Don’t be startled if you turn on the TV this Easter and see someone who looks a little bit like our alleged Lord and Saviour on your screen because chances are it’ll merely be Tim (unless you’re watching the story of Easter or something similar).
Tomorrow we kick off with Ruth Jones’s Easter Treat on BBC Two and BBC HD at 9pm (or Sunday on BBC One at 10:25pm if you live in Wales) on which Tim will appear alongside Dawn French and Michael Sheen. He’s written a special song for the show, which in my mind proves that he’s capable of writing a Eurovision hit (three minutes long and it has a key change; all he needs now is a part-detachable sparkly outfit!) and the BBC have put it up on YouTube early for your enjoyment!
Following that, on Easter Monday, Tim will be returning to The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 at 9:15am, where he’ll be joined by Natalie Pinkman and Dave Gorman to discuss the latest current affairs, which, Tim’s hoping won’t involve modelling Royal Wedding headwear again!
Then, on Tuesday, if you’re up bright and early, Tim will be back on the BBC Breakfast couch for another interview, charmingly answering questions, which could potentially range from ‘What have you been up to since you were last on here?’ to ‘Which hat should I wear to the Royal Wedding?’, and all while trying to mind his Ps and Qs.
Heads up if you live in Scotland and have missed out on this weekend’s Edinburgh and Glasgow gigs or can’t wait to catch the show again: there are still some great tickets to be grabbed for Tim’s orchestra show in Aberdeen on Tuesday 19th April 2011. That’s the day after tomorrow!
So if you live in the north of Scotland, or are elsewhere and are feeling spontaneous, Aberdeen is as far north as Tim can transport 57 musicians this year without having to resort to yaks.
You can buy online from Ticketmaster or phone: 0161 385 1001 or 0844 844 0444.
First the TV show: Tim will be on The Hour 5pm on STV on Monday 18th April and it looks like you’ll be able to catch up using the STV Player, if you miss it, via the same link.
So now the radio, deep breaths everyone: Tim’s going to be on quite a number of radio shows in the coming weeks (trying not to use that colourful Aussie language the beeb love so much). Here are the ones we know about so far:
18th April
BBC Radio Merseyside – Sean Styles, 10am – 12am
BBC Radio 4 Extra – Comedy Club, 10pm – midnight
20th April
BBC 6Music – Breakfast with Shaun Keaveny, 7am – 10am
21st April
Absolute Radio – Geoff Lloyd, 7pm – 8pm
23rd April
Xfm London – Justin Lee Collins, 2pm – 6pm
24th April
BBC Radio 2 – Weekend Wogan, 11am – 1pm
25th April
BBC Radio London – Robert Elms, 12pm – 3pm
27th April
BBC Radio 5Live – Richard Bacon, 2pm – 4pm
And that isn’t even a definitive list! Tim’s going to be doing lots of radio in Scotland, Liverpool and Sheffield too, talking about the Orchestra shows and what not. You all know you can find details of those gigs here right? Thought so.
Look out for Tim in the papers too. There are interviews running in The Times Playlist and Telegraph Saturday Review tomorrow, for example.
What a busy boy!
Who says video killed the radio star eh?!
Canadians! Remember how Tim was in your country last year for the Just For Laughs festivals? Well HBO Canada decided to record some of the acts from that festival for posterity (or, perhaps to air on TV at a later date).
I tell you this because one of the acts recorded was our Tim, and he is set to have his performance aired on ‘Funny As Hell‘ on HBO Canada on the 15th April at 9:25pm (ET / MT)!
If you’re out, it’ll be repeated on 16th April at 12:30am (ET / MT), 19th April at 11:00pm (ET / MT), 20th April at 8:25pm (ET / MT) and 21st April at 5:25am (ET / MT), so you’ve got no excuses (other than not receiving HBO Canada).
You’ll all tune in and come back to tell us how awesome it was, won’t you?
Not content with having two, very nearly, sold out shows of his own at the Royal Albert Hall, with Jules Buckley the Heritage Orchestra, Tim will once again be returning there in August for a very different kind of show!
Once again teaming up with Jules Buckley, Tim will be hosting the BBC’s first ever comedy prom! Also appearing will be Kit And The Widow, Susan Bullock, Danny Driver and Sue Perkins, who won BBC Two’s Maestro, with the BBC Concert Orchestra providing the musical accompaniments and tiddely-om-pom-poms.
