Ladygarden. (Photography by Nowherefast)

This is a perfect example of authentic variety that is thriving in the fringe scene of London today. The Wilmington Arms in Farringdon plays host to this brilliant evening  of comedy in a positive and encouraging environment. This line up is from Tuesday 3rd November.

Ladygarden are a comedy troupe consisting of six girls who met at University in Manchester. Following a successful show in Edinburgh last year they have taken residency in this pub and are frequently gigging across the UK.

Ladygarden's "America's Next Top Monarch" sketch. (Photography by Nowherefast)

Their humour consists of short snappy character sketches with not a period joke in sight.

Particular highlight during this evening was “America’s Next Top Monarch” where a Tyra Banks-esque character told the wannabe wives of Henry VIII their fate.

The evening began with Daniel Rigby, an extremely dry comedian who champions “the more awkward the better” comedy style.

Daniel Rigby reading his "Take a Break" story. (Photography by Nowherefast)

His parody of “Take a Break” magazine with a story about his friend chopping his feet off during a game of scrabble was particularly entertaining.

The Four Gallants, the weakest of the night’s entertainment, attempted to improvise on a subject chosen by the audience: in this case turnips. However, the sketch by two men (not four) had nothing to do with vegetables and instead depicted a strict and pre-rehearsed story surrounding poets Byron and Shelley. When the improvisation ran dry they simply kept saying, “I don’t know what to say,” in supposed shock at the other’s behaviour when it was very obvious that neither were witty or quick enough to regain control of this rubbish sketch.

Idiots of Ants with an unsuspecting audience member. (Photography by Nowherefast)

Idiots of Ants are a male Ladygarden but their comedy style warrants more of a belly laugh than an intelligent chuckle.

During one sketch they play women who have had sex changes during a hen party. Their sexist and chauvinistic jokes were actually hilarious and encouraged essential audience participation, whilst they were clever to include some male bashing jokes as well so as not to alienate the females in the audience. Multi-talented performers, their finale saw all bar one playing guitar to an unsuspecting woman on the front row – the other played a bongo in between his legs.

Anna and Katy. (Photography by Nowherefast)

Following this was a hilarious duo called Anna and Katy. The physical appearance of these two women with arms that spanned over two metres wide combined with their accents had the audience in hysterics.

The  girls play two South Africans who tell the audience they can fly due to their huge arms. To laugh that long and hard is a rare occasion.

The wonderful Frisky and Mannish. (Photography by Nowherefast)

Rounding up the night was the wonderful Frisky and Mannish who wowed Edinburgh audiences this year with their sold out show “School of Pop.”

Their intelligent but audience pleasing take on pop songs are a joy to hear and their combination of witty banter with musical talent makes a cabaret show unlike any other. A recommendation for anyone who needs a safe introduction to cabaret.

This night was high energy and good fun. At only a fiver this is great value guaranteed to please all.

Ladygarden’s next night at The Wilmington is on the 30th November.

Don’t spend more than £15.

We’ve got together with Multitude Media to offer one lucky punter a pair of tickets to see Lady Garden, LOL! Manchester’s Best new act winner last year, & Idiots of Ants at their joint sketch show extravaganza taking place at the Comedy Store in Manchester on Tuesday 20th October. Both the Ladies and the Gents of the live sketch show world have had amazing success in their own right at the Edinburgh Fringe this year so don’t expect to see them perform together too much as i’m sure they will be touring in futute in their own respective groups.

All you need to do to get your hands on these tickets is to drop us an email at manchester@thelolnetwork.com with “LADYGARDEN/IDIOTS GIVEAWAY” in the Subject Heading before Midday on Sunday 18th October. We will pick a winner and announce them on here at 5pm that day. It’s that easy!

Lady Garden
The hot new all-female sketch group, return to the Manchester Comedy Festival with their brand new show. A fast-paced, daring and surreal hour of comedy from six slightly disturbed young women.
“One of the funniest, clever & sexy new sketch groups around” Time Out
“Excellent comic writing and comedy acting” Chortle

Idiots of Ants
Renowned for their off-kilter take on the world around them, Idiots of Ants have taken the comedy world by storm, having amassed millions of hits online with the most viewed BBC3 comedy clip on YouTube.
“Very, very funny” Evening Standard
“Very slick and very funny…marvellous” Time Out

Lady Garden

The hot new all-female sketch group, return to the Manchester Comedy Festival with their brand new show. A fast-paced, daring and surreal hour of comedy from six slightly disturbed young women. Winners of the inaugral LOL! Manchester new act award.

