2011: The Simple Hour
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The Simple Hour was a conscious
attempt to return to simple stand-up for 2011. The Bobby Spade project had taken over my comedy life and I realised that I had let my club material slip so I decided the new hour would be a stripped back solo stand-up show. No bands. No character. No overarching theme. Just a fun simple hour. The show was housed in the new Stand V and sold out from beginning to end. A highlight was when the legendary Frank Oz came to see the show and laughed heartily at my uncanny muppet impressions. That was one for the memoirs. Ha! Read more, here. |
2010: Welcome To Crazy Town
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Welcome To Crazytown was my most ambitious show to date and one that I am most proud of. Working again with my writer friend Greg Neale, we took Bobby Spade to another level. I performed Welcome to Crazyytown at the Stand One with a jazz backing band that included Jono Eio on piano, Phil Moriarty on clarinet/guitar/harmonica and his brother Mick Moriarty on double bass. The show was an hour long poem/song that Bobby Spade wrote in the summer of 1974 whilst grieving the loss of his third wife Tamara to testicular cancer, which is very rare in women. Described as a bleak solvents-induced Under Milkwood, Welcome to Crazytown was only ever performed once by Bobby Spade at Bertha’s Jazz bar in downtown Baltimore. That autumn, we recorded it live off the floor at the Premises Studio and this recording is available as an extra on the DVD! Thanks to Greg, Glenn, Mick, Phil, Jono and Premises Studio for helping me make it possible. Read more, here. |
2009: A Deadpan Poet Sings Quiet Songs Quietly
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A Deadpan Poet... saw me
heading back to my favourite venue the Stand II in 2009. The smaller
venue allowed me to experiment once again and I took full advantage.
With the help of writing partners Greg Neale and Glenn Christie
I successfully attempted to fuse one-liners, poetry and jazz.
The show was a tribute to little-known American performance beat poet Bobby Spade and illustrated Spade’s Oedipus complex that ended with the tragic demise of his mother and his subsequent suicide. The show included the jazz backing of Mick Moriarty on double bass and Alex Silverman on piano. It rocked the critics and ended up being invited to the Melbourne Comedy Festival and Just for Laughs in both Montreal and my hometown, Toronto. It also transferred to London for a ten day run at the brilliant Soho theatre where Rich and Damian Coldwell replaced Mick and Alex. In Melbourne Greg Neale replaced Rich on piano. Read more, here. |
2008: 8 Nights Only
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Eight Nights Only! was a ‘best bits and greatest hits’ show
performed on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the Fringe
2008. Read more, here. |
2007: Hiro Worship
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Hiro Worship, in 2007, was the last of that trio of story-telling shows which saw me move downstairs to the Stand I. Hiro Worship was the comical yet true story of Hirofumi Makami, a Japanese friend that I met one night at the 100 Club on Oxford Street in London. I performed the show every night with a Rolling Stones backing band that included my dear friends Kirsty Newton, Mick Moriarty and comedian/drummer Milo McCabe. I loved this show and it later transferred to London for a run at the famous Menier Chocolate Factory and saw Paul Byrne, Ivan Sheppard and Matt Blair replace Milo and Mick. Read more, here. |
2006: The Naked Racist
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The Naked Racist was my tribute to pacifism. It was the 2006 follow up to Nearly Gay and it recounted an incredible wonky night in Amsterdam which ended with full frontal nudity and a new perspective on racial harmony. Again at the tiny Stand II, the show included a full metal band, The Shitsticks, that included Ossian Richie, Richard Creek and my soundman Jerry DeSousa and a group of hippie dancers made up of Pappy’s Fun Club, Phil Kay, Janice Phayre and whoever else we could convince to dance naked at the end of the show in the name of peace. This show was absolutely brilliant fun and ended up being chosen for the inaugural If.comeddie Award, which was formerly the Perrier Award albeit with a new sponsor and a silly new name. The award has since been rebranded again as The Edinburgh Comedy Award which kind of makes me the George Lazenby of comedy award winners. This show is also soon to be available on DVD! Read more, here. |
2005: Nearly Gay
