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.

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!

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.

Thursday 6th December 2012

Monday night was the blockbuster  JUICE-A-Nanny show in which we celebrated eight years of being in the comedy world, and the J-blog has got a full gig-report for you!

JUICE-A-Nanny Year 8

Venue: Joxer Brady’s, Stafford

Line-up: Harriet Dyer, Michael J. Dolan, Billy McGuire, Paul Savage, Dr. Joseph Ettrick-Hogg, Lou Chawner, Phil Pagett, Dave Dinsdale, Tom Allsopp, The Man Called WudWud

For the first time ever the show was hosted by both Neil Reading & Rob Halden doing dual MC’ing. This meant the hosting of the show had a lot in common with their weekly radio show on Stafford FM. It was so much fun we can’t think why they haven’t done it before. Rob and Neil will be the first to admit that they’re not the best Comperes in the world, and whilst they did stumble down a couple of blind alleys and let the energy in the room drop from time to time, there was some great natural banter between them and a lot of laughs were had with the two of them on stage together (which is more than can be said for when they Compere on their own…just saying, guys!).

With the new start time of 8 pm, not all comedians could arrive in time for the start of the show. This meant that the running order of comics could not be fully fleshed out beforehand. We had to arrange the first section of the show based around whoever was in the building, and then leave the rest of the planning for when the other acts had arrived. Usually when booking the New Act/New Material Show we have to pay special attention to which acts are a bit wet behind the ears and make sure they are complimented on the bill by the more seasoned performers, making sure that a section opens with confidence (to set up the section for all the other acts) and then ends with a bang (to make sure the punters come back after the break). But with this line-up of really great comedians it was difficult to place them in a running order, because they were all so good!

Paul Savage took the bullet and went on first. He carried a lot of nice energy with him on the stage and immediately carried out some good audience interraction with a blue-haired girl in the front row called Siobhan (more on her later). When Paul allows himself to slip into his “angry rant at the world” mode, he is truly brilliant and funny and it makes you wish he did it more. Paul’s new material really found some gold with his bit on Post Apocalypse Observational Comedy. Yes, it’s as crazy as it sounds but it’s beautiful, funny stuff that the audience loved! Paul was worried that this material would only appeal to comedians, but a number of audience members said it was their favourite part of the night.

 Harriet Dyer’s new material was more embarrassing-yet-true stories from her life, which included being egged by a stag party on the streets of Manchester. Whilst Harriet herself is a zany and anarchic performer, she manages to convey the truth in her stories that connect with the audience and make the stories funny. Harriet made numerous spontaneous tangents from her set to interact with the audience, which did, unfortuneately distract from the flow and the narrative.

Next up was Dr. Josephine…we mean Joseph Ettrick-Hogg, who is definitely a man. Jo’s got a really entertaining character which allows her to be both filthy and sexist whilst subverting the concepts and mindsets of those who’d both tell and enjoy such jokes. Wonderfully, there were several occasions where you could see Jo breaking character and laughing at some of the spontaneous moments with the audience, which was really nice.

 The first section was closed by the eccentric Billy McGuire who’s been a stalwart of the JUICE-A-Nanny shows for a number of years now. Billy gruff exterior quickly melts away with the pleasant lilt of his voice and the whimsy of his delivery and set. He brought out all the old Billy Favourites and took us into the break very nicely.

During the break we had a surge of comedians arriving, allowing us to wipe our collective brows. There was plenty of cake to be passed around, including some delicious homemade treats from Billy’s excellent wife Yolanda.

Dave Dinsdale has recently made a return to comedy after a brief, and successful, sojourn into the world of theatre. The JUICE-A-Nanny marked Dave’s return to JUICE, so it was great to have him open the second part of the show. Dave seems to have gained a renewed enthusiasm for stand-up, and he threw himself into this performance with aplomb. He also had some very nice new jokes in with all the classics.

Phill Pagett took the audience on a ride through his wonderful one-liners and threw out some new material in the mix as well. Phil’s got confidence and excellent delivery, but also possesses great gags. In short, he’s got everything a comedian needs. Pagett did come up against one of Stafford’s idiosyncrasies, as this appeared to be an audience not overly fond of dark material. Sometimes this is because there’s a higher percentage of women in the audience (which there was at the show) but not always. Some of Phil’s gags that would absolutely kill in most areas of the country, were met with some cautious “ooh”s and embarrassed laughter. Yet this didn’t knock Phil’s pace and he delivered a very funny routine.

