Our first gig went without too many genuine hitches, though admittedly a few teething troubles. First a run down of who did what...
Al's health and safety inspector started off the show - "All accidents must be noted in the book, there's been some minor ones already, in rehersals Callum laughed too hard and a little bit of wee came out." After a quick introduction from our 3 hosts, Paul Gerrard was on first and is getting better and better, and set the night up really well. We lost James Christopher to gut rot (poor excuse), so Peter Thompson had to go on and fill the gap with the routine he did at the student comedy awards. ('Not without promise', raved the reviewer from Chortle) Al Dawes did a good 10 minutes, incorporating a lot of new material. Peter appeared again with Callum Cramb in an elongated sketch / link about a magician who makes 'the bird' appear from nowhere. Les Paul Marshall almost didn't get there but when he did get there he managed to delight some and disgust others. Alex Collier boldly finished off the show in fine style.
One success of the night was the audience competition, this week it was to think of a word, and write a new definition (e.g. supercedes; the best budgie food in the world, or collonade; a fizzy enema). We weren't sure if the audience would be willing to take part, and had a few sneaky 'entries' already in the box. However, when we opened it at the end of the night it was stuffed with ideas from nearly every table. The winner was the rather spurious Contagious; used to describe a council worker. As in 'any job will take that lazy contagious.' They made it away with a lovely bottle of Blue Nun. Here's a few more of the best entries;
copper nitrate - overtime for policemen.
DNA - national dyslexics association.
trampoline - a skinny vagrant.
boomerang - a startling pudding.
Quincy - a fruity medical drama.
Dilate - to live too long.
Some of those teething troubles involved the fixable - only one mic and a few of the stage lights had missing bulbs. Others were more problematic - some people think we should just get one experienced compere, instead of linking through a mix of banter, competitions and sketches. Our philosophy here is that if we go for the compere option we'll be the same as every comedy night going - we'd rather be different, even if that means risking some things falling flat.
