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Simon MunnerySimon Munnery, also known as 'The League Against Tedium', is a British comedy writer and standup comedian. He performs mainly to an alternative audience but has pierced the mainstream both with his BBC Radio 1 show in 1997 and his BBC2 television series, Attention Scum! in 2001. To the eye, Munnery is a curious beast with his tragically unfashionable glasses, clothes that appear to have come from a charity shop (or, on some occasions, appear homemade), giant hats, arm in a sling and dramatic facial hair. As 'The League' he often dons a hat crafted from a kettle and one of his standup shows is performed entirely with a metal bucket over his head. One might consider him eccentric but he is seen by many to be a philosopher and a comedy genius. His standup is perhaps best described as often satirical, often political and most always surreal. He is very much a one-man band, and perhaps could be described as an anarchist although he would probably shrug off any form of social tag given to him. Munnery plays Harmonica and his dialogue, sometimes comparable to that of a modern Oscar Wilde is endlesly quotable ("Life is like a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Very popular and not as bad as bad as some would have you believe. That is unspeakably awful but mercifully brief."; "If you've only ever read one book in your life... I strongly recommend that you keep your mouth shut"). While at university, he took part in a standup double-act called God and Jesus, which as Richard Herring notes, is a hard name to beat. Herring and Munnery would later work together (along with Steve Coogan, Patrick Marber and Stewart Lee) at the Edinburgh Festival in a piece called The Dum Show. Munnery was brought to the attention of a comedy community as the compere of a post-alternative comedy cabaret called Cluub Zarathustra performed originally in London and later at the Edinburgh Festival. Zarathustra also featured the comic talents of Stewart Lee, Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips, Johnny Vegas, Julian Barratt, Roger Mann, Jason Freeman and the music of Richard Thomas and Lori Lixenberg. A television pilot was made of Cluub Z for Channel 4, but was never broadcast. Perhaps his crowning achievement, Attention Scum! was a television series produced for the BBC and directed by Stewart Lee. It involved Munnery as 'The League Against Tedium' driving around the United Kingdom in an adapted transit van and preaching to the masses with the help of an opera singer (Lori Lixenberg), a sedated vampire (Richard Thomas), and a monkey (Munnery's wife Janet). He is also famous, however, for his musical and comedy work as Alan Parker: Urban Warrior on the stage and for writing and hosting the 1999 TV comedy Game Show, Either/Or. More recently, Munnery has been working in radio and runs a show called 'Simon Munnery's Experimental Half Hour' ("experimental in that it lasts an hour") on Resonance FM. He also wrote and performed two 4-part Radio 4 series called "Where Did It All Go Wrong?", which were broadcast in the summer of 2003 and the spring of 2005. Munnery seems to have taken up something of a residency at The Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh and performs excellent one-man shows there during festival time as well as shows at the Glasgow counterpart of the same club. Some recent Munnery Festial shows include 'Trilogy', 'Buckethead' and 'Simon Munnery's Annual General Meeting'. External links League Against Tedium - An unofficial but pretty well researched fan site. Comedy CV - A small write-up on Munnery with good picture. in which comedy writer Richard Herring relates a personal Munnery anecdote.
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