Of manic Americans, extra Fringe shows, smooth(ish) links and Malcolm Hardee’s thievery

Well, things are starting to move slightly faster. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing, but it’s certainly a Fringe thing.

Workaholic American comedian Lewis Schaffer has added 10 extra shows to the 25 he was already performing. As well as his hour-long Free Until Famous shows at 7.30pm every evening 5th-29th August… he will now be performing an additional ten 45-minute shows at 5.30pm every day 5th-14th August. With only an hour-and-a-quarter break between the two shows, it’ll be interesting to see how manic he will become. Even if he gets Steven Spielberg in the first row on the first night, he will convince himself it’s a disaster.

As far as extra shows are concerned, though, Lewis is beaten by the 21 extra screenings added for The Tunnel documentary short. Director Jody VandenBurg and producers Naomi de Pear & Domenico Favata had previously announced a modest three screenings of the 32-minute documentary. But it will now be screened additionally at The Newsroom 3.20pm daily, 8th-28th August. It features comedians Harry Enfield, Simon Munnery etc in the untold story of London’s most notorious comedy club. The Tunnel is a ‘teaser’ for a larger Malcolm Hardee documentary currently in production. The Laughing Horse Free Festival screening will include a trailer for and extracts from that longer Malcolm Hardee documentary. There is a trailer for The Tunnel here.

Which leads smoothly on to my annual Malcolm Hardee Awards which, this year, will be presented on Friday 27th August during Nik Coppin‘s nightly Shaggers show as part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival. The Daily Dust obviously reads this blog, as it reports here on my nomination of Stewart Lee for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award. While Stewart Lee writes about the origin of one of Malcolm’s standard lines here.