Wednesday 17th July 2013

Last night our Season of Edinburgh Previews concluded with two more excellent full-length comedy shows. The quality of these comedy shows has been very high, comedy fans and casual punters alike have been full of praise for all the performers and their shows in the build-up to Edinburgh. Last night was no different.

One big road block occurred a fortnight before the event, when scheduled performer Dan Nightingale had to drop out. Dan is a comedian in such high demand that he was suddenly offered some very high-profile work for Channel 4. This was obviously an opportunity that Dan could not pass up, and we really hope we’ll be able to showcase him in Stafford in the near future because he’s an excellent comic.

One show down left us in a tricky spot, but luckily we were able to book in the sketch troupe Gein’s Family Giftshop. Comprised of talented performers James Meehan, Kath Hughes and Ed Easton, this trio have been causing a real stir on the Northern comedy circuit and JUICE has been eager to see their act for months.

Audience numbers weren’t quite what we’d hoped for, but the punters we did have in were a lovely, eager lot of laughers. The comedians were all delayed by traffic, which meant that MC Rob Halden had to fill quite a bit of time. He did this by pulling a reluctant volunteer out of the audience and creating a shambolic bit of improv sketch comedy that was cheerfully bad but got everyone involved and laughing.

The first part of the Previews came courtesy of JUICE Award-Winner Kiri Pritchard-McLean. Kiri’s is a show of bitter-sweet anecdotes about childhood and relationships, relayed with a dry wit that’s just this side of sardonic. It’s a show peppered with some well-crafted dark punchlines that are nicely set amongst some more life affirming stories. Kiri also has a natural talent for performing, and these small physical touches add greatly to the material.

Gein’s Family Giftshop were the final act in our Edinburgh Season, the first sketch group JUICE has hosted, and they were absolutely fantastic. Short, sharp sketches that delivered more jokes-per-minute than most stand-up on today’s circuit. The sketches are inventive and enthralling, with some very clever deconstruction at work that, crucially, didn’t go over anybody’s head. Press releases have labelled the act as being “dark” but there’s far too many laughs and giggles for this to be taken to heart. There are big punchlines, hilarious little lines and some excellent performances.

All three members of Gein’s display sublime comedy timing, fully-committed acting that snares the audience and really gets them believing in the characters and scenarios before it’s all undercut by the big jokes and funny endings.

The audience absolutely loved this show and were raving about it at the bar afterwards and later that night on Facebook & Twitter. JUICE are already eagerly awaiting the next time we can bring this excellent sketch troupe back to Stafford. In the meanwhile, we highly recommend seeing them at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Sunday Share

The Sunday Share this week is the precisely funny Henning Wehn performing for the BBC!

Weekend Guide

Friday Night – Marcel Lucont at Lost Theatre, South London

Easily the best French comedian on the UK circuit! Marcel is an inventive act full of miserable, dry wit that best typifies the staples of British humour, personified in this over-the-top Gallic caricature.
Tickets just £10 – 8pm show time

Saturday Night – Joe Lycett, Danny McLoughlin & Keith Carter at Liverpool Slaughterhouse

Joe Lycett’s meteoric rise to fame has seen him win numerous Best Newcomer and Breakout Star awards, before becoming a panelist on BBC1’s prime-time TV show Epic. See him live alongside the brilliant Danny McLoughlin and Keith Carter for a pittance of a ticket price!
Tickets £15 – 8pm show time

Sunday All Day – Patrick Monahan, Gary Delaney, Dan Nightingale, Alfie Moore, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre & Silky at Sheffield New Barrack Tavern

A jam-packed all day event featuring some brilliant stand-up comedians as well as some inventive and exciting Sock Puppet Theatre! And because all these acts are warming up for the Edinburgh Festival, you can see ALL these preview shows for just £6! Six pounds for all day! You’d be mad not to!
Entry just £6 – starts 1:30pm runs all day

 

Weekend Guide

Here’s the JUICE Guide to some of the best stand-up comedy showing around the country this weekend!

