“Inequality is widening, autocracy is rising and political parties are collapsing,” says political comic Nish Kumar. That’s why the time is right for his Angry Humour From A Really Nice Guy tour
POLITICAL comedian Nish Kumar will play the Grand Opera House, York, on September 23 on his Angry Humour From A Really Nice Guy tour.
Tickets go on general sale at 10am tomorrow (29/1/2026) at https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/nish-kumar-angry-humour-from-a-really-nice-guy/grand-opera-house-york/.
“The world is in chaos,” laments Kumar. “Inequality is widening, autocracy is rising and political parties are collapsing. In these divided times, what this country desperately needs is Angry Humour From a Really Nice Guy. (In many ways it’s actually the last thing this country needs, but it’s what it’s getting, so tough luck).”
Pod Save The UK podcast co-host, former host of axed BBC Two show The Mash Report and Late Night Mash, and one of Taskmaster’s greatest losers to boot, Wandsworth-born Kumar has entered his 40s (birthdate August 26 1985). His mind is breaking, his body is worse, “but audiences can still expect existential angst and political disquiet from comedy’s cheekiest boy”.
After blending his trademark high-energy with more personal reflections on mental health and modern life on his Nish, Don’t Kill My Vibe tour, now Kumar will “tackle big, uncomfortable questions in a bold, fast-paced and unflinchingly smart new show, delivered with fury, intelligence and warmth”.
Kumar says: “I looked out of the window and the world was ending. Stand-up comedy was the only thing that made sense to me – then it was co-opted by charlatans in service of autocrats. I’m going back on tour to try and reconnect with the thing I love more than anything else. I promise the show will be funnier than this.”
Kumar has appeared on such TV shows as Live At The Apollo, QI, Have I Got News For You, The John Bishop Show, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Russell Howard’s Stand-Up Central, Drunk History and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order.
Nish’s Your Power, Your Control tour show was released as a special on Sky Comedy in 2023 and he made a Netflix special as part of the Comedians Of The World series, as well as joining fellow comic Joel Dommett for Comedy Central’s 12-part travelogue Joel & Nish Vs The World and Josh Widdicombe in Sky Max’s Hold The Front Page. On the radio, he has hosted BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz and BBC Radio 4 Extra’s Newsjack.
His 2026 tour will take in further Yorkshire gigs at Leeds Playhouse, October 3, Hull Truck Theatre, October 9, Octagon Centre, Sheffield, November 13, and Scarborough Spa Theatre, November 14. Box office: www.nishkumar.co.uk from tomorrow morning.
Liza Pulman, left, Dillie Keane and Adele Anderson raise a glass to Fascinating Aida returning to the stage. Picture: Johnny Boylan
SATIRICAL cabaret trio Fascinating Aida are heading for their 40th anniversary next year.
How they will celebrate remains under wraps, but the comedy singing group’s founder, Dillie Keane, is delighted to be back on the road for 61 winter and spring dates with key writing partner Adele Anderson, who joined in 1984, and Liza Pulman, who first teamed up in 2004.
Among the shows will be York Barbican on Saturday and Scarborough Spa Theatre on May 13.
“We first toured this new show in the autumn, and it was such a relief. It felt like going home,” says 69-year-old Irish actress, singer, pianist, comedian and columnist Dillie.
“Sometimes, I’m overwhelmed in the wings, thinking ‘’I’m home’. I love being backstage too and all the routine that goes with that.
“After nearly four decades, I’m enjoying it as much as ever, having started the group as something to do when we weren’t acting!”
During lockdown, Dillie penned three songs that she posted on YouTube. “I’m not one for livestreaming,” she says. “There’s something depressing about seeing people performing a ‘show’ from their bedroom.
“Instead, I wrote these rather bitter and angry songs. There was one about Cummings ‘wanting all us old people to die’ [Song For Dominic Cummings], and one about Gavin Williamson ‘stuffing up the education system’ [Song For Gavin Williamson].
“Then, Nothing To Do Blues (‘and all day to do it in’), that came about from the moment when I was queueing in a little farm shop and a chap turned round and said, ‘Sorry, I’m taking ages’, and I said, ‘that’s OK, I’ve got nothing to do’. I got that one properly edited and made a little film of it.”
Those songs will not feature in Fascinating Aida’s set. “No, they were of the moment and they would only have been in my solo show,” says Dillie.
She had anticipated spending her pandemic-enforced hiatus from the stage rather differently. “I always felt in my year off, ‘I’ll write my autobiography’; ‘I’ll write the novel of my dreams’; ‘I’ll read [James Joyce’s] Ulysses and Proust’…
… “Well, I did start Proust – I’m halfway through the first book! – and I listened to 13 Anthony Trollope stories read by Timothy West and enjoyed some audio books, and I grew a lot of vegetables. I’ve now used almost all the courgettes; pounds and pounds of them.”
