“It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” This was how Michael Biehn described the Terminator back in 1984 (poor Terminator – I notice he didn’t give it the opportunity to give its side of the story), but it’s also a […]

Once again, the Edinburgh Fringe bears down upon us with crushing inevitability. Frantically, comedians order badges in bulk with things like “Funny Joke” or “Relatable Branding” printed on them. Websites with names like Bloomin’ ‘Eck Daily Digest or Fringewhistle publish a new comedian Q&A every five minutes, their writers and editors shackled to an infernal […]

Howdy! Yowza! It’s been a while. For that, I can only apologise. Did you know there are CEOs now who hadn’t even been born when I sent my last newsletter? (Admittedly their companies are doing very badly as their CEOs are month-old babies). I’ve missed you all, but I have simply been too busy. Every […]

“What’s that?” I said, “You’d like me to direct your show this year?” (this conversation is happening at the end of last year, while I’m in the middle of making my first full new show since 2022). “Sure, I can do that, I’m a huge fan of your work. Hold on, got another call coming […]

A couple of warnings up top in this post – firstly, I have a feeling this will be a bit of a ramble through a lot of quite messy, disconnected ideas and I’m not all that confident of what kind of sense I’ll be able to make out of them. Apologies in advance if this […]

A while ago I did a deep dive into the history of my own poster designs for all my old shows, from the good to the deeply embarrassing (I actually left out the poster for my first ever work-in-progress show, because it was TOO embarrassing, but maybe that’ll appear in a future newsletter one day). I mentioned […]

I’ve been thinking about when comedy comperes say “And now ladies and gentlemen, please go wild and crazy and welcome to the stage…” when they introduce an act. It really makes me laugh. The sentence “Please go wild and crazy” is like the linguistic equivalent of an optical illusion, and whenever I hear it as […]

I wrote a while ago about my gradual shift towards doing more live comedy directing, but I’ve been holding off from announcing the full list of my directing clients for 2025 because I wanted to wait until they were all on sale on the EdFringe website. Well as of this week they are, so I’m […]

This weekend is one of the loveliest weekends of the comedy year – MachFest is back! I remember back when I started out in comedy and didn’t know how to get booked for MachFest. I hated it every time people wanged on about how good Mach was. It sounded like an exclusive club for cool people, […]

As I wrote about last week, this year I’m returning to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in 3 years. 3 years can be a long time in showbiz, and I’m no fool. Audiences forget. I’m haunted by a recurring dream in which I’m running up and down the Royal Mile covered in photos […]

Well, it was inevitable. Readers who’ve been subscribed to this newsletter from the very beginning will probably be able to predict my Fringe-centric entries with a certain regularity by now, like old folks rocking on the front porch sensing an oncoming storm through their knees. “Joz is going to write about the Fringe again, and […]

I’ve spent the last few weeks, on and off, working with various incredible brains (art director Miranda Holms, photographer Oliver Holms, designer Will Andrews, producer Queenie Miller) developing and constructing the poster design for my new show (it’s called You Wait. Time Passes. and it’s coming to a wonderful comedy festival near you at some point in the […]

I’ve sat paralysed at my laptop for some time now, trying to work out what this week’s newsletter will be about. Truth is, I’ve been a little thrown off balance by the fact that this recent entry, about people who say “You couldn’t make such-and-such any more,” has become the most-read of these things I’ve ever […]

Last month I was chatting to a frequent collaborator and friend about a new idea we’ve just pitched into the Gods of Radio (pray for us! Cross your fingers! Send us your best vibes! It’s a documentary about pirates, kind of!). We were catching up on what we’d both been up to and I was […]

You may have heard that Mitchell & Webb are back with a new sketch show. I’m quite excited about this – the original Mitchell & Webb series had some absolute classics, and the team involved in the new series includes legends Stevie Martin, Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Lara Ricote, so it’s nice to see a big-name commission […]