When introducing Lou Chawner, Rob Halden decided to have a little fun (mainly because he’d been on the booze) and said to the audience “if you weren’t fond of some of Phil Pagett’s dark jokes…you’re fucked now! Here’s Lou Chawner!” and this was probably not the best way to introduce an act. Lou was trying out some new material, and a lot of the jokes were quite dark, but the audience had already been put in a particular mind-set by Rob’s introduction. The gag about “spastics” probably didn’t help either. Lou got laughs and entertained everyone, but the material would no doubt have received better from a different audience. After the gig, Lou was eager to point out that his set was not actually that dark and when he performs a full routine there are just as many light moments of levity as there are juicy dark gags. He’s right, but that didn’t stop us from chanting “spastic” at him.

The final section of the show saw Michael J. Dolan make his first appearance for JUICE. It’s unusual for us to book a new act on the end-of-year show, as we generally reserve it for our favourite acts. But the wonderful Kiri Pritchard-McLean had asked a favour of us in booking Michael before the end of the year. And we love Kiri so we got him on the show and ended up being very glad that we did. Michael’s performance is full of hate, but is not an angry or shouty act. Michael’s hate is targeted largely at himself, with also some healthy shots taken at the general public. There’s a lot of entertaining, rambling introspection in this set. There were quite a few stops & starts to the routine, but this was down to the set being quite new. But Michael impressed us all and JUICE looks forward to having him back in 2013.

Next up was Wudwud, whose routine involves deliberately contrived puns being drawn out over time to squeeze laughs out of the crowd. Once the audience gets into the act, there are some very nice laughs to be had as Wudwud takes you all-round-the-houses to get to a very simple bit of word-play.

The show ended with the frustratingly versatile Tom Allsopp. Tom performs each and every month at our New Material Show, and not only is every performance brand new material, but it virtually never fails to be hilarious. All the other comedians hate him. This show was no different, as Tom delivered a great monologue/story about swimming as a child. A great way to close the show and, indeed, to end the year.

During the night we also held the annual JUICE Comedy Awards. This year we awarded Performer Of The Year to . . .

Harriet Dyer! Harriet has had a brilliant year and really improved and honed her abilities on the circuit, as well as doing some excellent work for JUICE. We’re very proud to name her the JUICE Comedy Performer Of The Year 2012

Much like last year, we decided to create a second award for one of our regular performers. We called this award the Comedian’s Comedian Award as we were giving it to a grizzled veteran of the stand-up circuit . . .

Billy McGuire! Billy is a comedian who has been with JUICE since nearly the very beginning, playing some of our best, and worst, venues. Earlier this year he had a triumph of a performance at our show in The Gatehouse Theatre. Virtually every audience member who spoke to us after the gig said that Billy was their favourite act, and that was no mean feat on a bill with some top pro-comics.

Oh, and Rob Halden also decided to name Siobhan With The Blue Hair  as the best audience member of the night. Rob’s reasons for this included Siobhan having good audience interaction with most of the comics on the show, having blue hair, and finally “being dead fit”. We here at JUICE Comedy would like to point out that this was in no way an official award, and Rob’s opinions do no necessarily reflect the opinions of JUICE or our parent company (Reading/Halden Industries) . . . however, in this instance, Siobhan was dead fit.

It was a great, fun show all-round and we hope you can join us next year as we celebrate a frankly-baffling 9 years of JUICE!

T-shirts & Expansions

Big thanks to CODENAME_U81K for our sexy new logo! Head on over to The Goosefactory for art, designs and t-shirts from this awesome Stafford artist!

Speaking of t-shirts, we’re working hard to get some JUICE shirts available to buy before Cocktails & Comedy Part IV in a couple of weeks. The shirts themselves have all been designed by CODENAME_U81K and a number of limited editions are currently worn by JUICE staff & associates. Quite a few of you JUICERS out there have expressed an interest in buying a shirt, and it’d be great to be able to see them on people around Stafford and at the gigs. We’re looking at keeping the costs down so we can sell them to you as cheap as possible. Why? Because we’re not in the selling-clothes business, we’re in the Badass Comedy business, and we’d LOVE to see our audiences wearing our shirts! Get in touch and let us know if you want one of the first shirts to roll off the presses!

Tickets are on sale NOW for Cocktails & Comedy Part IV, priced at £5they’re available from the venue itself, Number 15 on Greengate Street, or you can contact Rob Halden and get them from him. In addition to having Freddie Farrell, Freddie Quinn and Jollyboart on a show hosted by Rich Wall, we can now exclusively reveal that Tom Allsopp has been added to the bill! Tom is an excellent comedian who recently Headlined our show at The Gatehouse Theatre. It all takes place on Friday 23rd November and it’s going to be a fantastic show!