The show will take place on the 13th August at 7:30pm, and it will be broadcast live on BBC Radio Three, as well as being broadcast on BBC Two on 27th August.
Seating tickets will go on sale on the 7th May at 9am from the BBC’s Proms website, while Promming (read: standing) tickets will be available on the day for £5.
Guess you rubbed your lamps properly in Portland, as Tim will be appearing at the Aladdin Theatre, Portland, Oregon on Thursday 23rd June 2011 at 8pm. Under 21s are permitted if accompanied by a parent or their legal guardian.
Tickets go on sale via Ticketmaster, to the General Public on Friday 15th April 2011 at 10am PDT.
However, there is a pre-sale Wednesday 13th April 2011 at 10am PDT, until Thursday 14th April 2011 at 10pm PDT, with the password ‘BAND’, via the same link.
Tim will also be performing at this year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Manchester, Tennessee. He’ll be in the Comedy tent on the Thursday, 9th June and Friday 10th June. Tickets and further information are available from the festival site here.
Last month, Tim hosted the 25th Melbourne International Comedy Festival Opening Night Comedy All Stars Supershow. (Yes! – it feels like the longest show title ever to type too)
He performed with some members of the Melbourne International Symphony Orchestra and introduced many of the best local and international comedians, including Mark Watson, The Pajama Men, Arj Barker, Danny Bhoy, David O’Dougherty, Mick Molloy, Jeff Stilson, Tommy Tiernan and many more.
The show will be aired on on Channel TEN, on Wednesday 13th April 2011, 8.30pm – 10.45pm.
This is only being screened in Australia I’m afraid.
Aussies, you are just so lucky, lucky, lucky…
You really are! If you tune in do come back and tell us all about it.
x
We announced it over a month ago, but now the time has finally come to tell you that the double-CD album, ‘Tim Minchin and The Heritage Orchestra’, is now available for you to buy (kinda)!
The tracklist looks a little something like this:
Disc one
I’m In A Cage
Rock n Roll Nerd
Cont
If I Didn’t Have You
Thank You God *
You Grew On Me
The Fence
Disc two
Prejudice
Lullaby
The Pope Song
Cheese
Beauty
Dark Side
Not Perfect
White Wine In The Sun
The album is available worldwide for you to buy on iTunes now for a rather reasonable price and there’s a nice link for you here. And a reminder, also available on iTunes is the studio version of The Fence.
If you’re in the UK, the CD version will be available from this here website from the 15th April and also at Tim’s forthcoming orchestra shows, while Australians are able to buy it from shops, as we mentioned earlier.
If you’re elsewhere, you’re going have to import it from one of the above options, but it rather pretty.
Oh, and we’ll post this nice medley of clips from Lullaby, Dark Side and You Grew On Me again in case you missed it the last time and want to try before you buy.
*also known as Sam’s Mum
UPDATE (18/05/11): This album is not currently available on iTunes in the US. We’ll update this once it’s available again.
I’m incredibly excited that DC Turner’s wondrous animation of my large and ranty beat-poem, Storm, has finally been released online.
Two and a half years in the making, it is the result of epic dedication from DC and from the producer, Tracy King, who has driven the whole thing from day 1.
The film was long-listed for an Animated Short Film BAFTA and has played to great acclaim at festivals, but it hasn’t actually been completed til, well… today actually.
Tracy says: “When we first started Storm we had no idea how big it would become, but it was always our intention that this would be a free film for YouTube, and I’m so proud that that day is finally here. One of the best ways to get people to listen is to give them something to see, and I like to think of Storm as a gateway for ideas as well as a piece of entertainment, which is why we wanted to make this film. The fact that we were still making tiny changes a few hours before it went live is testament to the passion that has gone into the film and the justice we want to do to the source material. While I still maintain the best way to see Storm is to see Tim perform it live, I hope you enjoy our animated version as much as we enjoyed making it.”
Dan says: “Making Storm has been an exhilarating, terrifying experience, and I am endlessly grateful to everybody who worked on the film.
Now stop reading this and watch the film.”
If you want to learn more about how this all came to be, try here. I hope you love it as much as I do.
People of the UK, we hope you’ve missed hearing Tim’s dulcet tones over the radio, or seeing his big face on your televisual box, as there are some forthcoming events of that variety this very weekend!