“One of the funniest, clever & sexy new sketch groups around” Time Out

“Excellent comic writing and comedy acting” Chortle

Idiots of Ants

Renowned for their off-kilter take on the world around them, Idiots of Ants have taken the comedy world by storm, having amassed millions of hits online with the most viewed BBC3 comedy clip on YouTube.

‘Very, very funny’ Evening Standard

‘Very slick and very funny…marvellous’ Time Out

Reclaiming Chaplin’s moustache for comedy, Herring muses on iconography, whether racists are closer than Liberals to believing that all people are the same and why an innocent square inch of facial hair has taken the blame for Nazism.

Winner of the LOL! Manchester Best Touring show award

“He’ll be remembered as the best comic of his generation mastering every comedic art form” GQ

Star of the fastest selling debut stand-up dvd of all time, Michael McIntyre’s brilliantly engaging delivery and effortless rapport with the audience have led to him to be hailed, as the best new stand up to emerge in a decade.

“The man is, quite simply, top-to-toe hilarious” ***** Daily Telegraph

Al Pitcher’s Picture Show

All listing for the Manchester Comedy Festival on LOL! Manchester are courtesy of www.manchestercomedyfestival.co.uk
]]> http://allthefestivals.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/review-idiots-of-ants-this-is-war-pleasance/ Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:42:05 +0000 Stephen http://allthefestivals.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/review-idiots-of-ants-this-is-war-pleasance/

Idiots of Ants – This is War
Pleasance
Edinburgh Fringe

Idiots of Ants: This is War, Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe

***** 5 STARS

This show embodied everything that a sketch show should be, at least everything I would like it to be. It was low brow enough to appeal to my juvenile sense of humour but never tasteless, it parodied itself with great magnanimity and it laughed at the audience without picking on them. In fact, they made one audience member the star of the show, tip – Don’t sit front row unless you are keen for attention.

There was no self indulgence or embarrassing shock tactics but most importantly it was genuinely, orders of magnitude style, funny.

Right from the off it was loud, unabashed and insightful, at points I had to strain to hear over the laughter of a couple of slightly tipsy young ladies in the row in front.

Even the traditional framework jokes about the differences between men and women or the embarrassing dad were inventive and originally handled. Combine these with a 1950’s war film version of Tom and Jerry and half time analysis of the show and this is a fantastically well judged mix which just never gives up.

At one point they take the entire audience on a date with the aid of a giant teleprompter and it is the funniest thing I have ever seen on a stage.

This is no less than you would expect for a group who created ‘Wii breakfast’ and ‘Facebook in Real Life’, two of the most viewed comedy clips on Youtube.

If you go to this show in the hot old church building which is the Pleasance over the Road then you will one day tell it as an anecdote. The only questions you will have are: how the hell did they think that stuff up and why aren’t they the biggest show on TV?

Reviewed by: Magnus Huntly-Grant

Facebook, site de réseautage social le plus populaire de la planète avec son quart de milliard d’utilisateurs, est aussi le sujet préféré des comiques en ce moment.

Parmi eux, on peut citer le jeune anglais Julian Smith avec son sketch “25 Things I hate about Facebook” qui est un délicieux clin d’oeil à tous les Facebookers.
Le site officiel de Julian Smith

mais aussi “Le guide des bonnes manières sur facebook” du groupe YourTango

Sans oublier Les Idiots of Ants, avec un sketch sur ce que serait Facebook dans la “vraie” vie

Le site officiel des Idiots of Ants

Et du côté des français, je vous laisse avec Jérôme Commandeur (qui est quand même un peu moins drôle que les précédents)

Frukost kanske aldrig har upplevts bättre än såhär…

Filmen Wii Breakfast är gjord av humorgruppen Idiots of Ants och är en grymt skön parodisering av vår tids största causual-game succéer, Nintendos Wii-konsol. En spelplattform som verkligen har kommit ordentligt i vardagsrummen och spelats av alltifrån lillasyster till farfar.

Tack till Hallberg för tipset.