Experiencing the Nothing To Do Blues, Dillie missed seeing shows as much as she missed playing them. “It broke my heart,” she says. “I will go and see anything. I’m very eclectic. High opera. Low opera. Mongolian throat singers. Anything you can name.
“Not being able to see stuff was a killer – then someone told me it took 18 years to reopen theatres after the plague.”
From 1984’s Sweet FA to 2012’s Cheap Flights and onwards, Fascinating Aida have captured the political and social fixations of our times. For 2022, Fascinating Aida’s cabaret compound will combine “old favourites, songs you haven’t heard before and some you wish you’d never heard in the first place” as Dillie, Adele and Liza are joined by musical director, composer and pianist Michael Roulston, under the direction of Paul Foster (whose credits include Kiss Me, Kate and Annie Get Your Gun at Sheffield Crucible).
“I think there are several reasons for our longevity, and one of them is that we’ve always had a director for our shows, which is incredibly important,” says Dillie. “You should have someone on the outside to say, ‘no, this is better’.
“Working with a director makes it sharper focused, and we now have the wonderful Paul Foster, who I worked with on another project [a solo show off-Broadway and on tour].”
Summing up Fascinating Aida’s chemistry that will be clicking once more from January 29 to June 20, Dillie says: “We’re terribly finickity, driving each other crackers! But when we get a line right, when we’re together in Liza’s kitchen, or mine, it’s wonderful.
“Like when we were writing a song about one thing, and Adele came up with a few lines that were nothing to do that but were all to do with ‘fake news’, I thought, ‘that’s awfully good, we should use that for the opening song’.
“We stopped what we’re doing and wrote the new song in full, writing everything in black and white terms: that’s how True True True Or Fake News came about.”
Further assessing the trio’s bond, Dillie says: “A very silly sense of humour helps too. That’s never changed. People come up after a show and say, ‘have you been hiding in my kitchen? You are singing about my life’.
“We’ve also never been starry. We’ve been relentlessly down to earth; there’s a genuine rootedness about us, and we’ve never been seduced by the idiotic side of showbiz.”
One other factor lies behind Fascinating Aida’s continuing success. “Satirical songs are different to doing stand-up, where the rules of comedy say you’re not allowed to repeat old jokes, but though a song like Cheap Flights is no longer topical, people still sit there in hysterics,” says Dillie.
“Songs are a different discipline altogether. Give us a stand-up script and we wouldn’t be very good at it, so we say, ‘let’s keep the chatter to a minimum; let’s stick to the songs’ as we seem to be rather good at them!”
Fascinating Aida, York Barbican, Saturday (12/2/2022) and Scarborough Spa Theatre, May 13, both at 7.30pm. Box office: York, yorkbarbican.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 376774 or scarboroughspa.co.uk.
Enjoy free admission to York Art Gallery’s Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings exhibition as part of York Residents’ Festival. Booking required. Picture: Charlotte Graham
YORK attracts 8.4 million visitors, but this weekend you are invited to be a tourist in your own city, as Charles Hutchinson highlights.
Festival of the week: York Residents’ Festival, today and tomorrow
MORE than 70 events, attractions and offers make up this weekend’s York Residents’ Festival, with the offers continuing all week.
Organised by Make It York, this annual festival invites all York residents with a valid YorkCard to “explore the city and be a tourist for the weekend”, one card per person.
Pre-booking is required for some highlights of a festival that takes in museums, theatres, galleries, churches, hidden gems, historic buildings, food and drink and shops. For more details, visit: visityork.org/residents-festival.
Tall storey in Tall Stories’ The Smeds And The Smoos at York Theatre Royal this weekend
Children’s show of the week: The Smeds And The Smoos, York Theatre Royal, today, 2.30pm and 4.30pm; tomorrow, 10.30am and 1.30pm
SOAR into space with Tall Stories’ exciting new stage adaptation of writer Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler’s joyful tale of star-crossed aliens.
On a far-off planet, Smeds and Smoos cannot be friends. Nevertheless, when a young Smed and Smoo fall in love, they promptly zoom off into space together.
How will their families get them back? Find out in an interplanetary adventure for everyone aged three upwards, full of music and laughter, from the company that delivered The Gruffalo and Room On The Broom on stage. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Bedtime story: Ian Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens as Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in Eric & Ern
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be; it’s better in: Eric & Ern, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.30pm
IAN Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens bring you sunshine in their uncanny portrayal of comedy duo Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in a show that has been touring for more than five years.
