My Edinburgh Sean Hughes, comedian

I've been coming up to Edinburgh for almost 25 years – with a seven-year gap in the middle. The Fringe has totally changed in that time. You used to turn up on the day and do your show. Now you're doing interviews about your show in March. It's a crazy place. I arrived less than a week ago and feel like I've been here a year. Yesterday, I...- 10/08/2010, Edinburgh

You've got to be having a laugh: Jimmy Connolly's guide to the Edinburgh Fringe

Edinburgh is upon us. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. An irresistible, terrible, fabulous pilgrimage. A marathon, and a sprint. Yin and yang. Bert and Ernie. This year's will be my 41st Edinburgh Festival, or "the auld Fringe", as we veterans call it. When I started coming to Edinburgh, I'm not sure whether there even was a festival. Bu...- 01/08/2010, Features

My Life In Travel: Sean Hughes, comedian

We were quite poor so we'd go to see my granny; there were no brochures involved. My first proper holiday was when I was 14 and I was sent to the Isle of Man to babysit for a week. My abiding memory was of going on the go-karts. I pretended I had been on one before but I didn't even know where the brakes were. I got flagged down but I didn't ...- 31/07/2010, News & Advice

Stuart Free: The neon laureate of north London

When Stuart Free's mother Jane went into labour at St Andrew's Hospital in Billericay, midwives summoned his father David, who jumped on his Lambretta and set off for the maternity ward – at speed, and in a state of understandable distraction. "By the time I was born," the painter says, "my dad was in a coma. On his way to the hospi...- 17/01/2010, Features

Properties seized from alleged IRA killer Sean Hughes

A man accused in the House of Commons of being one of the IRA's most ruthless killers has had his properties seized for suspected money laundering. The High Court in Belfast granted an order freezing assets held by Sean Gerard Hughes and his wife, Annette, from south Armagh. The Serious and Organised Crime Agency alleged his properties were the ...- 10/11/2009, Crime

Win comedy tickets in London and Birmingham

Magners Pear Cider and The Independent have teamed up for a night of laughs with some of the best UK-based breakthrough comedians at The Roundhouse, London on the 11th November and The Glee Club, Birmingham on the 18th November. We’ve got five pairs of tickets to giveaway for this invite-only gig at both venues. Featuring Sean Hughes, Ca...- 03/11/2009, News

Sean Hughes: What I Meant To Say Was..., Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh

It is nearly 20 years since Sean Hughes won the Perrier Award in Edinburgh. At the time he was the award's youngest winner, aged 24. Now 43, the Irishman complains that he feels like the oldest living comedian. "The younger people in the audience will think this is a documentary," he warns, adding later, "I am the only comedian who could get Alzheimer's d Wo...- 26/08/2009, Reviews

Fringe benefits: How winning the top comedy prize at Edinburgh can transform a performer's life

You couldn't have scripted better inaugural winners than the Cambridge Footlights, who numbered Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery and Emma Thompson, for whom it's not so much a case of "where are they now?" as "where haven't they been?" Fellow members included Paul Shearer, who is best known for his work on The Fast ...- 11/08/2009, Features

Carnival of culture: Our guide to the pick of the Edinburgh Festival

Ask Jonathan Mills why he thinks it is that so many people make the annual pilgrimage to the Scottish capital each summer to feast on the extravaganza of performance, art and culture that has given the city the world's biggest and most famous festival and he provides an answer of quite breathtaking lucidity. "They come for the wonderful and wild juxtapos Th...- 07/08/2009, Features

Bestival: This year's festivals boast an array of non-musical delights

So you're either too middle-aged or too middle class to mainline bottles of lager while hoisting your friends on to your shoulders to the sound of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Is there any point in going to a music festival at all, then? Well, yes. This year is a better time than any to discover the off-piste, non-musical delights of the festival cir...- 23/07/2009, Features

Stonehenge, Longleat and all that jazz

What's on There's plenty to keep the feet tapping this summer in Wiltshire. The Marlborough Jazz Festival (marlboroughjazz .co.uk) leads the way, from 10 to 12 July, featuring old favourites and up-and-coming names including YolanDa Brown and her Trio and The Slaughterhouse Quartet, appearing in venues across the market town. Next up, the Lar...- 07/06/2009, UK

Edinburgh Fringe: The rise of BritCom

The Edinburgh Fringe is the Woodstock of comedy – and it offers the greatest prize there is for an art form that has less immediacy than the hit-driven world of music, but has a crowd every bit as eclectic and innovative as musical movements such as Britpop. Call it Britcom, if you will. Every movement has a talisman, its Holy Grail. For Fri...- 01/08/2008, Features

The new wave of comics at Edinburgh

It's not just music that had a Manchester scene; in the 1990s, the city built up arguably the best comedy circuit outside London, one that nurtured Dave Gorman, Chris Addison and Lucy Porter. Meanwhile, the boys and girls who had already made good, like Steve Coogan and Caroline Aherne, were still to be seen. Porter worked on The Mrs Merton S...- 01/08/2008, Features

The joy of 6: Who says digital radio is dead?

This is The Steve Show," says Stephen Merchant as Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting" draws to its breathy conclusion. "I'm with my little gang of cronies here – we've got Harry, Dan, super-posh Rufus and Sammy from the North." He considers this. "We have to reduce everyone to one simple identifiable Viz-style characteristic. The concept of a personality is Mo...- 24/02/2008, Features

How We Met: Sean Hughes & Mark Eitzel

grew up in Dublin. In 1987 he was the youngest ever winner of the Perrier Comedy Award. He lives in north London The first time I went to see Mark he was performing with American Music Club at the Grand in Clapham. It was February 1992 and they were being supported by The Band of Holy Joy. I'd liked what I'd heard of both acts so I went wit...- 03/02/2008, Profiles