Ed Night picks his Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites

Edinburgh Fringe comedian Ed Night picks his Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites...

The Death Hilarious

I met these guys in my debut year at the Edinburgh Fringe on a stinky awful late night showcase where they tore the roof off. 

Couldn’t believe my luck. Moments like that when you see something new and different and crazy that really captures your imagination and sort of changes something in your mind are why you get into comedy. The best of what live comedy can be.

They’ve remained one of my very favourite acts. Unreal!

Laurel and Hardy: Saps at Sea

Way Out West was the first comedy I ever saw. Three years old, sat on grandad’s knee he put a tape in the player and it changed my life. One of them has a moustache and one of them doesn’t. Genius! 

Those boys were something else. It’s a testament to their quality that so much of this stuff from 100 years ago has held up so well. Obviously not all of it, some of it’s rubbish. 

The opening sequence of Saps at Sea is packed with some all-time favourite gags of mine.

On The Hour

Chris Morris is probably the first person in comedy I got properly obsessed with as a teenager. 

I’m not alone in this. The Day Today is probably what I go back to the most but I’ve put On the Hour because I actually listened to it in the car as part of a playlist recently, and this selection could easily be Brass Eye, Blue Jam, Jam. 

What’s great is that not all of it hits, in fact a lot of it doesn’t, but the attempts and experiments are almost always invigorating. 

There’s probably not one lone performer or writer who’s changed the language of comedy in my mind as much as Chris Morris, but the magic of all the above is in the ensemble. Doon Mackichan, Rebecca Front, Kevin Eldon, Patrick Marber, Amelia Bullmore, Mark Heap and the rest is an almost unbelievably stacked deck and they’re all being put to use trying this really different stuff.

Porridge

Porridge has a special place in my heart ever since I watched all three series in bed on prescription opioids after falling down the same set of stairs four times at a party. Don’t remember much but I like how the voiceover at the start says ‘Norman Stanley Fletcher’ and I think Ronnie Barker, like Tony Hancock or Peter Butterworth or Oliver Hardy, is one of the great pliable-faced comic actors. 

I like it when comedies are a bit bizarre. I like being trapped in a prison with a strange looking man doing funny faces like Ronnie Barker. That’s why I like Hancock’s Half Hour better on TV than radio. You need to see Sid James and Tony Hancock’s faces. In a respectful way it’s like if you put melting wax figures in a Le Carre film. 

That’s also why I like Steptoe And Son. Harry H Corbett and Wilford Brambell have hall-of-fame faces and voices. Some Mothers Do Ave ‘Em is the same. And On The Buses. 

As a child I basically just used to sit in front of UK Gold and marvel at whatever came on. They’re not my all-time favourites but if I see one’s on I’ll have a small smile to myself and switch over to it and watch it til the end, like stopping to have a chat with an old acquaintance you’ve bumped into in the street.

The Mrs Merton Show

Everyone knows the Bernard Manning one but I think my favourite is probably when Steve Coogan is the couch guest. That’s a great bit in a great episode. I think it might even be the last one. 

Caroline Aherne was an extremely underrated comic. I think it’s cool that in the height of like new young cool alternative comedy and all these different young transgressive acts breaking away and doing these different things, Aherne was doing a chat show with a studio audience full of old people, but in a loving way. 

What with Mrs Merton and especially the Royle Family, I don’t think any comic in this country ever was or ever will be as good at tapping deep into the national consciousness as Aherne was.

[The Coogan footage is not available on YouTube, so here’s Mrs Merton with Michael Winner]

• Ed Night's Edinburgh Fringe show The Plunge is on at Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive) at 7.35pm nightly

Published: 5 Aug 2024