Andra bloggar om humor, spel, wii, nintendo wii

Those folks on the other side of the pond are just so witty, are they not?  As someone who does not own a Wii and does not find it as amazing or entertaining as everyone else, I found this to be particularly funny.  My typical response when asked to play Wii?  ’We would NOT like to play!’ Followed by me laughing at my own joke.  Get it?  Like the commercial?  I am hilarious!  While goofy, the video (brought to us by Idiots of Ants) does touch on something bizarre about our culture– our need for all those pointless games and silly controllers.  I mean, if anything, don’t you just love the accents?

So don’t get too disappointed that the game is fake.  I would like to see it exist for one scenario alone: if Mallory were to play, she’d make one hell of a breakfast sandwich.  

[Posted by Kathleen]

Watch this. This is soo funny. It is made by a british comedy group. A friend of mine from facebook posted it on her profile. I just had to share this to the few people who do check this page out =)

What would happen if Facebook interactions happened in real life..?

From comedy sketch group Idiots Of Ants, as featured on BBC3 TV show The Wall.

Grappige videoclip door Idiots Of Ants.

Jack has an office!  Yep! We are now firmly located on Curtain Road. If anyone wants to pop in for tea and cakes or Absinthe or even to meet our office Fox Mr Bling (who is already earning himself quite a fan base) let us know. 

As Jack is most definitely gearing up for the festive season (we have already eaten wayyy too many mince pies) we bring you perfect Christmas underwear,  ways to fritter away your money, new galleries that are thankfully free and plenty of Christmas Cheer. 
Including Caspa and Rusko, Stella Dore, Mutate Britain, Christmas Fashion Shoot, Kounter Culture, George Lamb, Jodie Harsh,Idiots of Ants and a lot more

read it for free in full here 

read it for free in full here

Mamamia writes a brilliant blog that’s top of my daily routine blog checks. Today the mother hen shared this hilarious video a short spoof re: the popular phenomene Facebook.  Check it out!!! If you’re on Facebook I guarantee you’ll laugh.

So this week is the Shoreditch Shuffle!

Which I’ve been helping out on the blog for, lots of fab music, art, comedy, film, burlesque and more in the ‘Shoreditch triangle’ on the 13th and 14th.

I’m excited to see that the excellent Idiots of Ants are now on the bill as I loved them at the Edinburgh Festival. And my friends The Getaways and The Fighting Cocks will be performing too.

Check out all the acts here and come and play!

Full artists at Cordy House brought to you by The Newcross gallery now are - 

KEV MUNDAY / XENZ / REMI/ROUGH / BUSK /  DAN KITCHENER / BLAM / SYSTEM / PRE FAB
Hobbit  / Stig of the Dump, Dr Syntax & DJ Manipulate (Beer & Rap) / The Last Skeptik / Smokey (Mexican DMC Champion) / DJ cH!co (Gettin Hectic) / DJ Tigerstyle

Also comedy group  Idiots of Ants join the line up at Hoxton Pony - 

The Ants TV work was pilotted as part of BBC3’s The Wall and they have recently completed filming on their own show for E4 to be broadcast in August 2008.

They have also just shot a short film for Friends of The Earth with Tomboy Films and have written material for shows such as Channel Four’s School of Comedy.

Their most recent success has been their Facebook sketch, ‘Facebloke in real life’, which has become an ‘internet phenomenon’ (BBC Online) with over a million YouTube views and counting. 

Edinburgh feels ages ago already – boo – these are my other best bits:

Soweto Gospel Choir ♥♥♥♥♥
Back in The Assembly Rooms, loved it, simply a class act. Amazing Grace made me cry – job done. 

So I hope it’s not offensive or horribly hypocritical to say that me and my Dad laughed afterwards about how nice religious songs are when you don’t understand the words! It just sprang to mind because of Tim Minchin’s assertion the night before, as he got his audience singing “I love Jesus/ I hate faggots”, that most of us in secular society don’t get to sing with one another anymore as we would have done at church. We agreed with Tim that a lot of church songs have ‘weird’ lyrics, so Soweto was spot on with a share of the songs in Zulu and Sotho so us heathens can just get goosebumps and not feel all confused!

(Also spotted this pre-Edinburgh review of Tim that I liked from Lisa - especially the ‘I remember people from the internet’ bit – quite right too!)

