2024…
…is here and we managed about a week off, that sweet bit between Christmas and New Year, where for me personally I got to do nothing, it was bliss. Our last gig was on the 21st December and our return show was on January 4th at The Picturedrome. We ended the year by working with Josh Pugh, and we started the year working with him as well. I think Josh is at that stage now where promoters will want to get him headlining their clubs as much as possible before he sky rockets into the unreachable comedic stratosphere. Just in the last year alone we’ve seen him pop up on Live at the Apollo, The Last Leg, do more gigs with Ricky Gervais, release a special recorded at Birmingham Town Hall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgLxdII5msg), it’s all great to see, Josh is an excellent writer and performer! Also, Paddy McGuiness is working on a mockumentary about his life for the BBC which will feature Josh Pugh. So keep an eye out for that one as well.
Those Niggling Ideas
Over the holidays for some strange reason, I’d got it into my head that I wanted to try my hand at Photography. I have always enjoyed seeing the stuff we get sent from our friend Stuart Hogben on our events. I had also received the latest edition of Steve Bests’ Photography book for Christmas, which didn’t help with suppressing this niggling idea. I think that phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" certainly applies to me. Luckily we have a professional Photographer already in the team in Stu, who has kindly agreed to provide me with some training. So now I call him Mr. Miyagi.
Bradlaugh
First show of the year at the Bradlaugh involved Aurie Styla, Jamie D’Souza, Pete Teckman and a last minute replacement in Rachel Fairburn. It was really nice to see so many people come out on the second week of January for a comedy night. All the acts were on fine form as well. This was also my first night experimenting with my newly purchased camera and getting some training from Mr. Miyagi. I don’t think it was a bad start… wax on, wax off.
For a review of this night, you can visit a far more professional bloggers site, The Real Chrisparkle HERE.
Aurie Styla
Charles Bradlaugh - 11.01.2024
Northampton is not as scary as this picture suggests. I just thought it was fun..
Northampton Comedy Festival
Now we have announced the Weekender dates (20th-21st July tickets on sale now) we also need to start locking in some acts. Fortunately friends of the Crate, Hudson & Hudson have already mentioned to Mike about a brand new show. Bodes well because the magical duo got a lot of praise after last year’s Edinburgh Preview and we think alot people would love to see what they are cooking up next. So there you have it, exclusive announcement. 1 act in the bag, 24 to go…
Conversations have also begun with Northampton BID, regarding putting on more shows in June and July. Similar to last year where we did quite a few pop up events in town. We are in the process of selecting some venues, hopefully adding a few we’ve never done comedy in before. We have already locked in one show as part of the Festival which is a tour show from the brilliant Jon Pearson. This will be at VandB on the 17th July. Jons ability to riff off the audience and create a unique show earned him an award for Best Improv show at The Leicester Comedy Festival in 2022, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Watch this space for even more announcements for the Northampton Comedy Festival 2024.
Crazy Amounts Of Vetting
Tickets for our new act, new material night are now available. £6 a ticket to see 6 acts all do about 10 minutes. We hold these shows at Saints Coffee, a 35 seat room. It’s intimate and it’s perfect for this type of event. For these shows we create an application form which we put out into various forums and groups full of UK based comedians and see who applies. This year we received 148 applications, which I’ll tell you now is almost double what we had last year. We love to see new comics and get a nice mixture of styles on these shows, but in order to do this correctly, we have to go through all the applications and clips of every single act. For the love of the game! It’s a real team effort as well involving myself, Mike, Ian Hayes (who will be MCing these shows) and sometimes a friend of mine called Mark who watches an awful lot of stand up. Once we’ve gone through and selected a bunch of acts we’d like to see, it’s then a case of compiling the line ups with a nice mixture of styles. We have a lot more to get through but we have some great names already lined up for these. It’s insane value for money. Some of the material you hear on these nights may never be heard again. Tickets > HERE.
