not laughing at her 'good' jokes, complained that she hadn't done much standup because she'd been too busy with her successful career, then read out a prepared speech about the patriarchy trying to control women with body shaming and that by owning her fatness, she had become immune to their powers. The best bit was the background music, the young lesbian from the Gen Z table played (Luke Skywalker's theme from Star Wars: A New Hope) to accompany the speech. 

I was especially disappointed in Jayde, because I'd heard she could be so good. 

The Gilded Balloon branded the previous tour as the Big Fab Comedy Show. They definitely were right to lose the Fab tonight.

Ticket Price  2 x £23 plus Booking Fee £3.58 = £49.58 from Ticket Source Ltd

The original tour graphic

Breaking The News BBC Recording, Drygate, Glasgow. Thursday 17th April, 2025

Another visit to Drygate for the recording of Breaking The News, the last in the current series.

We arrived earlier than last time at 11.30 am, way earlier than we needed to, ending up sixth in the queue on a wet and dismal Glasgow morning. At least we were under cover while we waited.  

At noon, the production team let us in, issuing us numbered stickers that dictated the sequence in which the audience was allowed into the recording.  

This time we noticed, thanks to this blackboard, that the coffee wasn't actually free. Whoops! We snagged a cushioned booth and ate our lunch, watching sports on the big screens and reading on our Kindle apps. With no telephone reception and only weak WiFi internet, we had no contact with the outside world for a whole hour, so I couldn't look up who the fourth, unadvertised panellist was going to be. It turned out to be Welshman Robin Morgan.

The show was slicker than last time, with fewer tangents and digressions that were unusable for broadcast. It was still incredibly funny. Raymond and Felicity tussled even though they were on the same team. Des held it all together marvellously, not needing as many pickups this time. Best joke: "Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, insisted on taking a photograph of the six beautiful ladies on his Blue Origin spaceflight upon their safe return to earth... as proof of delivery." 

Or that's how I remembered it.

The actual joke went: "When the crew landed, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos took a photograph of them partly to commemorate the occasion, but mainly as proof of delivery." 

On the way back to the station, this mural caught my eye. Does anyone else think this mural resembles comedian Bill Maher? I have no idea who it is supposed to be.

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Ticket Price: Free 

Stuart Mitchell & Festive Friends, Blackfriars, Glasgow. Early Afternoon Show, Friday 6th December, 2024

It has been many years since I last visited Blackfriars and even longer since I'd been to a show there. And at nearly a tenner for a glass of red wine and a can of Irn Bru, it may be a while before I return. Since my last visit decades ago, the downstairs area has been given a revamp; the stage is now at the opposite end of the room, where the bar used to be, with a mural of Detective Columbo as a practical reminder of where to face. Actually, the position of the mic stand and the chairs help, too.   

The show is sold out despite the 2:30 p.m. start on a Friday afternoon. Stuart Mitchell is the draw for many of the crowd, which has a predominantly elderly demographic. There was a bit of impolite forcefulness as punters converged on the stair entrance from three directions, multiple people pushing in front of me after my wife went through. Such was their enthusiasm to grab the best seats.  

Downstairs, the semi-circle front row had been heavily populated by grey/balding old men, all friends from Motherwell. As Stuart remarked, they gave the place the appearance of a prostate ward, cue mime pulling on the surgical gloves. 

Stuart is hosting, not headlining, much to one woman's vocal disappointment. He has to remind her of the show's title, emphasising the 'And Friends' part. As host, he shows off his crowd-work skills for which he is famous on the old internet. He gets some mileage from the Motherwell grandpas, one of whom claims to work at Edinburgh Zoo. The punter's replies are quick-witted, the banter bouncing back and forth, with others joining in. Who knew a Friday afternoon crowd could be so rowdy? Especially with a Chief Detective Inspector from the Paisley Police Office in attendance.

The first act is Rosco Mclelland, who is in his thirties and is younger than everyone in the audience as far as I can see. I'd watched his recent Edinburgh show online, and he used bits from it today, but not enough for it to feel like a repeat. At times, it felt like he was slogging through his material, trying to connect with this crowd and stop them from veering off into heckle-land or starting conversations. We weren't his normal demographic.

Aside: He revealed he'd had his teeth fixed in an attempt to appear more tv-friendly, just as BBC Scotland admitted they had no money left for new programmes.     

After the interval, Stuart dropped a bombshell: the zookeeper was, in fact, a car salesman. He was miffed because it scuppered the joke he'd written at the break especially for him, asking, "What Koala-fications do you need to work at the zoo? 

After more banter with Mr Mercedes, Stuart introduced his Glesga Da, Raymond Mearns, as headliner. Raymond has been on the circuit for decades. I'd even seen him perform (badly) in this venue back then when he died on his arse. Today, he fared better. His rough and ready Glaswegian material won over the crowd, though he did give both barrels to the grandpas to ensure they knew who was in charge. 

This show went over well as a wee early Christmas treat. Hopefully, when I see Stuart perform again, the crowd will be better behaved but just as funny.   

Ticket Price (for two): £19.80 (incl. £1.80 booking fee) from WeGotTickets. 

GICF Comedy Gala. King's Theatre, Glasgow. Saturday 30th March, 2024

Another solo gig for me, with my wife still recuperating from Covid. When I arrived, the auditorium was not yet open, so I made for the upstairs bar. Looking around, I noticed the walls had framed photos of famous actors and signs indicating the year they performed at the venue. For example, Michael Caine trod the boards there in 1959. Not a lot of people know that. I meant to snap a few of them to post here, but it was too busy. 

I had plenty of legroom on the front row of the Grand Circle, not just because of my missing wife. There was one seat free on my right and two more on my left. I must have appeared like a right Jonny No Mates, which was why it felt so good to notice a former colleague also on the Grand Circle. At the interval, I texted to confirm it was her, and then we chatted at the back. It's always nice to see a friendly face.

Susie McCabe was the gala's host. In the first half, she introduced Billy Kirkwood, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Stuart McPherson, Jin-Hao Li, Susan Riddell, and Craig Hill. They each received five-minute slots, and all performed well (although many of them opened with How are you doing, Glasgow? - Were they not listening to our previous answer?). I was most impressed by Jin-Hao Li, who has a great delivery and a unique style. One to watch (and listen to, obviously).  

The second half featured Luisa Omielan, Zara Gladman, Rosco McClelland, Raymond Mearns, and Janey Godley (last year's recipient of the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award). Luisa came across well, with some excellent material. It was harder to get into Zara Gladman as she is a character act, and I didn't know her work. Janey has always been a force of nature, but now, with her cancer diagnosis, she is totally unleashed and terrifyingly funny. The top act of the afternoon, in my opinion. 

The afternoon finished with the presentation of this year's Spirit of Glasgow Award. After an introduction by the festival organiser, Elaine C Smith announced the winner, with Janey Godley handing the award to Susie McCabe. There was a touching video from Sir Billy, which made Susie quite emotional. We left the gala with the PA system playing If It Wisnae fur yer Wellies, which brought another smile to the crowd's faces. 

Susie, with the other nominees.

I was surprised to learn that the festival is run by a core team of just five people. Maybe once I retire, I should investigate how to get involved. With a staff discount, I could save a fortune on tickets.

Ticket Price: £24.10 each plus £3.95 transaction fee from ATG.