Comedy Club Line-Up

Next Monday night JUICE will return to the fantastic Market Vaults pub in Stafford with our monthly Comedy Club! This exciting show is a mix of professional comedians testing out new jokes & material, as well as some newer comedians gaining experience. It’s always a fun, unpredictable show from start to finish.

Last month marked our return to The Market Vaults for the first time in two years, and it was a great show. We packed the pub with somewhere between 50 and 60 punters, everyone having a good time. Through out partnership with House Of Bread, we raised £100 for low-income families, vulnerable adults and homeless people across Stafford. The House Of Bread will be back next Monday night and we’re hoping to SMASH £100 and raise even more money!

The line-up of professional comedians for August has been confirmed and we’re very excited about some JUICE Favourites returning to Stafford!

 

Craig Deeley – a stalwart of the Midlands comedy scene, Craig is an experienced, professional comedian who delights audiences with his story-telling style. A true Favourite of JUICE Comedy, Craig has performed at virtually all our venues over the years.

Kate McCabe – a comedian who got her start on the New York comedy circuit, Kate crossed the pond to join the Northern comedy scene in the UK. Adept at both stand-up and improve comedy, we were lucky enough to have Kate perform for us as part of our professional show at The Gatehouse Theatre in June.

 

Harriet Dyer – Energetic, unique and bonkers, Harriet Dyer is a stand-up comedian no audience will forget. JUICE was lucky enough to book Harriet during some of her earliest gigs, but now she regularly performs for major comedy clubs such as The Glee Clubs, The Stand and The Frog & Bucket.

Also on the bill will be Jayne Edwards, Adam Blaize, Graham Wythenshaw and Joe Ross Williams. As ever, this line-up is subject to change.

Monday 3rd August at The Market Vaults, Stafford. The show starts at 8pm, but spaces in the pub are LIMITED so make sure you arrive at 7:30 in order to get a good spot to enjoy the show.

TV Stars

Tonight, as part of BBC 3’s oddly named “Feed My Funny” series, two JUICE Comedy favourites will be airing pilot episodes for their very own TV shows. Both of these brilliant comedians have performed live at our monthly Comedy Club at The Market Vaults and other shows that we’ve produced in-and-around Stafford.

Both these TV pilots premier tonight at 11pm on the BBC iPlayer, but will then be available on-demand at a time and location of your choosing.

Radges

Set in a pupil-referral unit in Scotland, Radges is about a group of teen outcasts trying to survive a small-town. The cast includes Sarah Hadland, whose comedy credentials include everything from Miranda to Green Wing, That Mitchell & Webb Look to Horrible Histories.

The pilot has been written by JUICE Favourite Fern Brady, and is based on her own experiences in a similar pupil-referral unit. Fern first performed for JUICE many years ago at our Comedy Club in the back of a pub, and we were then lucky enough to get Fern on-stage for our big show at The Gatehouse Theatre.

If Fern’s stand-up is anything to go by,  expect Radges to be smart, sharp, original and ever-so-slightly bleak. Here’s a clip.

Funz & Gamez

A bizarre entertainment game show that’s almost definitely for kids! Hosted by Phil Ellis, who’s girlfriend has left him, taken the house and sent him spiralling towards a full-on breakdown. Phil is joined Jim The Elf (on loan from the North Pole), Bonzo The Dog and the very unsavoury Uncle Mick.

Phil Ellis had one of his very first gigs for JUICE at our monthly comedy club and was an instant hit with our audience. One of his memorable performances saw him do the entire gig in a Dominos Pizza uniform from his ‘other job’. We were also lucky enough to have Phil Headline one of our very first professional comedy shows at the old Reynold’s Cellar Bar.

Other performers in Funz & Gamez also include the talented & hilarious Will Duggan & James Meehan, both of whom have gigged numerous times for JUICE in Stafford.

You can expect a unique, creative, anarchic and bonkers comedy show. Here’s a clip.

Both these shows premier at 11pm tonight on the BBC iPlayer, and will be available on-demand after that.

The Homecoming Show

Last night was the Homecoming Show for our Comedy Club at it’s new venue, The Market Vaults and it was a great success! There were a couple of teething problems with the sound and comedian Liam Pickford had to drop out at the last minute, but we packed the venue with a great audience, had a lot of laughs and raised some money for charity.

