Skip to main content

The Comedy Night That Never Was.



Myself and Glyn are currently sitting on the train from King's Cross to Hitchin; on our way home from the comedy night that never was.

Tonight was supposed to be this year’s final Leicester Square Theatre installment of Mostly Comedy (we still have two more Hitchin dates to go). We had a cracking line-up booked, including Red Dwarf’s Norman Lovett, Foster’s Best Newcomer Nominee Sam Fletcher, Time Out’s “rising star” Nish Kumar and us (no prefix). It was a great gig on paper – but sadly no-one wanted to come and see it.

That’s not strictly true. There probably were plenty of people who wanted to come and see it, but only two people booked - and when the performers outweigh the audience 5/2 it’s less of a comedy night and more of a hostage situation.

We’d probably have to rebill the gig as Mostly Comedians.

I think the problem is we haven’t quite got our marketing right. The London gig is obviously up against a lot of competition (they’ve got The Trocadero for a start)  – but we do consistently pull good line-ups with a strong headliner; this year we've had Phil Kay, Josh Widdicombe, Barry From Watford and James Acaster, to name just a few.

The first two London dates of the year sold pretty well, but they were both recommended in Time Out. Since then we’ve been a little unlucky: important listings have been missed here and there, shows have been booked on the same day as the Wimbledon Men’s Final (7th July) and the England v. Germany match (tonight), and consequently we’ve missed out. Missed out and lost money, which is what hurts most.

Hopefully we’ll turn it round. Come the New Year we hope to run the gig on a more appealing night; something towards the end of the week, when people are more likely to want to come out. We’ll also endeavour to be more on the case when it comes to press and marketing; speaking to the publications more directly, asking what they want from us and when they want it.

All was not lost: we had a nice chat with Norman – and had a cup of tea and a catch up with Sam Fletcher; sharing photos of kittens (Sam’s), cats (mine) and babies (Glyn’s).

Let’s hope that next year we get it right – and at least we’ve got this Thursday’s Hitchin Mostly Comedy to look forward to.

Thursday's Hitchin Mostly Comedy features WitTank, Joey Page and Luke Benson. To book, click here, or click here to download free episodes of our More Than Mostly Comedy Podcast.


Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.
Read more

Comedy That's Worth a Letch.

Today, I nipped to Letchworth to meet with illustrator (and one-time - two-time - comedy poet) Mushybees, to discuss an event Mostly Comedy will act as surrogate parents to as part of Letchworth’s Arts Takeover in a couple of weeks. Months ago he got into contact to see if we’d be up for co-organising a comedy stage as part of Letchworth’s weekend of arts-based attractions in July; something I’d provisionally said yes to, before things got hectic in the lead-up to Edinburgh and we didn’t take it any further. Despite not getting down to the nitty-gritty straight away, we managed to pull a line-up together in a back-and-forth of emails yesterday, leading to me getting Glyn’s blessing and us deciding we’d officially go ahead with it (whatever ‘officially’ means in this context). In reality, it’s not complicated: from 12pm until 6pm-ish on the 22 nd July, Glyn, Mushybees and I will host four Edinburgh previews from four acts (including me), before Nor...
Read more