Friday Night – Bush Hall, Shepherds Bush, London
Stewart Lee, Tony Law & Daniel Simonsen

This glorious old venue hosts a stunning line-up tonight. The comedian’s comedian, Stewart Lee is gearing up for his Edinburgh stint, so don’t be surprised to see some of that new show creep into his performances over the weekend. Lee is joined by the stunningly unpredictable Tony Law, who admirably blends improv. clowning with surreal concepts.  Also on the bill is award-winning Norwegian comic Daniel Simonsen, who’s off-kilter, European-flavoured stand-up has won him numerous accolades in a short space of time.
Tickets are £16.50 and are still available

Saturday Night – Queen’s Square, Bristol
Adam Buxton, Omid Djalili, Sean Walsh, Mark Oliver & Arthur Smith

The Bristol Comedy Garden continues this year with two comedy shows back-to-back. The first is a special presentation of the best of Adam Buxton’s show ‘Bug’. Buxton will present his favourite videos and comments from the recent BFI shows. In the second show, Omid Djalili, Mark Oliver & Sean Walsh will be performing on a bill hosted & MC’ed by the legendary Arthur Smith.
The event takes place on the beautiful lawns of the Queen’s Square in the heart of Bristol, underneath a Big Top.
Tickets cost between £18.50 and £24 – click here for more details

Sunday Night – The Cannon, Newton Pagnall
Gary Delaney Edinburgh Preview

The most quotable comedian on the circuit will be previewing his brand new Edinburgh Show on Sunday night. Delaney is a regular guest on Mock The Week and has also brought his razor-sharp comedy to Dave’s One Night Stand. His last last Edinburgh show sold-out every single night of the festival and received numerous 4 & 5 Star Reviews. Get in on the ground-floor and see his next show develop for the bargain-price of just £4!
Grab your tickets now!

Wednesday 3rd July 2013

 
This week featured the end of an era for JUICE, as we bid farewell to Joxer Brady’s, our original venue and the home of our monthly New Act / New Material Show. JUICE began life at Joxer’s eight-and-a-half years ago when Neil Reading & Rob Halden started dicking around in the back of a pub. From their it grew into a well-respected performance space for stand-up comics, and acted as the launching-pad for JUICE to move into bigger venues and more diverse shows.

With Joxer Brady’s going through a change of management it felt like the perfect time for JUICE to move away from running shows in pubs. So to bid farewell to Joxer’s we assembled some of our favourite performers for a final show. It ended up being a wild and unpredictable evening of beautiful grass-roots stand-up.

As ever the night was hosted by Neil Reading & Rob Halden, who have started to compliment each other well as co-comperes. Rob spouts off near non-stop ranting, which gives Neil time to work on considered and funny interjections. Some of the high points of their MC’ing involved picking on a young lad on the front table who worked in a Particle Accelerator, chatting to a local author about her latest novel, and the constant mocking of Paul Savage.

The show kicked off with Chris Norton Walker, who immediately started pulling people out of the audience and getting them to stand on the stage. With no explanation of what he was doing, Chris sent punter after punter up onto the stage. He then arranged them like a football team taking a group photo, and had Rob Halden lie across the knees of the lads crouching at the front. Once this was all over, Chris revealed that his ten minutes was up and left the stage after not telling a single joke, but receiving a great deal of laughs.

Craig Deeley returned things to normal next, bedding the audience in before trying out some new material. Craig is consistently one of the funniest people on Social Media, following him pays endless dividends, and it was interesting to see how these observations and one-liners translated from the screen to the Microphone.

Billy McGuire is one of the longest serving comedians to perform for JUICE. He’s been with us since the early days, performed for us in a muddy tent at Stafford Castle and on the lovely stage of The Gatehouse Theatre. Billy’s affable act was wistful, funny and charming.

Closing the first section of the bill was Johnny Sorrow, an absolute legend on the West Midlands comedy circuit. When introducing him, Rob Halden tried to lay-in Johnny’s backstory and create an air of uncertainty in the audience (something which Johnny’s act feeds off). But the crowd knew exactly who was coming on stage and the cheers and applause for him was deafening. Despite Johnny’s act being largely the same as the last few times JUICE has seen him, Johnny never seems to get apathetic with his delivery and always throws in something different into each performance. The people in the audience who had never seen Johnny before were quickly swept up in waves of giddy laughter that everyone else was experiencing. The audience began chanting along with Johnny’s catchphrases, egging him on to the next punchline that they all knew in advance. It would have been impossible to leave Joxer Brady’s without having Johnny Sorrow on the bill.

