Skip to main content

Mostly (Just) Comedy (Giving).

For the second time in a year, I've turned to JustGiving to help me through a financial plight; last time it was to contribute to the funding-hole left for Edinburgh when my dad's estate was frozen after he passed away; this time, it's to bolster Mostly Comedy through the coronavirus situation.

Like so many industries, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown live events into crisis. Suddenly, the future of venues & gigs looks worryingly unsustainable. Sadly, that's the case for Mostly Comedy too.

Glyn and I run the club as self-employed performers on a low income. As it stands, Mostly makes just enough money to sustain each consecutive event and our running costs, but its survival relies on (1) the gigs going ahead, and (2) our taking little money from it. And when the money isn't there, we plug the gap.

Until our shows can continue, the club has no money coming in (our ticket provider holds all funds until a week after each show). Meanwhile, our running costs - including public liability insurance, venue hire, rent & utility bills for office/storage space, web renewal and mailing list subs - keep going out. I've already put over £2000 of my own money in the kitty since January to cushion a difficult start to the year, but my low income makes this unsustainable longterm. It would only take a few months for us to fold.

Thankfully, the people of Hitchin are troupers, and super ones at that. Since setting up the crowdfunding page on Tuesday, we've already raised enough to cover a month's closure. Our local paper, The Comet covered the story today, which should help things along. But we're not out of the woods yet. That said, we've received so many kind messages since we began raising money, which goes to show how much the club means to people. And that support means a lot to us; not bad going for a little social experiment that we started on a whim back in 2008. 

 CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW THE PICTURE TO DONATE:




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

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

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce...
Read more