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.

TV Stars

Tonight, as part of BBC 3’s oddly named “Feed My Funny” series, two JUICE Comedy favourites will be airing pilot episodes for their very own TV shows. Both of these brilliant comedians have performed live at our monthly Comedy Club at The Market Vaults and other shows that we’ve produced in-and-around Stafford.

Both these TV pilots premier tonight at 11pm on the BBC iPlayer, but will then be available on-demand at a time and location of your choosing.

Radges

Set in a pupil-referral unit in Scotland, Radges is about a group of teen outcasts trying to survive a small-town. The cast includes Sarah Hadland, whose comedy credentials include everything from Miranda to Green Wing, That Mitchell & Webb Look to Horrible Histories.

The pilot has been written by JUICE Favourite Fern Brady, and is based on her own experiences in a similar pupil-referral unit. Fern first performed for JUICE many years ago at our Comedy Club in the back of a pub, and we were then lucky enough to get Fern on-stage for our big show at The Gatehouse Theatre.

If Fern’s stand-up is anything to go by,  expect Radges to be smart, sharp, original and ever-so-slightly bleak. Here’s a clip.

Funz & Gamez

A bizarre entertainment game show that’s almost definitely for kids! Hosted by Phil Ellis, who’s girlfriend has left him, taken the house and sent him spiralling towards a full-on breakdown. Phil is joined Jim The Elf (on loan from the North Pole), Bonzo The Dog and the very unsavoury Uncle Mick.

Phil Ellis had one of his very first gigs for JUICE at our monthly comedy club and was an instant hit with our audience. One of his memorable performances saw him do the entire gig in a Dominos Pizza uniform from his ‘other job’. We were also lucky enough to have Phil Headline one of our very first professional comedy shows at the old Reynold’s Cellar Bar.

Other performers in Funz & Gamez also include the talented & hilarious Will Duggan & James Meehan, both of whom have gigged numerous times for JUICE in Stafford.

You can expect a unique, creative, anarchic and bonkers comedy show. Here’s a clip.

Both these shows premier at 11pm tonight on the BBC iPlayer, and will be available on-demand after that.

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.

Coming Home

Last night was a HUGE night for JUICE Comedy, as we returned to the Gatehouse Theatre for the first time in over a year. These big, professional shows are so much fun for us. We get to play with a budget, hand-pick our favourite comics from the circuit, bring them to the heart of Stafford and showcase them in what is just a beautiful room for stand-up, The MET Studio.

Every comedian that we book tells us how much they love playing The MET Studio. It’s intimate but not small, with nice, low ceilings for the acoustics and round cabaret tables for the front row. It’s also fantastic to have professional sound & lighting to highlight our comedians and make them the best they can be.

For this show we’d put together one of the strongest line-up of comedians we’ve ever had. Strangely for us, only a handful of tickets were sold in advance for the show. Even 5 days before the event, we’d only sold 40-odd tickets. This caused us a lot of concern, as all our previous shows were three-quarters full weeks in advance and sold-out before the night. As it turned out, three days before the show tickets started flying out the door and we ended up having the BIGGEST ATTENDANCE EVER for a JUICE show!

But it was a stressful month for us when it looked like tickets weren’t selling. Our friends & colleague in the theatre industry tell us that, across the country, people just aren’t buying their tickets in advance and every show comes down to the last 5 days.

Paul Savage returned as our Resident MC, holding the show together & warming the audience up. Paul has a natural ability to engage people and draw them into the event. His audience interaction is brilliant and sets the perfect tone for the rest of the night.

First on the bill was Freddy Quinne, a comedian who has earned a reputation for being one of the most entertaining and exciting MC’s on the circuit and is gaining lots of attention on the circuit. Freddy actually had his first ever gig as a comedian for JUICE Comedy five years ago, so was it great to welcome him back now as a true professional.

In the middle of the show we had Kate McCabe, a stand-up who began her comedy career in America and who now has a great reputation on the English comedy circuit. Kate brought her background in Improv and physical comedy with her, performing some very memorable physical routines.

Also in the middle section was Hannah Silvester. Hannah has performed for JUICE at our grass-roots comedy club, and we’ve seen her numerous times at new material night, but it was great to showcase her on a professional stage. Hannah possesses a unique voice in the comedy world, delivering brilliant routines on middle-class domesticity and some excellent musical comedy.

Headlining the show for us was the wonderful Danny Buckler. Danny is a comedian with such a high-level of talent that we’re constantly amazed he isn’t on the telly every week. The show so far had been good, but Danny took it to another level and made the show great. The audience was laughing so much and so hard that twice when Danny tried to wrap things up, the audience wouldn’t let him and begged for more (which Danny was happy to give).

In the middle of all this came a special announcement from JUICE Founder Rob Halden. As you wil know, Dear Reader, out monthly comedy club became homeless two months ago when cafe/bistro Number 15 was suddenly & unexpectedly closed down. For the first time in 10 years JUICE was homeless, with no venue for our monthly grass roots comedy club. But last night Rob Halden announced that JUICE had found a new home. Or, more accurately, an old home.

On Monday 6th July JUICE Comedy will return to the venue where it all began, the pub formerly known as Joxer Brady’s, but now currently the successful and popular bar The Market Vaults!

We’ve incredibly excited to return to our spiritual home, which has improved drastically since the last time we were there! The pub has a completely new lease on live with a refurbishment, wider selection of beers, some of the best food in town and a commitment to live music.

We think The Market Vaults is going to bring us a brand new audience and this chapter in JUICE is going to be the best one yet!

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.

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!

Sunday Share

This week’s Sunday Share features the marvelous Phil Ellis! You can see Phil LIVE in Stafford on Tuesday night, when he brings a Preview of his Edinburgh Show to Number 15! Contact us for tickets!