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.

Wednesday 19th December 2012

JUICE suffered some technical difficulties this week when we were left without internet connection for days, which meant that Episode Two of JUICE News didn’t get posted. Since it’s a topical web-show, we won’t be posting it a week late. There’s nothing worse than comedians telling old jokes that nobody cares about anymore. But we’ll be shooting a new episode this week so look out for that later in the week!

Last week we finished off our comedy year by hosting a special show for Paul Savage. Regular readers will know that Paul Savage has been working with JUICE Comedy for quite a few years now, and he’s the Resident Compere for our shows at The Gatehouse Theatre. Paul has been a stand-up comic for over five years now, and has crafted his very first full-length comedy show called ‘A Cheerful Shambles’. JUICE was in audience when this show debuted at the Birmingham Comedy Festival earlier this year and snapped up the chance to put the show on in Stafford for our comedy fans here.

This is the first full-length comedy show that JUICE has had the opportunity to put on, so we decided to keep the guest list exclusive rather than leave it open to the public. We advertised the show just to our loyal JUICE Followers and got a great response the real fans of comedy that live in Stafford. There was a great atmosphere in Number 15 on Thursday night as the audience was made up of people who have supported JUICE Comedy all year round.

The show itself was brilliant. Paul Savage really matured and evolved as a performer during the hour-long set. Paul’s rambling journey through a series of embarrassing life events really took root with the audience. Crucially, Paul was able to do what all great headlining comics should be able to do. Namely, create spontaneous moments of comedy gold with the audience, moments that exist separately from the planned material but don’t detract from it. These are one-off moments that the audience can see and feel are happening spontaneously and just for them. Not only are these moments fun, but they elevate the rest of the planned material in the show by adding a real truth to the routines and jokes. Paul connected with the audience by showing the truth of his character . . . that of a very silly, neurotic and borderline autistic man with a small mouth.

It was fantastic to see Paul, who does the majority of his work for JUICE as a compere and MC, hold an audience for a full-hour and get belly laughs and applause-breaks from them throughout. After the show, Rob Halden brought Paul back onto the stage to do a Q&A session with the audience, which allowed Paul to go through another ten minutes of routines he’d left out of the main show.

We received a plethora of great feedback from audience members, and it was a lovely way for JUICE to close the calender year. But even as 2012 draws to a close, we’re busy making BIG plans for 2013! We’re looking for more ways we can make you laugh next year with some brand new projects. Earlier in the year the J-blog announced that our very own comic-strip will be starting in 2013. Check out a sneak peak of JUICE Comix!

This week JUICE commenced plans to bring a host of original articles and blogs from some of your favourite JUICE comedians right here to this very WordPress site!  We’re giving an open-platform to these very talented comedians to create funny and original content exclusively for YOU, our beloved JUICE Followers! Two names attached to the project so far include the hilarious Jayne Edwards and the hysterical Kiri Pritchard-McLean!

So whilst we’re winding down for 2012 don’t think there’ll be a lack of updates here, or at juicecomedy.co.uk We’ll still have the weekly Podcast show with Rob & Neil and (technology allowing) a new episode of JUICE News for you to digest before the New Year.

To all of you out there who have come along and enjoyed one of our comedy shows in 2012 we want to say thank you for supporting grass-roots comedy and local entertainment in Stafford. Onward & upward for 2013!

Return Of The J-Blog!

First of all, appologies for the lack of WordPress activity in the last few weeks. Since JUICE Comedy launched our weekly radio show on Stafford FM, we’ve been seriously over-taxed and over-worked.

But the good news is that the brand new radio show has been a huge success! By broadcasting between 10 p.m. and Midnight the show is able to get away with a lot more “near-the-knuckle” jokes and adult subject matters. The response to shift in attitude has been overwhelmingly positive. Stafford FM are reported to be very happy with the pairing of Neil Reading & Rob Halden as the regular presenters of the show. The programme features all the latest news and controversies from the world of comedy, interviews and chats with top stand-up comedians as well as classic and hilarious clips.

One of the great new features added to Late Night JUICE is the studio audience. Once a fortnight, during the live show, we assemble a small group of fans (or the JUICE Cartel as some people insist on calling them) and pack them into the studio to watch proceedings. There’s nothing quite like the excitement of a live broadcast, and the audience add a fantastic atmosphere to the live show, bringing it more in line with a stand-up performance. If you would like to be part of the studio audience, drop us a line!

Friday 14th saw JUICE take over The MET Studio once again, almost a year to the day since we began our working partnership with The Gatehouse Theatre. To celebrate, we booked two of the very first comedians to ever perform for JUICE Comedy, nearly a decade ago. In the last few years both Craig Deeley and Andy Kind have gone from strength-to-strength and enjoyed ongoing success in the comedy world. It was nice that JUICE has also grown a bit in the last decade, and now reached a level where we can bring these old friends to a wider audience and a larger stage.

As each of the acts arrived, the giddy excitement of seeing old friends grew and grew in the backstage area. Comedians who have performed with each other time and again all over the country, trading road stories and tales of bad gigs.

Craig Deeley was our choice to open the show. Craig’s mixture of double entendre, regional accents and family stories, roots him firmly in comedy’s grand history of Music Hall and provides entertainment for literally everyone in the audience.

Jayne Edwards was a huge hit for us at Cocktails & Comedy earlier in the year. Her well-crafted comedic persona is a mix of clueless buffoon and delusional ego-maniac. Jayne’s closing set-piece had audience members in fits and tears.

Billy MacGuire is a veteran of the circuit who, in our minds, has never been given the opportunities he deserves. Billy’s gaelic lilt casts a spell over audience members, and they hang on his every word. When interviewing audience members after the show, almost everyone said that Billy was their favourite act of the night.

Andy Kind delivered the kind of assured and confident comedic routine that JUICE has come to expect from him. Over the years we’ve been privileged to see Andy mature as a performer, and if he is not now at his absolute peak then he’s not far off it. He mixed up his prepared set with some brilliant audience interactions, entertaining the audience for over 40 minutes (yet it felt like he could have continued all night long).

MC & Compere Paul Savage once again proved why he’s our resident host for The MET Studio gigs. Paul immediately put the audience at ease, settling everybody in by joking around with them rather than firing jokes at them. The Ushers working at the theatre effused praise on Paul during the intermission, telling us what an excellent host he is. And they were right.

We’re hoping to get back to our full internet schedule of providing silly distractions for you guys, all week long. Wednesday will see the return of JUICE Chat as we sit down with the hardest working comic in Britain today, Chris Norton Walker. There’ll also be a brand new video for JUICE Tube! So make sure you keep coming back for more JUICE!