Late ‘n’ Live (sometimes typed as Late And Live) is a late-night comedy show (1am to 5am) at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, held at the Gilded Balloon.
This nightly event consists of 3 comedians (or comedy acts), a compere and a comedy band and the atmosphere is described as a bear-pit.
In 2012 BBC Scotland showed a 4-part TV series called Late ‘n’ Live Guide to Comedy and the episode names / broadcast dates were:
- The Audience – January 23rd 2012
- Virgins – January 30th 2012
- Antics – February 6th 2012
- Scottishness – February 13th 2012
In this March 2011 Chortle article the series is described as a 6 x 30-minute documentary, which clearly only ended up as being 4. Although all of the articles / TV listings says Series 1 there was not actually a Series 2.
Edinburgh’s Gilded Balloon venue was originally located at Cowgate and moved to Teviot Row House in 2002, shortly before the old Cowgate venue burnt to the ground.
In the article linked above, Chortle quotes Jimmy as saying:
His ‘happiest memory of the Gilded Balloon was sitting with Karen Koren backstage at the old Late ‘n’ Live show in Cowgate discussing how best we would burn the place down for the insurance money.’
Annoyingly that footage never made it into the series (assuming it was filmed) and, in the end, Jimmy’s only contribution was of some archive footage in episode 3. The blurb for Ep3 is:
The stars of Late’n’Live reveal just how far they are prepared to go to entertain a late night drunken audience – and it’s pretty far. Archive highlights include a crowd surfing bicycle, a crowd surf race between John Bishop and Patrick Monahan and the infamous night Scott Capurro, err, wet the stage. Key contributors include Russell Howard, Johnny Vegas, Ross Noble, David O’Doherty, Jimmy Carr and Greg Davies.
You do wonder exactly how much material was lost in the edit if they had intended having 6 episodes.
Contributors to the series included:
- Adam Hills
- Andrew Maxwell
- Andy Zaltzman
- Bill Bailey
- Daniel Kitson (archive footage)
- Dara O’Briain
- David O’Doherty
- Ed Byrne
- Francesca Martinez
- Fred MacAulay
- Greg Davies
- Jason Byrne
- Jenny Éclair
- Jimmy Carr (archive footage)
- John Bishop (archive footage)
- Johnny Vegas
- Mark Watson
- Phill Jupitus
- Rich Hall
- Ross Noble
- Russell Brand
- Russell Howard
- Scott Capurro
- Shappi Khorsandi
- Stephen K Amos
- Tim Minchin
- Tom Allen
- Tommy Tiernan
- Zoe Lyons
The trailer below features Shappi Khorsandi, Ross Noble, Johnny Vegas, Tommy Tiernan, Bill Bailey, Dara O’Briain, Greg Davies, Russell Howard
Additional clips from the series:
- Dan Antopolski – here
- Ed Byrne – here
- Rich Hall – here
- Shappi Khorsandi – here
- The First Time – Ep2 – here
There are some other random Late ‘n’ Live clips in this channel (not featuring Jimmy) and a couple more on the BBC website here.
Jimmy’s Edinburgh appearances can all be seen here.
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