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.

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.

How To Go To The Pub

It’s that festive time of year when decent, honest boozers are plagued by non-drinkers. And not real non-drinkers, not people who don’t ever drink, they’re fine. We’re talking about people who don’t go near a pub for 11 months out of the year, the kind of awful human beings who buy their beer from supermarkets with the weekly shop, people who consume such a laughable quantity of alcohol that they can only be designated as “non-drinkers”.

Whether it’s the Christmas Work’s Do or a Festive Drink With Friends, you are ruining pubs for the rest of us. Everyone hates you. Every actual drinker in the pub hates you and all the serving staff hate you. You’re awful. Here’s a guide on how to not be quite so awful.

[Before we start it’s worth pointing out that this guide is NOT sexist and misogynistic, it’s just that 98% of these things apply almost exclusively to women, because women are so very bad at The Pub]

Do Not Approach The Bar Until You Know What You Want

• The bar is an intricate machine full of seperate-yet-interconnecting cogs. It is NOT the place to think or choose or decide. The engine only works if everyone knows their place and performs their function. Do you hear that collective groan as you ask the Bartender if they’ve got Cranberry Juice? Or as you turn around to ask Barbara what she wants to drink? That groan is you single-handedly sucking life away from your fellow drinkers. Make a decision first, then go to the bar and order what you’ve selected. Just like ANY OTHER FORM OF COMMERCE!

Don’t Start Drinking At 4pm

• You’re NOT a drinker. We haven’t seen you all year. You’re an amature, so don’t start out with a Marathon. You can’t just rock up to the Premier League one day saying “I’m Match Fit, lads!” This is why you’re puking and crying before nine o’clock at night.

You ARE In A Round

• I don’t care who you’re with, how many of you there are or how well you know them. You are in a Round with all the people you came in with. That’s how it works. You see those twenty-five loud, burly, drunken Rugby Players on the other side of the pub? They are a pleasure to serve compared to you. They order eight pints of lager, eight pints of Guiness, six pints of bitter and three Jack Daniels, then they pay the bill in one fell swoop. Your group orders ten drinks one-at-a-time and then pays for them all one-at-a-time as the rest of pub creeps closer to Death’s eternal grasp waiting for you to finish, despite the fact nine of you are drinking the same fucking drink and the last person, THE LAST PERSON, wants a Guiness putting on. Every single person waiting to get served wants your group to die in a complicated house fire.

Know Your Locale

• Look around you. What kind of drinking establishment are you in? Is it a pub or a bar? If there’s 85 lads watching football on the telly, stop trying to be a drunk, flirty attention-whore because it won’t work. If the walls are cluttered with offers of 6 Shots Of Neon Sourz For A Fiver, don’t try asking for that Single Malt whiskey you memorized from Mad Men. Equally, if it’s a pub adorned with wood furnishings and hand-pulls, stop trying to get the Landlord to make that shitty cocktail you saw on Sex And The City.

Look at them, they’re doing it right

Hot Girls Get Served First

• Welcome to Western Civilization.

iPhone Ettiquette

• Okay, the music isn’t great. It’s nothing to write home about. But it’s been specifically selected to offend the least amount of people. It’s background music. If you want anything else, then you want to be at a club or a gig. If, however, you’ve decided to “do the pub a favour” by blaring out a playlist from your iPhone, then you are a cunt. A prize, prize cunt.

Attracting Attention

• Newsflash: You are NOT next. You might have been in the bar queue longer than anybody else, but that doesn’t mean you’re next. Do y’know why? Because there are no Official Rules Of Queueing At The Bar. The Bartender is 100% in charge of who is next. So do not piss them off. Yes, they can see you. You do not need to bang your change on the top of the bar. You do not need to wave your money around in the air, as if you’re the only person in the room with a tenner (unless it’s a Strip Club). You especially do not need to click your fingers like a Parisian Cafe Prick or whistle like a Shepherd herding his flock.  These tactics will only achieve one outcome: no matter how long you’ve been waiting up until this point, you’ve just moved yourself to the back of the queue.

Preferential Treatment

• If an old bloke sat at the bar gets served before you do, and the Bartender knows him by name and even seems to know what he’s drinking before he orders it, just shut the fuck up. That’s Ray. Ray drinks here all the time. Ray drinks here five times a week, every week. Ray’s custom pays the bills. Ray and the other Regulars keep the pub open eleven months of the year whilst you’re having diner parties and bulk-buying booze from the supermarket. Yes, they get preferential treatment. Accept it and shut the fuck up.

Time Is Time

• Pubs don’t stop serving because they hate you (that’s a lie, sometimes they do) or because it’s funny or because they get bored of selling beer. It’s a legal requirement for them to stop serving at a designated time. Once Time is called, they are legally unable to sell anymore beer. You cannot cajole them into selling more, because it’s a legal requirement. You cannot bribe them into selling more, either with the promise of drinks or money, because it’s a legal requirement. You cannot reason or argue them into selling more, because it’s a legal fucking requirement.  “Who’s gonna know? There’s nobody around, I won’t tell anyone.” THAT’S HOW THE HOLOCAUST STARTED!

See you in twelve months, you fucking pricks.

To see the author pouring pints in person, visit The Market Vaults in Stafford.