SMH Stay In Touch:

• Wil Anderson’s new ABC-TV show The Gruen Transfer is generating buzz:
  

  The ABC’s resident rabblerousers have more tricks up their sleeve after spoof commercials prompted more than 250 complaints in the past week - and became YouTube hits.

• Lawrence Leung has been named the best local comedian at the Cracker Comedy Festival awards.
  

  Other winners were Ross Noble, who won the Time Out readers’ choice award, Mark Watson, who won the best of the fest gong, and Amelia Jane Hunter and Hannah Gadsby, who won the director’s special award for Meat the Musical. Winners took home Golden Chickens from the awards ceremony at the Enmore Theatre.

The Age’s Kate Duthie reviews the new SBS comedy show featuring Muslim performers, Salam Cafe. The show airs on Wednesdays at 10pm, and you can catch the first episode online via the SBS Salam Cafe page.

From The Australian, Michael Body discusses films featuring in the upcoming Sydney and Melbourne film festivals. The relevant comedy stuff:
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A good way of keeping up with who’s around Sydney doing gigs - they usually turn up on Richard Glover’s Friday afternoon show Thank God It’s Friday on ABC 702 Local Radio, and for those who can get to Ultimo by 5pm to join the studio audience (see contact details and upcoming artists below) it’s a great end to the working week.

These shows have been podcast by the ABC for a while [subscribe to podcast], but now the good folks of NSW who don’t podcast can hear the show as well:

TGIF Weekly show - Goes to Air Statewide!
If you can’t make it to see Richard Glover’s TGIF as a live audience, we’re excited to announce Thank God Its Friday will air statewide! Live music, comedians, news and weather. Every Friday from 5pm - 6pm, tune in to your local [ABC] radio station to hear live radio at its very best.

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Booking details can be found at the performers’/venues’ websites linked below:

The Chaser’s Age of Terror Variety Hour on tour until July 2nd. Remaining shows will be in
SYDNEY • ADELAIDE • CANBERRA • GEELONG • MELBOURNE • BRISBANE • NEWCASTLE

Heath Franklin’s Chopper in Make Deadsh*ts History - on tour until June 8th. Remaining shows will be in
BRISBANE • GOLD COAST • BUNDABERG • DARWIN • MACKAY • CAIRNS • TOWNSVILLE • HOBART

The 2008 Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow is gadding about all over the country until the last weeks of June, and then hitting Singapore in July.

Mark Watson: Can I Briefly Talk to You About the Point of Life? (UK) Finishes this Saturday at the Factory Theatre in Enmore, Sydney.

Emma Powell and Bev Killick in Busting Out are touring NSW until mid-June, then BRISBANE from June 11.
SYDNEY • ORANGE • PARRAMATTA • SUTHERLAND • PENRITH • WOLLONGONG • GOSFORD • CANBERRA

Let me know of more tours in comments and I’ll add them above.

It’s that time of year and I’m starting the site nearly at the end of it, with Sydney’s Cracker Comedy Festival ending on May 11. Oh well.

Check out the acts at the Cracker site by clicking on the image below:

Plenty of old favourites and some new faces too fronting up to the mic. Read the rest of this entry »