The response to our Homecoming Show was been brilliant, and we had 50+ excited punters in the building. All the seats were taken, it was standing room only and the rest of the audience crammed themselves into the pub to watch the show.

Chris Norton Walker drove all the way from London to have a prolonged-yet-hilarious argument with virtually the entire audience.

Critically-acclaimed Michael J Dolan explained why he hates himself, hates other people and hates life, and we somehow laughed through all of it.

We also had a last minute replacement in the form of Tom Little, who stepped in to replace Liam Pickford. As replacements go, Tom Little was fantastic. Tom was a Finalist in the BBC Radio New Comedy Awards last year, and earlier this year he won the prestigious Leicester Mercury Comedian Of The Year award.

Tom’s persona is unique, fascinating and hilarious and he had the 50+ audience in the palm of his hand from beginning to end.

As promised, our Homecoming was an exciting, chaotic and funny show. Best of all, the generous audience helped us raise £100 for House Of Bread, giving donations that will help vulnerable adults & low-income families in Stafford.

The next JUICE Comedy Club is on Monday 3rd August at 8pm.

Market Vaults Line-Up

We’re just two weeks away from our Homecoming Show at The Market Vaults, and we couldn’t be more excited!

For those of you who haven’t been to our monthly comedy club before, it’s a great show. We play host to a collection of professional stand-up comedians from all over the country, who come to the heart of Stafford to road-test some brand new jokes and material. The quality of comedians we attract is always high, and we can now exclusively reveal the line-up for 6th July!

Michael J Dolan – the grumpy misanthrope of the stand-up circuit, a comic who levies hilarious negativity at life itself. Michael performs for major comedy clubs such as The Stand, The Frog & Bucket and XS Malarky as well as Headlining our JUICE show at The Gatehouse Theatre. Described as “Skilful humour from the very dark side” by The Sunday Times.

Chris Norton Walker – a prolific comedian and actor, Chris has gigged the length and breadth of the country as well as performing at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles. One of the most-requested comedians we’ve ever had at JUICE, his animated performances & dry delivery are exciting and memorable.

Liam Pickford – one of the most exciting new comedians on the circuit today, Liam’s act is part-anarchic-stand-up & part-alcoholic-breakdown, which has led him to be described at “the new Johnny Vegas” (by us). Liam hates audiences, hates comedy and only does it for the free beer.

Paul Savage – jack-of-all-trades, Savage is a professional comedian, MC & cartoonist. One of the longest-serving comedians at our comedy club, Paul is the Resident MC for all our professional comedy nights. The last night he played our comedy club at Joxer Brady’s, he leaped onto the audience who crowd-surfed him from the back to the front of the building.

Tom Allsopp – a verbose story-telling comedian, Tom had his very first stand-up gig at JUICE and hasn’t looked back since. A firm-favourite with the JUICE audience, Tom is now an accomplished playwright and Champion of BBC game show Pointless.

The show will be hosted by Stafford comedian & JUICE Founder Rob Halden, who will be generally titting around and delivering nonsense.

Exciting comedians, great night out and FREE entry!

Monday 6th July 8pm at The Market Vaults

House Of Bread

One week after announcing our big Homecoming at The Market Vaults on 6th July, we got to make a further announcement this week.

For ten years we’ve been providing Stafford with a monthly grass-roots comedy club for absolutely FREE. Every month comedians come to the heart of Staffordshire to test out new jokes and new material, and the audience get to be a part of that experience with no entry fee, no charge at all.

That’s not going to change. Our monthly comedy club is still absolutely free. But now we’re going to be asking our audience to make a charitable donation.

 

We’re going to be imploring our audiences to make a donation to the House Of Bread, a charity that provides food, hot meals, support & services for low income families, vulnerable adults & the homeless all across Stafford.

In the current climate where governments & councils are cutting services and support for those in need, charities like the House Of Bread are becoming a necessity and a lifeline for a wide spectrum of people. And they need our help.

So, starting Monday 6th July, on The First Monday Of Every Month, JUICE will continue to put on a great stand-up comedy show for absolutely free. But we’ll be asking out audience, as they laugh and enjoy themselves, how much has our show been worth? £8? £5? Do you think our show was worth £3? Whatever you think our show has been worth, however much entertainment you feel we’ve given you for free, please donate that money to the House Of Bread.