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Nearly Gay saw me move to the Stand Comedy Club and present the first of a trio of story-telling shows in 2005. The show was an answer to an accusation of homophobia and a light-hearted look at the gay community from a straight man’s perspective. Starting with an unsettling onstage interaction with gay San Franciscan comic Scott Capurro, I took the audience through a series of humorous anecdotes based around my experiences with my gay friends, gay Amsterdam and being snogged by my then girlfriend’s father (weird!) and ending with a broken penis in a hotel in Melbourne whilst avoiding the advances of hairstylist Stavros. Intrigued? You should be. It was one of my favourite shows to date and is soon to be available on DVD! Read more, here. |
2004: Freedumb
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In 2004, Freedumb saw me collaborate with the comedienne Janice Phayre. Janice and I both thought writing a ‘parody of a political satire show’ was a good idea. It was not. The show featured the two of us playing a hapless couple bent on selling ‘freedom’ but making all the wrong choices. A one point we ‘buy’ a Mexican slave child called Pico off of the internet to save him from a life of slavery only to discover that he is actually a small Mexican man with a penis for a leg who molests Janice when I’m not looking. Janice kills Pico and in the ensuing fight we kill each other and are then re-incarnated as snails! Needless to say, Freedumb took a critical drubbing and we lost our shirts. I saw it as life’s way of keeping me humble. And poor. Read more, here. |
2002: Things I Like, I Lick
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Things I Like, I Lick’ was my first complete storytelling show. It was the story of a run of bad luck I had at Melbourne Comedy Festival when I received an extremely serious groin injury that ended my entire trip early and sent me packing back to London broken, broke and broken-hearted. The show received a very surprising Perrier Award nomination. Also involved in the show were Australian musician Mick Moriarty and Canadian performance artist Shannon Cochrane who devised a different ‘surprise’ ending for the show each and every night. In 2003, I performed in Twelve angry men and didn’t produce a solo show. I did, however, perform for two nights only at the Pleasance One! Read more, here. |
2001: Phil Nichol Is Stuck
In 2001 I returned to the Pleasance with Phil Nichol is Stuck, an hour of ‘improvised comedy’ that entailed me getting the audience onstage to perform on a large selection of instruments that I had assembled.
Most of the show was improvised except for a running gag about Bear Awareness in the Canadian wilderness.
Each show ended with me being attack by a celebrity comedian in a grizzly bear costume!
This show won a Spirit of the Fringe Award. Read more, here.
1999: Phil Nichol (Is A Puppet)
The following year, 1999, was difficult one.
Buoyed by the overwhelming success of the previous year and hoping to exploit the Time Out Comedy Award 1998 the producers decided to move my show to The Pleasance upstairs at a 9pm timeslot.
This show was the most complex and intricate monologue show that I had yet written.
Provisionally entitled Phil Nichol is a Puppet, the show involved me coming out of the closet as a puppet and then as a puppet, I set about doing a ‘human’ show (as opposed to a human doing a puppet show) The Puppet and the ‘human’ monologues all concentrated on different areas of the human condition.
Needless to say the timeslot meant that the show was often delivered to a drunken Edinburgh audience looking for stand-up comedy not some quasi-artistic attempt to unfold the mysteries of the universe. Fail.
I took the year 2000 off. Read more, here.
1998: Phil Nichol
The eponymous third show was supposed to have been called Phil Nichol is Brigitta Von Trapp but a move to the Pleasance with the Off the Kerb agency meant that I dispensed with fancy titles and wore a suit in the publicity material.
The show, however, continued stylistically with short sharp character monologues and songs although this time they were held together with a running story from Brigitta Von Trapp throughout.
The very loose theme of this show was depression and delusion with all the characters sharing the wish to be someone else.
Also involved in the show was musician Mick Moriarty. Read more, here.
1997: Phil Nichol Is A Spy
was my second Edinburgh Fringe show a year later, 1997, again in the Gilded Balloon’s Wee Room.
It continued stylistically with short fast-paced monologues and songs, however, in this show I thread a long personal story throughout the monologues.
It was the story of an emotional breakdown that I had suffered in Cork, Ireland caused by the failure of my marriage and the sudden end of Corky and the Juice Pigs.
All the characters in this show were related by the fact that they had seen something that they should not have seen.
One of them was a spy. Read more, here.
1996: Phil Nichol Is Schizo
was my first solo Edinburgh Fringe show that I performed daily in the
Wee Room at the Gilded Balloon in 1996. It was a mad mixture of short fast-paced monologues and songs with no costume changes and only brief blackouts between each character.
All the thirty-some characters in this show were related by their questionable mental state.
Read more, here.