Combining renditions of famous comedy sketches with contemporary references, Eric & Ern contains some of the first new writing in the Morecambe & Wise style in more than in 30 years. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Abstract collage, by Peter Schoenecker, at Pocklington Arts Centre
Exhibition of the week outside York: Peter Schoenecker, A New Way Of Looking, Pocklington Arts Centre, until February 19
PETER Schoenecker’s mixed-media artworks open Pocklington Arts Centre’s 2022 season of exhibitions in the studio.
On show are watercolours, acrylics and lino prints by the Pocklington artist, a former graphic designer, who is inspired by the landscape and seascape textures and lighting in and around his Yorkshire home.
“My aim is usually to create a mood or atmosphere using colour or black and white,” he says. “Switching between media keeps me interested and innovative, hopefully bringing a freshness to the work.”
Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant: From Liverpool to Leeds on Wednesday
Gig of the week outside York: Echo & The Bunnymen, Leeds O2 Academy, Wednesday, doors, 7pm
AHEAD of the February 18 vinyl reissue of their 1985 compilation Songs To Learn & Sing, Liverpool legends Echo & The Bunnymen play plenty of those songs and more besides in Leeds (and at Sheffield City Hall the night before).
Available for the first time since that initial release, the “Best Of” cherry picks from their first four albums with the single Bring On The Dancing Horses as the icing on top. On tour, vocalist Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant will be leading a band now in their 44th year, still too cool to be called a heritage act. Box office: gigsandtours.com/tour/echo-and-the-bunnymen.
Granny (Isabel Ford) and Ben (Justin Davies) in the Crown Jewels-stealing scene in Birmingham Stage Company’s Gangsta Granny
Family show of the week: Birmingham Stage Company in Gangsta Granny, Grand Opera House, York, February 3 to 5, 2.30pm and 7pm; February 6, 11am and 3pm
IN David Walliams’s tale, Friday night means only one thing for 11-year-old Ben: staying with Granny, where he must put up with cabbage soup, cabbage pie and cabbage cake.
Ben knows one thing for sure – it will be so, so boring – but what Ben doesn’t know is that Granny has a secret. Soon Friday nights will be more exciting than he could ever imagine, as he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with his very own Gangsta Granny, in Neal Foster’s touring production, back in York next week for the first time since 2016. Suitable for age five upwards. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.
Two out of Seven: Shed Seven’s Rick Witter and Paul Banks to perform as a duo in Scarborough
Compact Sheds: Rick Witter and Paul Banks, Scarborough Spa Theatre, April 17, 7.30pm
SHED Seven shed three when frontman Rick Witter and lead guitarist Paul Banks “go where no Shed has gone before” to play Scarborough over the Easter weekend.
Mr H Presents promoter Tim Hornsby says: “Expect a special night of classic Shed Seven material and a few surprises”.
“You already know this whites-of-their-eyes show is going to sell out, so don’t get bothered with the regular unholy last-minute scramble for tickets and purchase early for a holler-along to some of the best anthems ever,” he advises. Box office: scarboroughspa.co.uk.
James Swanton as Lucifer with cast members of The Last Judgement when plays from the 2018 York Mystery Plays were staged in the Shambles Market. Picture: Lewis Outing
Looking ahead to the summer: 2022 York Mystery Plays, York city centre, June 19 and 26
HERE come the wagons, rolling through York streets on two June weekends, as the Guilds of York maintain their four-yearly cycle of York Mystery Plays set in motion in 1998.
As in 2018, Tom Straszewski is the artistic director for a community production involving nearly 600 people creating hours of drama, performed for free, on eight wagons at four locations, including St Sampson’s Square, St Helen’s Square and King’s Manor.
“The plays will cover the creation of the world, floods, last meals together and resurrections,” says Strasz. “We’re still seeking directors, performance groups and actors, who should email director@yorkmysteryplays.co.uk to apply.”
RICK Witter and Paul Banks are “going where no Shed has gone before” to play Easter weekend gigs in Barnsley and Scarborough.
Mr H Presents promoter Tim Hornsby has booked the Shed Seven singer and lead guitarist for Birdwell Venue, Barnsley, on April 16 at 7pm and Scarborough Spa Theatre for April 17 at 7.30pm. “Special nights of classic Shed Seven material and a few surprises” are promised.
“Fresh from yet another Shedcember of sold-out shows, and long after the NME darlings have faded away, the mighty Shed Seven are still packing huge venues, and why ever not,” says Mr H. “Since when did b****y great big tunes, consummate musicianship and fabulous shows ever go out of fashion?
“And so we welcome the thinnest man in pop with the biggest voice and the warmest personality, Mr Rick Witter; the witty and urbane frontman of a band that, lest we forget, once rivalled Oasis for Top 20 hits.
