Best of The Fest: Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 2008
Ivan Brackenbury’s All New Hospital Radio Show: Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 2009
Best of the Fest: Assembly on the Mound, Edinburgh, 2011
Mervyn Stutter’s Pick of the Fringe 25th Anniversary Gala: Assembly George Square, Edinburgh, 2016
Ivan Brackenbury’s 10th Anniversary Party with Tom Binns, Ian D Montford and Friends: Assembly George Square Studios, Edinburgh, 2017
Just The Tonic Working From Home – Good Riddance 2020 New Year’s Eve Special: Online: 2020
Tom Binns is a character comedian who I have seen many times at the Edinburgh Fringe. One of Binn’s recurring characters is Ian D Montford and the character delights in skewering professional spiritualists – whose careers are built on a mix of technical jiggery pokery and close-up magic. The audience were enthralled and amused every time he transformed into the individual and performed a routine on stage.
Perhaps Binn’s greatest creation though is Ivan Brackenbury who should be a real hospital radio DJ – rather than the spoof one. Brackenbury’s Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Hospital broadcast is called Disease Hour and is a cheap, obvious and brilliant agglomeration of cheesy DJ cliches, mannerisms and hilariously inappropriate tunes dedicated to the sick and the wounded. This joke routine has worked brilliantly every time I have seen Brackenbury and always reduces me to tears of laughter. Indeed at the 2017 Fringe when I attended his 10th Anniversary Party, the audience heard the opening line to Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet which is I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes… before the inept DJ jumped in with the words: This is for Richard who unfortunately suffers from gout! This is a great joke but little did Binns know that I do indeed experience attacks of gout from time to time so I recognised the situation instantly and produced a very loud laugh.
Binns appeared at Just The Tonic’s New Year’s Eve Special online where he appeared as himself performing magic and he then appeared as Brackenbury counting down to midnight playing tunes and causing much hilarity.