Covers night - more pictures.

You can see the originals in the proper review below - but here are our versions...



Carl Hutchinson as Dennis Leary; Ric Warton as Jack Dee- also winning the competition this week. Callum Cramb as Lee Evans (note the sweaty pits- such attention to detail!) with Al Dawes as Richard Pryor, or as Steff pointed out they may just be the leads in a new BBC police drama. Pete Thompson's Emo Phillips (with wig) and without wig as an anorexic Han Solo (Steff again). Shown here choking Steffan Peddie as a svelte Jabba the hut - Steffan also gave us Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams (such versatility!)

Covers Night - 19th December

Featuring the excellent compering of Steph Peddie, the covers night was a roaring success, and we all enjoyed it immensely.

Ric Warton come onstage as Jack Dee, and admirably started the night with some of the moody bugger's one liners and complaints. Especially the routine about Cricket players being more inclined to hit the ball if they didn't have pads. Excellent.

Al Dawes followed, with a very ambitious tribute to Richard Pryor. Being middle class, and thus almost physically scared of the infamous N-word, he used a BBC editing technique - Pussy was replaced by Pinepple, Mother-f***er became Melon-farmer, Nigger was replaced by Noddy. I'm not sure anyone knew how this would go, but it was actually funny, absurd, cringeworthy and joyous. I'm still giggling now.

Carl Hutchinson arrived as Dennis Leary, and impressively had learnt some incredibly fast paced ranting verbatim. It missed the audience at times from a humour point of view, but as an acting exercise was strong work.

Pete Thompson's Emo Phillips was a real highlight. As Steph later commented, it was a perfect recreation. Not only was the impression spot on, so was the audiences response. When the real Emo appears, you get a 50-50 split of people crying with laughter, or just looking confused. Everything was right, the voice, the clothes, and the wig, along with some of Emo's classic material. A triumph.

Callum Cramb gave us some Lee Evans - at times you may think they were separated at birth. You can see why Cal has him as a hero, the two are very similar. He injected a huge amount of energy into proceedings, and as such, did as much as Evans can do.

Finally, Steph took a break from his excellent work as compere, to become the second white-brit-does-black-american-icon as he presented us with Eddie Murphy. Some very pretty work, and loads of energy. The moment he turned around and challenged us not to love his tight ass, you knew it was all good. And just to show he had more strings to his bow, he did some Robin Williams too.

We had great fun performing as our heroes, and the audience had a good old laugh as well. I just can't wait until we do it again next year. Have a Merry non-denominational winter festival period. And God Bless.

12th Dec. Where were you?

A weird one this week. Possibly it was too cold, or maybe everyone is waiting for next week's extravaganza, but only 3 people turned up. And as we'd also had some acts cancel, it was a pretty empty room. Here's the view from the stage at 8.40, when we were starting to get worried...



Here's the 'stage' at 9 when we started the show anyway...



It was actually a nice night, as Al said in his blog...

"Last night at our regular tuesday night gig we had an audience of 3. This has happened approximately 3 times since last March, and it is an artefact of the time of year, and the fact that it was a horrible day outside.

This should have made the night a complete washout, but it didn't. Instead we sat around chatting, moved the mic (which we never used) to the middle of the room, and did the show anyway. It was intimate, interspersed with a lot of interruptions and chat, and was probably the best night I have had at long live comedy."

And it was fun. Al says it was the most enjoyable one yet. And for us it was, without the stress of taking money, queing acts, watching time or even worrying about being funny I had a great night. Of course, maybe sitting around chatting is simply more fun than watching a proper comedy show. That might be why sometimes only 3 people turn up.

Anyway- here are the survivors who made it all the way...

5th December- Movies.

Ian Dennis, BOOZO THE CLOWN!, Guest Compere James Christopher, Sean McLoughlin and Don Moses.

With a few cancellations this week so only 4 acts, we decided to start the show a little later and only have 2 parts rather than 3. James Christopher, our visiting compere from York, was up first. He merged the movies theme with some audience banter, trying to come up with Arnie style 'death puns' based on the crowd's occupations... for a printer 'You have been erased' and for an I.T. support officer (Who's gun has jammed) 'Did you try turning it off and on again?' -It's even funnier in a bad Austrian accent.

Don Moses was up again honing his act and had some more promising material. He was followed by Sean McLoughlin, -only on his second gig (though the first was a 'So you think you're funny' heat) Sean has a nice laid back style. Commenting on the film tie-in album, usually claiming to contain 'music from and inspired by' he asked what songs have been 'inspired by' Big Momma's House 2. We hope to see more of this Newcastle Uni student next year. This section was rounded up by Pete introducing the competition - 'Budget Movies'. His examples of films re-made on the cheap included 'The Empire Strikes' - 90 minutes of Stormtroopers on a picket line, 'We're not finishing this Death Star until management meet our demands!'

Cal took the second part of the show and introduced Boozo the Clown. Another character from Joe (Nolbert Stump) Hope, Boozo is an alcoholic, foul mouthed, inappropriate balloon model making ex-circus clown, forced by a re-start program to try comedy or lose his benefits. How do you follow that? Well, Ian Dennis had a go with his dark brand of humour- though he's not as scary as the picture makes out- have a look at Ian's own comment if it's still on this page. We wrapped up with the competition, and the audience's 'budget films' included...

Alice in Sunderland.
Brewster's Quid.

...and a load more i can't remember having lost my notes. If you remember any, or any other details of the show you think warrant a mention, then please leave a comment.