We came out of the break with “The G’vnor” Dave Dinsdale in fine form. It’s been a while since Dinzy has played for JUICE, but he really threw himself into this performance with energy and vigor. As well as his tried and tested material, Dave brought out some new jokes to JUICE and these contained some absolute gems we’re still thinking about today.

The Men With Bananas were a late addition to this show, mainly because they’ve stopped gigging. We’d assumed that they’d moved on with their lives and were no longer available. Luckily a message or two on Facebook ensured that this unconventional double-act reunited for the first time in two years just for JUICE! The Bananas were a big part of our early days at Joxer Brady’s and it was really special to have them back. Their larger-than-life act is full of silliness, songs, props and audience interaction. These are an act that really should have made it big on the major Festivals and would be right at home with a spot on BBC3’s Live At The Electric.

Following a second break, Paul Savage was due to be introduced. The problem with this is that Rob Halden and Paul Savage are very good friends, which means that whenever Rob is supposed to introduce Paul, he just repeatedly fucks with him. Earlier in the show Rob had shared a number of stories at Paul’s expense, and now he stole Paul’s T-shirt and used it to mock him. Paul swaggered on stage, yelled that he’d be doing this gig for eight years and didn’t want to do any jokes. “All of you, put your hands up and move into the middle. I am going to Crowd Surf you!”

Now, the above sounds like a funny way to start off a set. A wild and outrageous demand that the comedian will soon move on from. However, this was not Paul Savage’s plan. Instead, he leapt into the waiting arms of the audience and literally crowd-surfed! The audience held Paul up high and carried him across the length of the pub, depositing him safely on his feet! Savage then yelled “I’m not doing any fucking jokes!” and promptly left the pub to a thunderous applause.

Tom Allsopp had the unenviable task of having to follow that spectacle, with an audience now giddy after what they all just got involved in. He made a very good accounting of himself with some witty stories and presented a poem that was extremely well written and managed to be both funny and touching at the same time, without one disparaging the other.

The final comedian on the bill was the first ever comedian on the bill, Lovdev Barpaga bringing things full circle. Since first performing for us nearly nine years ago, Lovdev has gone on to make regular appearances at The Glee Club and The Comedy Store. Having Lovdev closed out our time at Joxer’s was very fitting.

When all was said and done, Neil & Rob sung a bad but enthusiastic version of ‘Send In The Clowns’ and the lovely audience indulged them with a standing ovation. What was perhaps most pleasing was to see so many comedians from the circuit in the audience. Comics who were scheduled to perform, but had just showed up to raise and glass and mark the occasion.

So it’s onwards and upwards for JUICE! On Monday 5th of August we relocate the monthly New Act / New Material Show to Number 15 on Greengate Street in Stafford town centre. A lovely bistro that will be more suited to our needs, and to the needs of our audience. The layout will be better, the arrangement of chairs will be much better for everyone’s viewing pleasure. We won’t have to deal with any disturbance from pub drinkers who aren’t there for the comedy. All-in-all it’ll be a much better experience for all.

To kick things off in style at our new venue, as well as the regular bout of new comedians finding their feet and some established veterans testing out new material, we’ve hired top professional comic Andy White to deliver a Headline set and close the show! Andy is a highly experience comic who regularly performs for all the major comedy clubs including The Glee Club, Jongleurs and The Comedy Store! We’re really excited about working with Andy and we hope you’ll join us as we start this new chapter in Stafford comedy!

Sunday Share

This week’s Sunday Share is the talented and marvelous
Boy With Tape On His Face at The Royal Variety Performance!

Top Tips

Every Tuesday on our Social Media sites, we bring you the very best tips for living your life!

JUICE Tip!
Prison Wardens. Improve your performance statistics by not allowing ANY cakes into the jail at all. Birthday or no birthday.

JUICE Tip!
Graffiti artists. Not enough time to spray what you want on walls? Buy some bricks, spray-paint them at home, then simply build a wall.

JUICE Tip!
Avoid intrusive Paparazzi by never actually becoming famous. Dodge success at all costs!

