Chewin the Fat star Karen Dunbar announces West Lothian show as part of Scottish tour
Comedian, actor, writer, DJ, and star of Chewin' The Fat, Karen Dunbar is set to embark on a brand-new tour which includes a West Lothian show.
This is a brand-new show for 2025, and it sees Karen sharing stories from her life and talking about her career, with – as you would expect from a stalwart of the Scottish comedy scene – a heap of humour and jokes.
This is Karen's fourth tour with Aberdeen-based promoters, Breakneck Comedy, since 2023, and as Breakneck Comedy founder, Naz Hussain, explains, it's their most ambitious to date.
He said: 'This is the biggest tour we've ever organised, and I'm delighted that we're working with Karen for it. This is a big year for Breakneck Comedy – it's our fifteenth anniversary and to be able to deliver such a huge tour for such a well-loved Scottish act is the icing on the cake.
'Anyone who's been to one of Karen's shows before will know that it's a great night of laughs, jokes, stories, and anecdotes from her career, covering everything from her time on Chewin' The Fat, right through to her latest adventures as a DJ.
'This is a brand-new show for 2025, and the fact that Karen has so many fresh new stories to share is testament to her talent as a comedian, and her amazing career.'
Karen began her career as a DJ and karaoke host before she attended The Comedy Unit's open auditions in 1997 where she was cast in the BBC Scotland comedy sketch show Chewin' the Fat.
Karen played a host of instantly recognisable characters including the Lonely Shopkeeper and the Depressed Taxi Caller.
She starred in The Karen Dunbar Show, which received two Golden Rose nominations for Best Comedy Show and Karen herself two personal nominations for Best Comedy Performance.
As a comedy actress, she has also tackled serious roles, most including a performance in the poetic monologue A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle adapted by Denise Mina from Hugh MacDiarmid's poem of the same name.
In 2014, she was lead compère at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony held in Glasgow alongside John Barrowman and Des Clarke. Karen sang and performed a showcase of Scottish culture, inventions and places during the broadcast, which reached a global audience of 1.5 billion people.
Breakneck Comedy is renowned for bringing top comedians and performers to towns and venues that might not be on the usual tour schedule.
'I love bringing big names to towns that some promoters might overlook,' said Naz.
'It's really exciting to be able to put on shows all over Scotland and make it easier for people to be able to enjoy a great night of comedy and entertainment without them having to worry about catching a train home from the city.'
Karen will be playing Livingston's Howden Park Centre on Saturday, September 27, at 6pm.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
River City's Jimmy Chisholm back on stage in new Fringe play
Jimmy Chisholm, fresh from his demise in River City, returns to his first love – theatre – in a new absurdist comedy at the Fringe. He tells Chad Maxwell about starring in a soap and sharing a lift with Mel Gibson Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... There would have more than a few River City fans shedding a tear or two following the death of one of their favourite characters Sonny Caplan, the 'silver fox' of Shieldinch, who died in the arms of his on-off love interest Maggie McLean in an episode aired last week. Sonny was a loveable rascal and a chancer, but he will be sorely missed by his fans. But there's good news too. The actor who played Sonny, Jimmy Chisholm, is coming off TV and straight on to the stage in a new Scottish play, Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie, premiering at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ths month Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad We caught up with him this week to talk about his five-year stint as Sonny in River City, and about the new absurdist comedy in which he is about to star. Jimmy Chisholm has worked with some of the most prestigious theatre companies in the UK (Picture: Lisa Ferguson) 'I loved Sonny,' Chisholm said. 'I'll miss him terribly. I just thought he was a great wee guy. He was willing to do anything for anyone. It's been amazing having a regular job as an actor, and it's nice to get a chance to develop a character and give him a life of his own in a series. 'You really feel you belong to something, which you don't get much as a theatre actor because you're usually together for seven weeks or so and then you never see each other again.' River City itself is living on borrowed time with it set to be taken off air next year. Fans want it saved but Chisholm is doubtful. 'I know there are moves afoot to save it, and they did that with Take the High Road with the protest Save Our Soap (Chisholm also starred as Jimmy Blair in that show for five years in the Eighties and Nineties) but I don't see that sort of thing happening now. Whatever money the BBC needed to produce River City will have already been allocated. They've got to allocate their money two years before they make anything.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The upside for Chisholm is that his departure has allowed him to get back to his first love – theatre. 'To me, that's acting,' he said. 