Charity Event
We’ve done a few shows for Harry’s Pals Charity now, run by really nice people doing really nice things. For this show we had the amazing Ninia Benjamin, Matt Stellingwerf, Kate Martin, hosted by Ross Smith at Pasha’s Bar in Daventry. The show was completely sold out and overall we’d say it was a pretty succesful first event at this venue. We even met the owner of the bar, Pasha the dog. This gig also clashed with the final episode of The Traitors, so I was quite keen to pack up at the end and catch it on iPlayer. Harry played a blinder!
The Call
On the drive over to Daventry Mike got a phone call, from Mark Thomas. You know, the guy who made 6 series of the Mark Thomas Comedy Product for Channel 4, performed multiple shows at the National Theatre, appeared on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Have I Got News For You and released multiple comedy specials on DVD. Cut a long story short, Mark is working up a brand new show for Edinburgh this year and he’s booked for our Weekender!! 2 IN, 23 to go…
The Royal & Derngate
Our show on April 13th at the Royal and Derngate is now in full swing. Marketing material has arrived and sales are ticking over nicely. Both myself and Mike are Northampton born and bred, so the Royal and Derngate was always the place to go for all the big theatre shows in the town. Think the first live comedy show I saw was Joe Pasquale, I was about 12. We often joked in the first few years of booking comedy about doing shows at the Derngate and now 7 years later it’s happening. This has all stemmed from conversations we’ve had with our friends at The Comedy Cow in Milton Keynes after doing the stadium gig last year together (Check the year review if you want to know more about that). There just seemed to be this feeling that we could achieve bigger shows in the places we love. So we’ve taken a punt, probably our biggest one to date. We’re doing Milton Keynes Theatre on April 12th and The Royal and Derngate on April 13th as a joint venture between two comedy promoters. Leaning on some acts we’ve met along this 7 year journey in Omid Djalili, Marcus Brigstocke and Glenn Moore, whilst booking some newer names that we’re really excited to work with in Josie Long and Boothby Graffoe. So I guess I’ll park this one here for now, and pick it back up in a few months…
Tickets for the Derngate - HERE.
Tickets for MK Theatre - HERE
Collaboration
Talking of collabs, like Run DMC and Aerosmith, Daft Punk and Pharrel, Linkin Park and Jay-Z, there are some collabs you didn’t know you needed. The comedy industry is a strange beast, it’s quite territorial among promoters, like a dog spraying in as many places as possible. Truth is, so many clubs come and go. One club that has been making a few waves more recently though is Hats Funny Comedy, run by Ian Hayes. A local promoter that has amassed over 30 venues in a short space of time. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t keep an eye on what was happening on the circuit and we are at a stage now where we need some additional support ourselves to run more venues. As a result me and Mike made the decision to approach Ian to see whether we could work together on some other gigs.
Within a few weeks we’ve already got a few new gigs off the ground with a few more in the pipeline. Working with people who are as passionate about comedy as you are can be a real joy. Comedy promoters should help and support each other and the same applies to acts, the more we raise the industry as a whole, the more people will come out and buy tickets and get behind our events.
Damn You Wind!
Well the weather certainly caused some chaos for us this month. The heavy winds on January 21st caused trains to get cancelled resulting in Jessica Fostekew not being able to get over to us for her Work In Progress Show. Mike got the call around 4pm. I had already packed the car with all the kit for the evening, put my phone on charge in the kitchen and decided to finish watching Killers Of The Flower Moon before heading out. Didn’t see the multiple missed calls and messages until almost an hour later… oops! Good movie though.
This show was fortunately rescheduled for the following week…
That week came around, and everything went according to plan. Jess’ show is shaping up nicely, there are some great bits in there that I won’t spoil for those who want to catch her on tour.
Jessica Fostekew
Work in progress at The Charles Bradlaugh 28.01.2024
Some Sort Of Conclusion
There we go, that’s a wrap for January. I’m not even sure at this stage who I’m typing all this down for. Maybe it’s just a splurge of conscious thoughts and memories for my future self after I’m cryogenically frozen. In 2324 I’ll look back at this and think I should have worked harder at school.
To be continued…
Rachel Fairburn
Charles Bradlaugh - 11.01.2024