JUICE Tip!
No credit to text? Simply order a pizza and have it delivered to your friend’s house with a message arranged on it in cheese and ham.

JUICE Tip!
Confuse elderly relatives by going to their house every day and insisting that it’s your weekly visit.

JUICE Tip!
Do you enjoy hot crumpets but don’t enjoy the cost of cooking hot crumpets? Avoid pricey gas & electricity bills by inserting a series of lit matches into all of the crumpet’s tiny holes.

JUICE Tip!
Do you have a surplus of sugar in the house? Have an extension built, then the builders will take care of all your sugary woes!

JUICE Tip!
Put too much water in your kettle when making a cup of tea? Simply boil the kettle repeatedly until you’ve got the right amount.

JUICE Tip!
Instead of buying car insurance AND cat insurance, save money by leaving your cat in the car at all times, classing it as ‘Contents’.

JUICE Tip!
Air-Guitarists. Save money by down-sizing to an Air-Ukulele!

JUICE Tip!
Women. Wash your hair in the morning-time. That way you won’t have to keep turning people down for dates.

JUICE Tip!
Worm breeders. Instead of spending money on all those expensive female worms, simply cut your male worms in half.

JUICE Tip!
Hipsters. Instead of using Instagram, simply flood your photograph with terrible, orange light until the image is ruined.

JUICE Tip!
Parents. Save money by ripping the wings off a butterfly and leaving them under your child’s pillow. As they wake, inform them that they ate the Tooth Fairy in their sleep.

JUICE Tip!
Has some little oik smashed your window with their football? Simply super-heat some sand, limestone, dolomite etc., then super-freeze the mixture to sub-zero temperatures and voila! A brand new sheet of glass!

JUICE Tip!
Create your own darts board on a budget by nailing a pizza to the wall. Pepperonis are Doubles and little chunks of ham are Triples.

JUICE Tip!
Avoid Jet-Lag when you finish your holiday by flying for three hours in the opposite direction!

JUICE Tip!
Encourage yourself to save cash. Anytime you put a sum of money in the bank, reward yourself with a personalized & engraved trophy!

JUICE Tip
Super-Heroes. Stop worrying about fatal battles with your arch-nemesis, as any death you do experience will only last 12 to 15 months.

JUICE Tip!
Gamblers. Convince other players that you have really bad cards by wincing crying and then quitting the game.

JUICE Tip!
Out of bacon? Simply cut thin slices off a joint of Gammon. No Gammon? Simply squeeze together 50 slices of ham.

JUICE Tip!
Batman. Preserve your secret identity by NOT being a famous billionaire everyone would recognise without a mask.

JUICE Tip!
If you can’t find a spoon, simply hold a fork under a naked flame until all the prongs melt together.

JUICE Tip!
For a morning pick-me-up, try Meth Amphetamine. Whilst not as strong as Starbucks Double-Shot Espresso, it is significantly cheaper.

JUICE Tip!
Clowns. Instead of terrifying the people you’re supposed to be entertaining, why not find a more suitable role. Such as serial killer or rapist.

JUICE Tip!
Turn a potato waffle into a meal but inserting croutons into its square-holes.

JUICE Tip!
Spies. Blend in to your surrounding by not wearing long, conspicuous trenchcoats. Try a fleece.

JUICE Tip!
During an Earthquake, jump up and down to minimize the risk of injury by being in the air more.

JUICE Tip!
Superman. Stop squeezing coal and turning it into diamonds to impress all the ladies, as this destabilizes the economy.

JUICE Tip!
Dip a dummy in Brandy to soothe a crying baby. If they’re hurt, use four-fingers of Bourbon.

JUICE Tip!
Never tell intergalactic smugglers the odds. They’re not keen on it.

JUICE Tip!
Boots, The Chemist. Save money on your shop signs by shortening them to just say “Boots”. We all know that you’re a chemist.

JUICE Tip!
Remember someone’s name by writing a song about them. The more popular the song is in the charts, the more likely you are to remember them.

JUICE Tip!
Unemployed? Remember, homeopathy requires no knowledge or skill whatsoever! Hand onion-water to idiots and take their money!

