About
The phrase “comedian’s comedian” has become diluted through overuse nowadays, but originally applied to just one man – Simon Munnery. For over 30 years, Munnery has performed around the world, experimenting with and innovating the stand up form. In the 1990s, his Alan Parker: Urban Warrior character, a bedsit anarchist, took the comedy circuit by storm, garnering Munnery his own BBC Radio 1 series 29 Minutes of Truth, which Time Out called “The funniest thing on Radio One.” and a residency on ITV’s Saturday Live. Next came The League Against Tedium, a Nietzschian egomaniac, which gave him a 2001 BBC2 series Attention Scum directed by Stewart Lee. Other shows have seen him pushing the boundaries by performing with a bucket on his head, hosting a conceptual pop-up restaurant and, via mix of visual sketches, handcrafted animation, music and stand-up, creating a live film onstage whilst sat in the audience.
A master of epigrams (“If you’ve only ever read one book in your life… I strongly recommend that you keep your mouth shut”), many of which are collected in his 2005 book How to Live, Munnery blends satire and surrealism effortlessly and is equally at home with comic songs, homemade prop comedy and short plays and films. His shows may look amateurish but there is no doubt you are in the hands of a consummate professional. He was also featured in Comedy Central’s The Alternative Comedy Experience series. Beware of heckling him however – he may end up marrying you!
Watch Simon Munnery: Hello
Short Clips
See Simon Munnery Live
Simon Munnery is performing various stand up dates along with a tour of his 2017 Edinburgh show Renegade Plumber details are here.
Bio
Simon Munnery joined the famous comedy launchpad Footlights whilst at Cambridge University. He went on to co-found the folkloric Cluub Zarathustra which included such comedy greats as Johnny Vegas, Sally Philips, Kevin Eldon and Stewart Lee and shunned traditional stand up in favour of comic artistic experimentation. 1996 saw him collaborate with Graham Linehan for a BBC2 show London Shouting in his guise as Alan Parker: Urban Warrior. The Parker character also became a regular contributor to NME.
He has performed at every Edinburgh Festival since 1994, often with mulitple shows in a year and almost always with a new twist on the stand up gig. In his AGM shows, he would often lead the audience out of the venue on a tour of the city, or into other shows. La Concepta was a food-free pop-up conceptual restaurant “serving” between 2 & 8 audience members at a time. He has lost most of the use of his left hand and survived testicular cancer but shows no sign of losing his passion to continue creating new and hilarious forms of comedy.