Phil Whelans
This weekend sees 200 performers take part in a 50 hour improv show for a great cause, and naturally, some familiar faces to TVO readers are on the bill. To celebrate Hoopla officially taking over the venue at The Miller as the new full-time home of improv comedy, they are hosting the biggest
[...]
October 17, 2017 // 0 Comments
Peacock Season – FMW Films debut feature featuring a bevy of comedic talent – is ten years old this year, and to celebrate, you can now watch it for free below. The film was written and produced by Alan Freestone, Fergus March and TVO’s very own James Wren, and was made on a
[...]
July 7, 2017 // 0 Comments
Cult early 90s improv company Spontaneous Combustion featuring Phil Whelans are to reunite for a one-off performance. Longstanding TVO readers will be familiar with Whelans through his work on The Day They Came to Suck Out Our Brains, Pros From Dover, It’s Kevin, My First
[...]
September 3, 2016 // 0 Comments
The Edinburgh Fringe is now officially over for another year, and as the city cleans away the chaos that millions of flyers and hundreds of shows leave behind, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on TVO related involvement in an epic Fringe run. Our editor in chief, Paul Holmes,
[...]
August 31, 2016 // 0 Comments
The Edinburgh Fringe is now well under way and there’s a whole host of TVO related shows to savour. There’s also a large number of shows worth watching that are not technically related to our ‘family’ of regulars, but we love ’em anyway. One such show is the latest solo hour from Marny
[...]
August 12, 2016 // 0 Comments
Stop what you’re doing, Fringe goers – Phil Whelans will be bringing cult London live night Séance Fiction to Edinburgh Fringe for one night only next week. For the uninitiated, the show presents an Improvised Haunting, as five of the UK’s top improvisers take a ride into the
[...]
August 11, 2016 // 0 Comments
The Velvet Onion is saddened to report on the death of journalist, author, historian, radio producer and comedy executive John Pidgeon, following a long illness. A celebrated critic whose work in the 1970s included collaborations with The Faces, Slade and Eric Clapton, John moved into radio in
[...]
July 19, 2016 // 0 Comments
Cast your mind back to the hazy days of 2014, when we told you about Pushstarter, a blog that parodied a similarly-named crowd-funding site, from the mind of Phil Whelans. Now the concept is bucking the trend to transfer from online to offline in the form of a book. For the uninitiated, the
[...]
May 8, 2016 // 0 Comments
Friend of TVO, the very wonderful James Wren, will be hosting Unrestricted View‘s first film festival at his iconic Hen & Chickens theatre later this month. Unrestricted View has championed new, innovative comedy and theatre since 1999, and now the group is turning is attention to film
[...]
April 14, 2016 // 0 Comments
Welcome to The Velvet Onion – the central hub for an interconnected range of alternative comedy and more. Click through for the latest news, and see what’s so hot right now THIS WEEK below… HERE COMES THE SUN TRAP Wednesday, 10:45pm, BBC ONE This week sees the launch of Sun Trap, the new BBC
[...]
May 25, 2015 // 0 Comments
Welcome to The Velvet Onion – the central hub for an interconnected range of alternative comedy and more. Click through for the latest news, and see what’s so hot right now THIS WEEK below… GO GAGA WITH SUCCESSVILLE Wednesday, 10pm, BBC THREE BBC Three’s delightfully silly murder
[...]
May 18, 2015 // 0 Comments
Welcome to The Velvet Onion – the central hub for an interconnected range of alternative comedy and more. Click through for the latest news, and see what’s so hot right now THIS WEEK below… W1A RETURNS Smash hit mockumentary W1A returns on Thursday for its second series, with an extended
[...]
April 20, 2015 // 1 Comment
The Velvet Onion is proud to bring you an updated version of our TVO IS FIVE video for your perusal, featuring a cavalcade of comedy legends wishing us a very happy birthday. Some of you may remember at the end of January, The Velvet Onion marked its official fifth anniversary with a string of
[...]
March 15, 2015 // 0 Comments
Channel 4’s latest series of online shorts has a familiar face amongst its cast, as Phil Whelans appears in one of several Bad Date shorts. Each mini-film features a real-life person revisiting their worst attempts at romance, which are then re-enacted on screen. In the episode entitled
[...]
February 3, 2015 // 0 Comments
James Wren is directing a series of short comedy plays at The Hen & Chickens theatre in North London later this month. This latest venture from the co-writer and star of The Day They Came To Suck Our Brains!, the (fantastically funny) web series, comes in the form of “bittersweet” dramatic
[...]
January 4, 2015 // 0 Comments
Phil Whelans has created a new online platform by the name of Pushstarter. As the name suggests, it shares a few basic principles with Kickstarter – but this one is very, very different. If we tell you that the initial projects for which Pushstarter is trying to raise financial backing
[...]
December 21, 2014 // 0 Comments
Welcome to The Velvet Onion – the central hub for an interconnected range of alternative comedy and more. Click through for the LATEST NEWS, and see what’s so hot right now below. TELLY VELVETS CONTINUE We’re knee deep into the current series of several TVO related shows at present,
[...]
November 17, 2014 // 0 Comments
It’s the news we’ve been waiting for… The Day They Came To Suck Out Our Brains is becoming a movie – and YOU can get involved with the production! Written and created by Bob Pipe (the man behind The Forgery Club) and James Wren (the man behind The Hen & Chickens),
[...]
October 24, 2014 // 2 Comments
Hello, dear Peelers, and welcome to The Velvet Onion! For your regular news updates you used to find on our home page, click here. But below, here’s what Dolly would say is sooo hot right now in Onion Land. AN EVENING WITH NOEL FIELDING BEGINS! The big news this week is that An Evening
[...]
October 20, 2014 // 0 Comments
Tune in your radio to hear some TVO stars do their thing. The second series of The Brig Society starring Marcus Brigstocke returned to BBC Radio 4 on Friday evening at 6.30pm – repeated Saturday at 12.30 and on iPlayer. Each week Marcus is put in charge of a ‘thing’ – this
[...]
August 6, 2014 // 0 Comments
The Velvet Onion 