JUICE Tip!
Women can add an extra seven years to their lives by not writing “u look gorge babes!” on every single photo they see on Facebook.

JUICE Tip!
Give yourself a long weekend by furiously quitting your job Friday morning, then re-applying for it on Tuesday under a pseudonym & false beard.

JUICE Tip!
Students. Why not spend all day in Starbucks even if you DON’T like coffee? You can split a Frappachino between nine of you, and then occupy all the comfy seats!

JUICE Tip!
Appreciate your home and possessions more by declaring yourself bankrupt and living as a tramp for ten years.

JUICE Tip!
Transform your cordless phone into a “mobile” phone by moving house a lot.

JUICE Tip!
Parents. Instead of buying your child that expensive Transformer toy, simply buy them a toy car AND a toy robot. Their imagination will do the rest.

JUICE Tip!
Employees of The Daily Planet. Consider a new profession. ‘Investigative Journalism’ is not your strong suit.

JUICE Tip!
Kids love a surprise. Buy them a Kinder Egg and tell them they’re adopted.

JUICE Tip!
Managers. Improve productivity by keeping a lion in your office. No one wants a dressing-down from Mr. Fuzzy Claws.

JUICE Tip!
Private Detectives. If business isn’t going well, start having affairs with married women.

JUICE Tip!
Avoid that summer-time Hosepipe Ban by connecting a series of Calippo lolly tubes to your outside tap.

JUICE Tip!
Wannabe Headbangers. Practice at home with soft-jazz and light head-wobbling before moving on to the hard stuff.

JUICE Tip!
If you can’t afford Alphabetti Spaghetti, simply cut your Spaghetti Hoops on one side and then twist into your desired letter.

JUICE Tip!
Criminals. Whilst Batman has a strict policy against using guns, he’s apparently fine with missiles, tanks & weaponized helicopters. So be careful.

JUICE Tip!
Crazy people. Put a slug in your ear to convince people you’ve got Blue Tooth. Then you can talk bollocks to yourself all day long without fear of judgement.

JUICE Tip!
Mobsters. Increase the fear of your cartel by taking credit for genuine ‘accidents’. People will pay through the nose to avoid being struck by lightning.

JUICE Tip!
If you need to borrow £1 from a stranger for your bus-fare home, try telling them you want it for Smack.

JUICE Tip!
Pirates. Instead of burying all your money on desert islands, why not spend it on things?

JUICE Tip!
If you want to keep your place in the book you’re reading, tear out the page, fold it in half and leave it in place as a sort of “book mark”.

JUICE Tip!
Parents. Instill in your children a firm belief in “God” and then, technically, you’re never leaving them unattended!

JUICE Tip!
Make bananas by removing them from the peel before reaching the check-out.

JUICE Facts!

Monday is full of JUICE Facts over on our Social Media sites! So Follow us on Facebook & Twitter for some essential trivia!

Sunday Share

This week’s Sunday Share features the marvelous Phil Ellis! You can see Phil LIVE in Stafford on Tuesday night, when he brings a Preview of his Edinburgh Show to Number 15! Contact us for tickets!

Thursday 6th June 2013

Well, Dear Reader, we’ve been extremely busy these last few weeks, with a big show at the Gatehouse Theatre, our penultimate grassroots comedy night at Joxer Brady’s and preparation for next Tuesday’s Edinburgh Previews! This edition of the J-blog will take you behind-the-curtain!

Last Friday night we returned to The MET Studio with a really brilliant line-up of comedians. We love these shows, we get to gather our favourite comedians together and share them with the rest of Stafford. It’s a genuine joy to put these excellent comedians on in a brilliant room like The MET, in front of a lovely audience who are enthusiastic about stand-up comedy.

Opening the show was Katie Mulgrew, a talented and engaging storyteller who we’ve been trying to book for years! Katie performed a number of times at our New Act / New Material Night in Joxer Brady’s, and even took part in our ill-fated, grimey gigs at The Bird In Hand. Since then we’ve had Katie on the books to perform at a number of gigs, but fate and ill-health over the years conspired against us, and it never came to be. So this time, when Katie came down with the flu mid-week we were convinced it was the universe conspiring against us! But Katie fought on like a trooper and performed for us, snot-and-all. She was the perfect act to bring the audience together, warm them all up and kick the show off with aplomb.

