In episode 16 of ‘A History of Comedy in Several Objects’ we have an exclusive interview with Bruce Dessau, the comedy critic from the Evening Standard and his own Beyond The Joke website. Together we went back to 1981 to examine a review of The Comic Strip written by Charles Spencer, and discuss the role of the comedy critic, how it has changed in the last 36 years and how comedy relates to both theatre and live music.

Bruce Dessau’s website ‘Beyond The Joke’

You can access this episode of ‘A History of Comedy in Several Objects’ via iTunes and acast. Some images of objects from the podcast are available on our flickr site, so do check them out (in the ‘History of Comedy in Several Objects‘ album)!

And don’t forget to get involved! You can contact us via standup@kent.ac.uk or tweet us at @histcompod. You can also search the online catalogue for more information about the holdings of  the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive at http://archive.kent.ac.uk.

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