Wednesday 25th September 2013

Welcome, dear reader, to the first J-blog in quite a while. But we haven’t been resting on our laurels all this time, we’ve been hard at work putting together some really exciting shows for Stafford!

JUICE has recently taken over the comedy nights at Staffordshire University, and Monday night saw our debut show at the Legends venue for Fresher’s Week. To kick things off we’d put together a stellar line-up of comedians, a really first-rate bill.  Headlining this show we had star of Mock The Week and Dave’s One Night Stand, Mr.Gary Delaney!

Gary gave Stafford a very special 45 minute set which included a Sneak Preview of the brand new material he was due to record on Tuesday for Mock The Week!  This was a rare treat for any audience, and we were really excited that Gary wanted to work with us and Stafford Student Union.

We didn’t have just ONE TV star on the bill, we also had the talented Fern Brady as well! Fern is a fast-rising star in the comedy world, and will be appearing on Comedy Central’s Alternative Comedy Experience later in the year.

Paul Savage returned as our resident MC and Compere, continuing the relationship he’s built up with the student audience over the last few years. Also on the bill was the energetic self-help enthusiast Robin Parmiter. Robin previously impressed JUICE at our New Act / New Material Show, and it was great seeing him in front of a large audience.

Although this show was open to the public and promoted to non-students, it’s notoriously hard to get the people of Stafford to come up to the campus. The show was a real bargain, just £5 to see a TV-level Headliner. But alas, the people of Stafford did not make the journey. But not to worry, dear reader, 140 students packed-out the Legends venue until it was standing-room only!

We’ve also been putting together our next show at the newly refurbished MET Studio! On November 1st JUICE returns to The Gatehouse Theatre with a line-up of brilliant comedians. Not only will we have the simply marvelous sketch-troupe Gein’s Family Giftshop, but we’re also having the brilliantly misanthropic Michael J Dolan! Both these acts have just finished up exciting runs at the Edinburgh Festival. Tickets are already available from The Box Office.

Losing Money & Moving Office

We gave you a special BONUS blog at the start of this week (because that’s how much we love you) so you should forgive this week’s J-Blog for being a day late.

This week our friends over at Speakeasy Comedy put on a brilliant show at the Walsall Student Union. It was the first comedy show they’ve ever had and Speakeasy booked an incredible line-up of comics that included crazy-pirate-music-sketch-duo Jollyboat, Scouse comedian Rob Thomas, our very own Rob Halden and was headlined by star of ‘Mock The Week’ & ‘Dave’s One Night Stand’ Gary Delaney! 

Unfortunately for such a stellar line-up, the Union did bugger-all to promote the event. When JUICE rocked up to enjoy this sure-to-be-excellent show, there was only a small handful of students in attendance. Now, for them to have performing for their students a comedian who is currently appearing on the country’s biggest comedy TV show, that is huge! The Union should have put Gary Delaney’s face all over their website, they should have posters and flyers all over the place and they should have been crowing about it to the local papers weeks in advance. Walsall did none of them, and subsequently it appeared as if the gig would have no audience at all.

In the end, the Union sent people all over Halls Of Residence knocking on doors and letting students know what was about to happen. An hour later than the advertised starting time, the Union bar was packed with students eager for comedy. Unfortunately, they had also decided at the last minute to not charge any entrance fee to their punters, thus losing themselves a hefty stack of money.

It turned out to be a great show. Jollyboatwere so good, we’ve signed them up for future gigs in Stafford, and Gary Delaney was excellent. Still, JUICE sat back and scratched our heads at how amateurish and mishandled the whole night had been.

Now those of you who regularly watch our JUICE Tube Channel over on YouTube, will know that last week JUICE HQ had to move offices into what appeared to be a public toilet. Well that was just a temporary situation which has now been rectified. You can check out the brand new JUICE office in the latest JUICE Tube Video below!

We’re also floating the idea of changing one of our weekly features. Every Monday on our Facebook & Twitter sites we run JUICE News! We post ridiculous headlines from news stories that may or may-not exist. Recently though, we’ve been toying with the idea of switching this to JUICE Facts based on how popular our JUICE Tips on a Tuesday have been. It would certainly be easier for our comedians to write, as topical humour is notoriously difficult. If you’ve got an opinion on this, let us know.

Don’t forget that Saturday we run our weekly Caption Contest and on Sunday we’ll put up some of our favourite video & audio comedy clips as part of the Sunday Share. Both of those take place on the JUICE Facebook Page, so you should join in the fun by Liking us!

Gigs & Stats

Recent activity with JUICE saw us run our first “private” function for a social club (that sounds seedy, it wasn’t, we were all fully clothed). We put together a dynamite bill of comedians including the larger-than-life Chris Norton Walker, the dryly sublime Phil Pagett, the energetically entertaining Chris Brooker and the marvelous Tony Jameson as the MC & Compere. Aside from a small technical issue with the microphone at the very end of the evening, this show went really well and the club members enjoyed themselves. If you’d like to arrange a comedy show for a private function, drop us a line.

The new working relationship with Speakeasy Comedy has seen JUICE get involved in a lot of their West Midlands shows this past week. Wolverhampton University had the completely awesome line-up of Andy White, Danny Sutcliffe, Kevin Shevlin and JUICE Favourite Katie Mulgrew on Thursday evening. Whilst three of the above acts were traveling back in a car together, one of them asked for the car to pull over as they felt sick, and then proceeded to run away from the car and the other comedians and leg it all the way back to Wolverhampton to go on a massive drinking binge. Nobody knows why, but thankfully everyone is okay.

Sunday night saw the debut of Paul Savage’s full-length show ‘A Cheerful Shambles’ and the brilliant venue of The Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, Birmingham. The audience was sparse but it was a treat to see the beginnings of Paul putting together an hour-long show. JUICE hopes we can host an performance of Cheerful Shambles in Stafford sometime soon, as Mr. Savage is very popular in the area.

And tomorrow night Speakeasy Comedy brings another excellent line-up of comics to another Student’s Union, this time in Walsall. As well as Rob Thomas, the marvelous sketch troupe Jollyboat will be on the bill along with JUICE Founder Rob Halden. Headlining the show will be Gary Delaney, a comedian audiences will know from his appearances on ‘Mock The Week’ and ‘Dave’s One Night Stand’. Gary is a phenomenal comedian who is really hitting the big time now. This bafflingly brilliant line-up is available for a measly £3 entry fee! Yes, it’s a school night, but it’s still worth the short trip to Walsall to experience this show. If you don’t, then the next time you see Gary Delaney on TV you’ll kick yourself for not making the effort.

We’ll wrap up this short update. We’ll be back on Wednesday with the JUICE Chat interview, and we’ll have our regular J-Blog at the end of the week.