Also on the bill was new comic by the name of Graham Milton. Graham is just getting his start in stand-up, but we’ve been really impressed by his smart and funny material. When he arrived at the theatre, Graham confessed that he’d died at a pub-gig the previous night and was very nervous. We reassured him that The MET would be very different from a belligerent pub audience. It was rewarding to give Graham the chance to have a really good gig just 24 hours after having a really crappy gig. Graham took to the stage and was really on-form, winning the audience and earning big laughs.

Our Headline Act for the night was the very talented Danny Deegan. JUICE first saw Danny on a bill in Saltaire, then again at The Comedy Store in Manchester, and we’ve wanted to book him ever since. A swaggering, entertaining performer, Danny is a comedian at the top of his game and really delivered for us.

But perhaps the star turn of the night came from Fern Brady. Fern is an act who came highly recommended to JUICE by Kiri Pritchard-McLean, a comedian and producer who really knows her shit when it comes to stand-up. Fern performed for us last year at Cocktails & Comedy, but since then she has really evolved and improved as a comic. Whilst her caustic wit is as sharp ever, her delivery has become deft. Fern has also devoleped the ability to bring the audience alongside as she cuts various figures and institutions down to size. Rather than feeling like a comedian ranting at the listener, Fern puts her arm around the audience’s shoulders and takes them with her through her performance.

As ever, Paul Savage returned as our Host & Compere. Paul is able to forge a bond with virtually any audience over the course of a comedy show, and this has only been heightened by making him the Resident MC for all our shows at The MET. Paul’s natural warmth is a huge asset to any comedy night. He wants the audience to have a good time and manages to perfectly convey that onstage.

Click here for an alternative review of the evening by the Staffordshire Newsletter.

Monday night was our penultimate New Act / New Material Night at Joxer Brady’s, and it was chock-full of talent. The talented Aaron Twitchen delivered a new routine in preparation of his Edinburgh Show in a month’s time. Rob Kemp returned to deliver another deconstruction of stand-up. Kemp is a young, unpolished comic who is developing a very interesting voice in the world of comedy, certainly one JUICE is keeping a close eye on.

Being our second-to-last show at our homeground, we put the feelers out to any old friends who have gone on to great success who might want to return. Matt Tiller did a number of performances for JUICE in our early days, and even took part in one of our shows at the down-and-dirty Bird In Hand. Since then Matt has gone on to have great success, taking two acclaimed shows to the Edinburgh Festival before segueing into an even bigger career. Matt has become a TV producer and director, developing a number of shows for television and working as the Executive Producer on BBC 2’s Hebburn. We were thrilled when Matt agreed to return to his roots and give us a special performance of his old set.

Sadly this entire first section of three comedians was mirred by a group of noisy customers on the other side of pub, who merriment was drowning out the comedy for a number of the audience. There was nothing malicious about the group in question, they weren’t trying to derail the show, it was just an unfortunate consequence of running a comedy night in the back of pub.

After a short break the noisy group left and the show ran much more smoothly. Dave Pitt and Jack Kirwan had nice turns (both are developing their styles), Rob Thomas had to put down a couple of loud chatters at the bar but did so with aplomb. Chris McIlroy came across with great stage presence and seems to have put a lot of work into his persona.

James Hately finished the show off with a wonderful piece of surreal comedy, throwing dozens of unique and interesting ideas at the audience in a small space of time. James is always a beautiful counter-point to a succession of traditional stand-ups, and a nice way to end the evening.

It’s certainly going to be sad when we have our final ever comedy night at Joxer Brady’s on 1st July, and it’s certainly going to be strange when we start running the monthly show over at Number 15. However, the change of venue will allow us to improve the show and correct some of the issues that have cropped up over the years. For example, at Number 15 the only people in the venue will be the audience that we bring to it. So never again will we have a noisy group of other customers spoiling the show for the audience.

Speaking of Number 15, we’re back there on Tuesday night with the second of our exciting Edinburgh Preview Shows. Talented professional comedians Phil Ellis and Katie Mulgrew will both be bringing their solo shows to Stafford on the way up to the world’s biggest arts festival in Edinburgh. Click here to find out more!