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.

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.