“Joined here for the first time in Barnsley and Scarborough by partner-in-crime, the brilliant guitarist and eloquent songwriter Paul Banks, an electrifying showman in his own right and a player with an instantly recognisable style and sound.”
Pre-sales open on Wednesday at https://bit.ly/3GVsTGWand https://bit.ly/RickWitterPaulBanksAcoustic; general tickets go on sale on Friday. “You already know these whites-of-their-eyes shows are going to sell out, so don’t get bothered with the regular unholy last-minute scramble for tickets and purchase early for a holler-along to some of the best anthems ever,” advises Mr H.
All smiles: Marti Pellow returns to the concert platform tomorrow night
GET your dancing shoes on, it’s time to party with Marti, says that Pellow fellow ahead of the opening night of the first leg of his Greatest Hits Tour at Scarborough Spa Theatre tomorrow (9/11/2021).
Next spring’s second leg will bring the former Wet Wet Wet frontman, soulful solo singer and musical theatre star to Hull New Theatre on April 25 and York Barbican on May 3.
“Throughout lockdown, I was inundated by beautiful messages from fans, asking me to please organise a tour once we come out of these terrible times. Twelve million people tuned in for the Lockdown Sessions I did and each one of you has inspired me to make this tour happen this year,” says the 56-year-old Scotsman.
Expect both Wet Wet Wet and solo material. “I finally wanted to put together a show that would celebrate all the wonderful music throughout my career and that I – and I know all of you – fell in love with again through the sessions.
“All through lockdown, when I could only communicate with my fans through my social-media platforms, you – the fans – would ask me to sing songs from the beginning of my career right up to the present day.
“It was a joy to get such great feedback from everyone and got me thinking about a greatest hits tour, where we could all enjoy those songs again and where I could enjoy singing them.”
Cover versions are promised too: “During the sessions, I also got to cover songs from other songwriters that were either favourites of mine, or had been suggested by you all,” says Marti. “I think they resonated with everyone so much that I’m looking forward to including some of them in the shows.”
Selections from Marti’s March 2021 album, Stargazer, will feature as well. “I finally got to write the songs that let me pay homage to all my heroes. I can’t wait to sing those songs live for the first time,” he says.
Tomorrow, the wait will be over. “It’s all about connection, all the things we love about live music that were taken away as we navigated the last year and a half in the strangest time that has ever happened to my industry, when we’ve lost friends from the industry that make performers look good: the sound engineers; the tech crews, the riggers,” says Marti.
“It’s all about connection,” says Marti Pellow as he whet, whet, whets his appetite for launching his Greatest Hits Tour tomorrow in Scarborough
“I could do certain things to keep myself busy, but though you can prepare for a rainy day, you can’t prepare for a rainy year and a half, and our industry was the first to go into storage and the last to come out.”
Marti’s Lockdown Sessions kept that all-important connection with fans with those 12 million hits. “Incredible! Here’s how it happened. I’m going about my business, and I got this wee email from the guys that run my social media, who sent me a wee message from someone asking if I’d sing a song for a relative who had Covid, so I recorded a song into my phone, hoping she would recover, and the response I got to that song was phenomenal,” he recalls.
The series of recordings ensued. “It worked for me because it wasn’t just ‘digital noise’. It really was a sense of connection, and I got just as much from them as everyone else who watched them did,” says Marti.
“James Taylor sent me an email after I did one of his songs and Annie Lennox wrote me a beautiful message too.
“I sang whatever took my fancy or whatever anyone asked for. Me and my musical producer, Grant Mitchell, created the tracks during the daytime, with me recording in the spare bedroom, where there are all these pro-tools going on, and Grant doing all the arrangements, creating the tracks, putting the reverb on.
“You can still see them on Facebook and my YouTube channel, and I also did lots of Q and A stuff, talking about growing up in Clydesdale.”
Now he can look forward to the tour’s opening night, as he enthuses about his fans: “You spoke and I listened. This brand-new Greatest Hits Tour is about finally being able to come together to celebrate love, life, and remember those we may have lost along the way.
“Most of all, it’s about enjoyment and celebrating the here and now. Get your dancing shoes on – it’s time to party with Marti!”
First stop, Scarborough Spa Theatre. “You have to have fish and chips in Scarborough, because we all have so many memories around fish and chips, debating about where you can find the best fish supper,” he says. Any recommendations for Scarborough, let Marti know via his social media.
Marti Pellow: Greatest Hits Tour opens at Scarborough Spa Theatre tomorrow (9/11/2021); box office, scarboroughspa.co.uk. Also: Hull New Theatre, April 25 2022, hulltheatres.co.uk; York Barbican, May 3, yorkbarbican.co.uk.