Official Volunteers from the House Of Bread will be at our monthly comedy club with their charity boxes for people to donate to directly.

• Maybe you think over the last decade you’ve had £10 worth of free comedy from JUICE – you could donate that.
• Maybe you think our show has been worth a fiver – you could donate that.
• Maybe you’ve got a pocketful of change from buying your last round – you could donate that.

Thanks to our wonderful new venue, The Market Vaults, we’ll be doing this each and every month to try and help people out. And if you don’t have any money to give (because times are tough), House Of Bread will have a Food Bank Collection Box with them where you can donate things like;

• Tinned Fruit
• Biscuits
• Dried Pasta
• Rice
• Toiletries

We’re excited about this new chapter in JUICE and we hope you’ll be able to join us and doing something small to help people in Stafford.

Coming Home

Last night was a HUGE night for JUICE Comedy, as we returned to the Gatehouse Theatre for the first time in over a year. These big, professional shows are so much fun for us. We get to play with a budget, hand-pick our favourite comics from the circuit, bring them to the heart of Stafford and showcase them in what is just a beautiful room for stand-up, The MET Studio.

Every comedian that we book tells us how much they love playing The MET Studio. It’s intimate but not small, with nice, low ceilings for the acoustics and round cabaret tables for the front row. It’s also fantastic to have professional sound & lighting to highlight our comedians and make them the best they can be.

For this show we’d put together one of the strongest line-up of comedians we’ve ever had. Strangely for us, only a handful of tickets were sold in advance for the show. Even 5 days before the event, we’d only sold 40-odd tickets. This caused us a lot of concern, as all our previous shows were three-quarters full weeks in advance and sold-out before the night. As it turned out, three days before the show tickets started flying out the door and we ended up having the BIGGEST ATTENDANCE EVER for a JUICE show!

But it was a stressful month for us when it looked like tickets weren’t selling. Our friends & colleague in the theatre industry tell us that, across the country, people just aren’t buying their tickets in advance and every show comes down to the last 5 days.

Paul Savage returned as our Resident MC, holding the show together & warming the audience up. Paul has a natural ability to engage people and draw them into the event. His audience interaction is brilliant and sets the perfect tone for the rest of the night.

First on the bill was Freddy Quinne, a comedian who has earned a reputation for being one of the most entertaining and exciting MC’s on the circuit and is gaining lots of attention on the circuit. Freddy actually had his first ever gig as a comedian for JUICE Comedy five years ago, so was it great to welcome him back now as a true professional.

In the middle of the show we had Kate McCabe, a stand-up who began her comedy career in America and who now has a great reputation on the English comedy circuit. Kate brought her background in Improv and physical comedy with her, performing some very memorable physical routines.

Also in the middle section was Hannah Silvester. Hannah has performed for JUICE at our grass-roots comedy club, and we’ve seen her numerous times at new material night, but it was great to showcase her on a professional stage. Hannah possesses a unique voice in the comedy world, delivering brilliant routines on middle-class domesticity and some excellent musical comedy.

Headlining the show for us was the wonderful Danny Buckler. Danny is a comedian with such a high-level of talent that we’re constantly amazed he isn’t on the telly every week. The show so far had been good, but Danny took it to another level and made the show great. The audience was laughing so much and so hard that twice when Danny tried to wrap things up, the audience wouldn’t let him and begged for more (which Danny was happy to give).

In the middle of all this came a special announcement from JUICE Founder Rob Halden. As you wil know, Dear Reader, out monthly comedy club became homeless two months ago when cafe/bistro Number 15 was suddenly & unexpectedly closed down. For the first time in 10 years JUICE was homeless, with no venue for our monthly grass roots comedy club. But last night Rob Halden announced that JUICE had found a new home. Or, more accurately, an old home.

On Monday 6th July JUICE Comedy will return to the venue where it all began, the pub formerly known as Joxer Brady’s, but now currently the successful and popular bar The Market Vaults!

We’ve incredibly excited to return to our spiritual home, which has improved drastically since the last time we were there! The pub has a completely new lease on live with a refurbishment, wider selection of beers, some of the best food in town and a commitment to live music.

We think The Market Vaults is going to bring us a brand new audience and this chapter in JUICE is going to be the best one yet!

Sunday Share

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

Sunday Share

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

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!