Idiots of Ants (Jaz’s Critics Choice) ♥♥♥♥♥
This was the first time I’d seen a live sketch show and it was my favourite act all weekend. While some of the other stand up I saw was amazing, maybe 2-5 minute sketches suit my internet trained, Gen Y attention span! They were brilliant with slick clips including references to Where’s Wally, ‘terrorist or really pissed?’ and a lovely song for an orgy with audience member Paula, complete with Facebook memorial picture. Having had a look around, Brian Logan at The Guardian feels they’re nothing special (maybe he’ll be next year’s Phil Daoust song?) but I thought they were great – especially considering they were in the unbelievably tiny, sauna-rific Pleasance Courtyard venue. I also realised they were the boys from the witty Facebook in reality sketch that went viral earlier this year. You can see their Edinburgh 2008 trailer below which was played to the audience before the boys burst through the door of the show onto the stage for a non-stop set that had the whole, hot, audience laughing pretty much constantly.

Other bits and pieces
The always excellent Ed Byrne (♥♥♥♥) had a Pulp Different Class branded show which I definitely approve of, and got good mileage out of his recent wedding proposal and planning process which had the massive Assembly Hall in stitches. Also great was John Hegley (♥♥♥) the comic poet, he was very funny, and enjoyed making his audience squirm a little. Less strong were a random Austin-Powers-esque farce called Zimbane (♥♥) and Out of the Blue (♥♥)- an all male accapella choir from the Oxford Unis – bless them, but I found them really cringeworthy, a bit like watching loads of Tory MPs sing, talented as they were.

Anyway, I love Edinburgh Festival, can’t wait to go again – I look forward to hearing what Pete sees!

Facebook. J’avais commencé à en parler ici, mais je ne pensais pas revenir sur le sujet aussi rapidement… C’est alors que ce matin, faisant mon tour du web quotidien, je tombe sur un article intitulé Facebook dans la vraie vie, c’est l’horreur qui nous parle d’une parodie facebookienne par la bande de britanniques Idiots of Ants. Ces derniers ont eu la bonne idée de transfigurer le principe de base de Facebook dans la vraie vie. La vidéo est assez marrante et le buzz est énorme. Je vous laisse juger par vous-même:

Quand on y pense il n’y a rien d’insensé là dedans. Facebook révèle la part de voyeurisme qui sommeille en chacun de nous. Comme tout réseau social sur le net, il a ses dérives et repousse sans cesse ses limites, car finalement rien n’empêche personne de faire et dire ce qu’il a envie. C’est un peu comme à la grande époque des forums et chats: une innovation majeure en matière de communication, sauf que sans modération, cela dérive illico sur de la violence, du sexe et du non respect d’autrui. Puis vint l’explosion de l’internet participatif dit “web 2.0″ : les blogs, les réseaux sociaux… Internet est un échappatoire, on communique dans tous les sens, et pas forcément bien. Je me souviens avoir été critiquée lors de ma soutenance de mon mémoire sur “les blogs comme nouveau média”: un de mes profs était révolté par la puissance d’internet et de ses dérives. Pour lui, internet incarnait la dégénérescence de la société et de la pensée individuelle. Il est vrai que les frontières entre le vrai et le faux sont difficiles à trouver – typiquement pour certaines infos qui circulent sur les blogs -, mais finalement, on en revient toujours au principe de rumeur et de bruit. Notre société a toujours été comme ça, car il est foncièrement impossible de tout contrôler : la responsabilité est alors individuelle, chacun d’entre nous doit savoir faire la part des choses – et tant pis pour les plus crédules. Et c’est peut être la forme principale d’autorégulation d’internet…

My cousin sent me this on Myspace a few days ago of the golden years known as the 90s. This had to be taken Christmas of 92′ or something. I can/cannot believe I rocked a mullet..at least I can say I did. Business in the front, party in the back. You know how I do.

I also found this hilarous Youtube video by the Brit comedians Idiots of Ants. I’m sure everyone can relate:

Net gezien op de blog van Christophe Bouten: Facebook in real live door The Idiots of Ants comedy sketch group.

My kind of humor.

What passes for normal on Facebook might never happen in real life. Would you literally write on a friend’s wall? Do you really want to be friends with someone you didn’t like when you were in class together? Do you poke people with your index finger often? Idiots of Ants (idiot savants?) created this great little video clip. Gotta love the British humour.

Thanks go to Donna Pappacosta’s Twitter feed for pointing this clip out.