'I mean, yes, I love TV – well, I loved playing Sonny – but, to me, theatre describes acting because you're there from start to finish. And no matter what happens you have to deal with that and go through it, and, you know, there's a sort of 'take me by the hand' suggestion to an audience which you don't get to do through a camera – it's more like modelling, you're just presenting an attitude, a line, an image, whereas it's all linked from beginning to end in a theatre and the audience see it all, the magic – and the mistakes!" Jimmy Chisholm with fellow Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie cast members Alan Ireby, left, Amy Fraser and writer John McColl, right (Picture: Liam Rudden Media) Chisholm has worked with some of the most prestigious companies in the UK, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, and in London's West End West, as well as making many appearances in the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, to name but a few. However, he is also a champion of the importance of small local theatres to entertain audiences. He said: 'I think, like everything else, theatre has been confused with profit, whereas, to me, it's a community service. To me it's a part of society to be able to sit down next to total strangers and watch something and be able to turn round to a stranger and know you're feeling the same thing at the same time. Again, it's like a belonging – which is a major theme of Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie – a feeling of oneness. I think that's why people are struggling so much with loneliness at the moment. We're not prepared to go as ourselves to a strange environment and become part of a bigger environment. That's what theatre is asking you to do and I think that's very very important in this day and age. 'Nothing does that better than the Fringe with so many small venues. There's no reason for why someone chooses your show on the day, but the point is that out of the one or two million people who are randomly walking about looking for something to see in the Festival they pick yours and they tell someone in the pub that night, 'don't go to that show, it's rubbish', or 'go to that, it's brilliant'. And that is how most shows operate in the Festival, apart from the big conglomerates that have taken over the Festival now.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad All that said, Chisholm is, of course, hoping they choose his show... 'They'd be very foolish if they didn't," he said with a smile. 'Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie is a play, shall we say, inspired by another play called Waiting For Godot. It discusses similar themes but, at the same time, it is very different. It is theatre of the absurd. It's not saying anything is fact, it's not saying anything is a lie, but it is asking you to think and I think any audience will be constantly reminded that this is a story about the human condition rather than anything else, and you'll recognise that in yourself without it being laid on with a trowel. 'It's a very poignant play, but also very funny and that is where the absurd comes in. You might laugh at something and then, ten seconds later, you're going 'God, that could be me'. Yet what you're watching doesn't bear any relation to you or your life. But it's what they're saying, what they feel... It's theatre, it's storytelling. I think it is beautifully written and, to me, it's engaging from start to finish, and I hope it will be to the audience.' But despite Chisholm's love affair with theatre, there is no doubt that featuring in Braveheart with Mel Gibson was a big highlight in his career and he tells a story of his first meeting with Gibson that reveals not only the young Inverness lad's rising fame, but also his burgeoning confidence in the acting business. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Getting a chance to be on set with Mel Gibson in a film that was so well received was brilliant. It's probably the most famous thing I've done,' he said. Gibson by that time, of course, was an international film star, but he quickly found out that the Chisholm was also a household name in Scotland. 'When I walked into the hotel room for my interview for the job, there was Mel Gibson sitting on the couch and he got up and shook my hand and I was totally tongue-tied. I'd never met anyone as famous in my life. He sort of went, 'Hi, I'm Mel Gibson,' and I said, 'Yes, I know'! Then I said, 'I'm Jimmy Chisholm' and he said, 'Yes, I know'! Then I realised I was still holding his hand! 'I let it go and he said 'please have a seat, there's not much to this interview, I hear you could do this job falling off a log, so if you want it, it's yours.' And I said, 'lovely, thanks'. And he said, 'right I'll get you down in the lift, I've got to go out and check some locations for the film'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'When we got out of the lift, there were these two women with a huge metal trolley for cleaning, and one of them looked at me, then turned to the other and whispered and it was obvious they recognised me from Take the High Road – this was the Eighties – and so they came running over shouting 'Jimmy Blair, Jimmy Blair!' They hadn't spotted who was coming out of the door with me at this point, so Mel Gibson said, 'Oh it's nice to have a celebrity on the show!' And I said to him, 'Don't worry, Mel, this'll happen to you one day!'' There is no doubt that Chisholm will secure TV appearances in the future. He has been so much in demand that he holds the record for guest appearances in Taggart. As Chisholm puts it: 'I've been killed more times in Taggart than anyone else!' But for now, the theatre's the thing once again as he looks forward to playing in John McColl's Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie. Chisholm regards it as a real treat to be back in a small Fringe venue. We suspect audiences will feel the same.
Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
Unpacking Edinburgh International Festival's seat-of-the-pants finances
PA Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... On the top floor of an unmarked building on the Royal Mile, staff at the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) are busy fielding calls and discussing logistics as the weeks tick down to the opening night. The year-round work done here to create the Scottish capital's globally renowned celebration of the performing arts, which kicks off tonight, remains out of sight most of the time. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Instead, much of what the public understands about Edinburgh's festivals – of which the EIF is the jewel in the crown – tends to be informed by the state of public funding for the arts or the evaporation of corporate sponsorship in the wake of Baillie Gifford's withdrawal from book festivals across the UK. Yet every year the expectation among Edinburgh's ticketed classes is that the EIF keeps carrying on - somehow. On the surface, it does. Among highlights in this year's festival is the return to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade of Dundee-born actor Brian Cox as the 18 th century economist Adam Smith in a play about former RBS boss Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin. But - to borrow the play's title - what does it actually take to make it happen? To say that the EIF flies by the seat of its financial and artistic pants would be an understatement. 'It requires a great deal of faith and commitment that it'll be all right on the night,' says Francesca Hegyi, the EIF's seemingly unflappable executive director. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad contributed Managing the cycle of funding and artist booking is a Sisyphean task that most arts organisations deal with. But in the EIF's case the task is harder due to its sheer scale. This year, more than 2,000 artists from 42 nations (a third of them based in Scotland) will perform in 133 shows. Unlike single art form events – say, an opera festival – the EIF combines multiple performance types including opera, orchestral and chamber music, and theatre. 'Our peculiarity is that we do all the art forms, with all of their different requirements and timescales, in three and a half weeks every summer,' explains Roy Luxford, creative director. At 65 per cent of expenditure, the cost of productions and performances is by far the EIF's biggest outgoing, followed by administrative costs at 18 per cent. Visiting orchestras don't come cheap. This year the Budapest Festival Orchestra will play Béla Bartók's music for the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, a score calling for large forces including bass drum, xylophone and celesta – all shipped from Hungary. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Most EIF income comes from a combination of philanthropic donations, legacies, corporate support, and grants from trusts and foundations. Ticket sales provided only 21 per cent of total income last year. The rest, about one third, was grants from Creative Scotland, a Scottish government agency, and the City of Edinburgh Council. As hard as fund-raising may be for Hegyi and her team, the unpredictability of grant funding is arguably harder. In theory, this money ought to provide a foundational level of financial certainty to allow what she calls 'programming certainty'. That's because productions and artists often must be booked up to three years in advance. This requires making financial commitments even if the grant funding has not yet come through in time – as has happened. Finding that risk capital from the operating budget instead at a time of inflationary cost rises isn't easy. Moreover, the EIF may make commitments to up to a dozen proposed acts for future festivals at any given time. Yet any squeeze in the budget because of a delay in grant funding means programming less. 'We might go to print with our brochure each year before we've got financial certainty,' Hegyi explains. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad That's what happened with this year's festival, which has shrunk by almost 20 per cent compared with last year's 161 performances. A delay last year in the announcement of the latest funding round from Creative Scotland – the result of foot-dragging by the Scottish government - meant that even with a one-off grant of £1.6 million from the UK government to help plug the gap, the EIF had to cut its cloth accordingly. Some stability will come in the wake of a new 'multi-year funding' settlement between the Scottish government and Creative Scotland, which Culture Secretary Angus Robertson said in January 'moves us beyond simply sustaining the [arts] sector to return our focus to where it should be – its long-term development'. He pledged to increase culture budgets by £100m annually by 2028-29. The EIF has been allocated a total £11.75m over three years from Creative Scotland, starting with £3.25m this year. While the festival says this will help, 'it does not give us additional capacity to invest in longer-term initiatives or more ambitious projects' given a backdrop of rising costs and a tough fund-raising environment in which corporate sponsorship has all but dried up. It also takes the EIF back to Creative Scotland funding levels in 2008.
Glasgow Times
2 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
Chappell Roan in Edinburgh 2025: How to get back to Glasgow
The concerts are part of the city's Summer Sessions, which will see other artists like Sam Fender perform. However, one of the biggest issues facing attendees from Glasgow is how to get back home from the venue. When is Chappell Roan performing in Edinburgh? Chappell Roan will perform in Edinburgh for two nights. (Image: PA) Chappell Roan is performing on Tuesday, August 26 and Wednesday, August 27 Doors for both Scottish shows will open at around 4pm, according to Ticketmaster. How to get to the Royal Highland Centre from Edinburgh Those wishing to get to the centre from Edinburgh have a number of options, according to the Royal Highland Centre website. Bus - Bus services like the Airlink 100, Skylink 200 and 300, as well as services 20 and 63, take attendees to or near the centre. Trams - Trams connect the Scottish capital with the venue. All travellers need to do is get off at the Ingliston P&R stop near the showground. Car - The venue is located next to Edinburgh Airport, placing it within minutes of the M8 and M9. How to get back home to Glasgow from Chappell Roan's Edinburgh gigs The gigs will end at around 10:30pm on both nights. With the show ending at 10:30pm, those wishing to get back to Glasgow from the concert will have fewer options. Revellers can make use of the local tram network to get back to the city centre, where they can then take a train back to Glasgow from Waverley or Haymarket. Recommended Reading: The 7 things you need to know before seeing Chappell Roan in Edinburgh What items are banned from the Chappell Roan gigs at the Royal Highland Centre? Everything you need to know about the Royal Highland Centre near Edinburgh The tram stop nearest the centre is the Ingliston Park and Ride, which is a 10-15 minute stroll from the venue. The CityLink 900 Service from Edinburgh Airport to Glasgow's Buchanan Bus Station is another popular service. The bus route runs late at night and takes around an hour, making it ideal for concerts.