Monday night sees our monthly New Act / New Material Show return to Joxer Brady’s! This month we’ve got a number of comedians we’ve been dying to get on the show for a while now, including Aaron Twitchen and Jack Kirwan. We’re also going to be graced with new material by JUICE Breakout Act Of 2011 Kiri Pritchard-McLean and one of the Founders of JUICE, Rob Halden. We’re really proud of how long we’ve been running this show and supporting comedians who are either starting out in their careers or looking for a performance space to test out new material. It’s always an excellent night out and the show is absolutely FREE to all who want to come.

Earlier in the week JUICE took a trip to the local towns of Cannock & Hednesford, on the search for a venue with which we can expand to. As he’s based in the area, Tom Allsopp acted as our guide and showed us around. The idea at this time is to set up a similar New Act / New Material Show to run concurrently with our one in Stafford. The ideal set-up would be to run the show on the same night as the Stafford show, First Monday Of The Month. That way we can offer comedians two gigs in front of two audiences, on the same night, just 15 minutes apart. This can make all the different to comics who are travelling from all over the country to get some stage time. Stay tuned to the J-Blog for further updates on this!

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.

JUICE Chat with Rob Halden

Rob Halden is one-half of JUICE Comedy, a radio presenter and a comedian in his own right. Outside of Stafford he’s performed for the Frog & Bucket as well as The Comedy Store, winning both the Beat The Frog and King Gong competitions. He has a great big beard and is also sort-of our boss, so we’re going to go easy on his with this interview.

JUICE: How would you describe your comedy?

Rob: I guess it’s deadpan and a bit odd. It’s character-based and there are some props in there as well. The Rob on stage thinks he’s better than everyone in the audience, but he’s actually a buffoon.

JUICE: How did you start out in stand-up?

Rob: I tried writing jokes for Neil Reading because he had done some stand-up. But he kept sending the jokes back saying he couldn’t tell them and I should try it. Then he organised the very first JUICE night in the back of a pub and sort of forced me into it. I dicked around with it and never really gigged anywhere, then I had a small breakdown and when I was battling depression comedy became my life-line and I started doing more of it.

JUICE: What’s been your most memorable gig to date?

Rob: Good-memorable would probably be doing the King Gong at The Comedy Store. I’ve never been so nervous in my life. There was a group of ten skin-head squaddies in the crowd just hurling abuse at everyone who got up on stage. Getting them to shut up and laugh and the cheer for me was fantastic. Bad-memorable would be any number of gigs Paul Savage has made me do, including a car trip to London on a hot summer’s day to perform in front of 4 people.

JUICE: Where’s your favourite venue to perform?

Rob: I’ve only played there a couple of times but The Holybush in Cradley Heath is really nice, I like that gig. It’s proper comedy. I like Lions Eat Ice-Cream in Leicester because they really encourage experimental performances. And I just performed at The MET Studio in the Gatehouse Theatre in Stafford last month and that’s a fantastic space.

JUICE: Who’s your favourite circuit comedian at the moment?

Rob: It changes all the time. I’m currently high on Jason Cook and Nick Helm, but I think I only like Nick when he’s playing to difficult rooms. I like Nick’s gigs where 75% of the audience don’t get it and 25% are physically dying. I also saw Pete Brush again the other night and he’s sublime.

JUICE: Who’s the best in the world, Louis CK or Daniel Kitson?

Rob: Having never seen either of them live, it’s hard to say. I truly love Louis CK and really admire what he’s doing with the business-model of comedy, producing and releasing his own shows online and cutting out TicketMaster for his shows. But I think Kitson is probably the best right now. As of the last thing of his I saw.

JUICE: Do you have any comedy influences or heroes?

Rob: I’m only funny because of my Dad, I firmly believe that. He’s a very silly man. I watched Tommy Cooper and Russ Abbott and Les Dawson when I was a child. Then, like all teenagers, I was heavily into Eddie Izzard and Monty Python. They must have all had an influence on me, but I can’t dissect it and tell you who did what to my brain.

JUICE: Where can people find out more about you?

Rob: Anything creative that I do goes through JUICE Comedy these days, so they should follow us on Facebook & Twitter and watch our silly videos on our YouTube Channel.

You can listen to Rob Halden hosting JUICE Comedy’s very own radio show Thursday night between 10 & Midnight on Stafford FM!