It all kicks off tomorrow, when Tim will appear on Ian McMillan’s The Verb on Radio 3 at 9:15pm, alongside Blake Bailey and bits of Galician poetry.
On Saturday, Tim will be on Christian O’Connell’sJon Holmes’s Radio 5Live show sometime between 9am and 11am, shortly followed by an appearance on Vernon Kay’s Radio One show.
The next day, Tim will be on Something for the Weekend on BBC2, 10am – 11:30am, cooking up a treat alongside Arlene Phillips! If you’ve got anything you’d like to ask him, the show are appealing for questions via email or Twitter
Perfect timing if you were starting to think he’d left you for Australia! Oh, and if you aren’t in the UK, don’t forget you can still listen to BBC Radio with their iPlayer.
If you live in or near Seattle, WA, USA, here’s the heads-up that Tim will be splashing down in person, possibly in a smart waistcoat and certainly with a piano and hair teased into utter confusion, at The Neptune Theatre on 24th June 2011.
Tickets go on general sale on Friday 8th April, 8PM PDT and you’ll find further information and ticket purchase opportunities here.
OR there’s a presale, on right now if you go here and use the password/promo code ‘band’.
Hey, this show will be so rock, there might even be an Eddie Vedder impression that gets really deep…
If you’re in Australia, here’s a little something special for you! For the first time ever, anywhere in the world, some of Tim’s CDs are being properly released so that you can buy them in actual shops!
That’s right, you’ll be able to walk down to your local Sanity, JB HiFi or other record store of your choice and buy a Tim CD from them! Or, you could, you know, buy it from their websites instead.
The two albums being made available initially are 2009’s ‘Ready For This?’ and this year’s ‘Tim Minchin and the Heritage Orchestra’. Both of these have been released on Navel Records and being distributed by Inertia Music.
If you’re elsewhere and wanting a copy of the orchestra album, we’ll hopefully have some news for you on that shortly but in the meantime, here’s a nice medley of clips from it to whet your appetite.
So last Sunday’s live broadcast of Tim Minchin vs the SSO was marred by gremlins in the speakers (no, not Gizmo; he wouldn’t hurt a fly and besides, he’s a mogwai) – a more technical explanation of which can be found here along with an apology from the ABC for the problems.
Well, the good news is that it will be broadcast again this Sunday; same time and same place as last time (8:30pm, ABC2). This time, though, they’ve rounded up the Stripe and his gang and are holding them in cages so that this showing will go out glitch-free!
The call for inviting your elderly relatives over to watch this still stands. Hopefully they’ll enjoy it more now that they’ll be able to hear Tim!
There have been quite a few requests from you Americans for Tim to come to Chicago, which would make today your lucky day!
Tim has been confirmed as part of the line up of this year’s Just for Laughs festival in Chicago! He’ll be playing a huge five nights at the Lincoln Hall between 14th and 18th June, with each show starting at 10pm. This will be the longest run of shows Tim has done in America apart from his off-broadway run in New York in early 2008, just in case you’re the type of person who likes useless trivia.
The shows look to go on sale on Saturday at 10am via eTix on the venue’s website.
I won’t add any more razzle dazzle or all that jazz, but suffice to say, you’ll definitely be wanting to getting your bear paws on these tickets! (… sorry)
UPDATE: We’ve just heard there’s an Internet pre-sale, Friday April 1st at 10am for one day only. You can access this advance ticketing goodness via the Just For Laughs, Chicago website here and the password is “laughs”.
Shell x
Re: Pre-sale problems: In case you have not seen the comments by Linzy or me here or on Facebook – they are aware of the problem and are working on fixing it. We will let you know as soon as we hear anything helpful. Sx
They seem to be on sale here ok.
Some are finding ‘laughs’ works, others ‘witty’. We suggest you try both.
Shell x
The Royal Shakespeare Company have confirmed that their world premiere production of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, A Musical, is to transfer to London’s West End in autumn 2011, for an open-ended run.
Tickets will go on sale in May when further exciting details of the venue, performance dates and casting will also be announced.
In case any of you have yet to notice the pretty tab at the top of the page we’d like to point you to the sparkly new Matildapage on this very website. It will give you the the story so far as well as videos and handy links, including to the dedicated Matilda, A Musical website where you can sign up for future news directly from the RSC and to the Matilda sub-forum on Tim’s official fansite if you’re keen and a little bit naughty…
Disc one
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