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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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Debut standup comedy tour puts TV star Miranda Hart on the spot

Article written by Brian Logan

Taken from The Guardian Stage

Nation's pratfaller-in-chief gambles on shift from eponymous sitcom and Call the Midwife to live show in UK's largest arena

Miranda Hart has played a few secret gigs to prepare. 'After the third gig, it felt like it was the hundredth, and I felt really comfortable on stage.' Photograph: ITV/Rex

It was announced over a year ago; she has being giving interviews on the subject for months, and now Miranda Hart's debut comedy tour is finally upon us. On Friday the queen of prime-time TV takes to the stage at the Bournemouth International Centre and embarks on her biggest gamble since the sitcom Miranda premiered in 2009.

The success of that sitcom, and the subsequent popularity of the dramaseries Call the Midwife, has established her as one of the country's best-loved entertainers. But her live standup experience is minimal and was acquired in small venues, not arenas. In a fortnight, she will play the O2.

So is she up to it? Or is My, What I Call, Live Show (as she's titled it) setting up the nation's pratfaller-in-chief for her biggest tumble yet? Arena touring, says comedy promoter Christian Knowles – whose client Micky Flanagan is one of the UK's top arena-level standups – can be a big risk commercially, especially for an inexperienced comic.

"The overheads may be nothing compared to [rock acts] Prince or Pink coming in with truck after truck," he said. "But by standup standards, it's still a small army you're sending around the country. And the rents on those venues are massive. But if you can sell it, of course financially it's a no-brainer: you can be massively successful."

Hart isn't alone in taking advantage of the boom in live comedy, which has opened lucrative opportunities to popular TV stars that were not available to the sitcom heroes of yesteryear: Dawn French, for example, announced her debut solo tour last week.

But French isn't calling her show standup; and neither did Sandi Toksvig and John Cleese, two other well-loved comedy figures who recently took their personalities on the road. They sold their live tours as "audiences with", book tie-ins – or, in French's formulation, "somewhere between a monologue, a play, and an autobiographical slide show".

Hart hasn't given herself a get-out clause. She's calling it standup, and the show will be judged alongside the likes of Lee Evans, Michael McIntyre and Peter Kay – arena regulars into whose territory Hart is pitching herself.

Hart's TV profile probably insulates her against commercial failure. Pre-tour sales are strong: five dates at the O2 in London are scheduled, with a further two at Wembley Arena in October, and several shows – including two at the National Indoor Arena (capacity 12,000) in Birmingham – are sold out.

As you would expect of a woman who has turned self-abasement into a comedic art form, Hart has been candid about her pre-tour anxieties. (She suffered from agoraphobia in her early twenties.) But, in an interview in November last year for the Daily Mail she insisted: "I'm looking forward to the tour. I'm looking forward to being in a room with the people who have supported me and watched the sitcom, and being able to thank them for that. And to have a laugh with them.

"I want it to be a real show that we share, rather than it being about me, showing off my attempt at the art of standup."

Hart's prior standup experience is limited, and she has not done it at all since finding fame as the star of her self-titled sitcom.

Now 41, she took sketch shows to the Edinburgh fringe in the 1990s, and performed in the double act The Orange Girls with Charity Trimm. (Their show, wrote Financial Times critic Ian Shuttleworth, "create[s] the impression that they are less funny than is in fact the case".)

Hart then performed solo character-comedy shows throughout the early part of the past decade, but she admitted to BBC Radio 5 Live when announcing her tour: "I've never done a full standup show."

She has been performing secret warm-up gigs in advance of the tour. "And after the third gig," she told an interviewer, "it felt like it was the hundredth, and I felt really comfortable on stage."

She has her material well prepped: "I'll be examining universal social embarrassment and general life conundrums," she said.

An anecdote about meeting the Queen is promised, and material on "my attitude to food and my irritation with diets. [And] the odd tiny ranting moment that you can't do in a sitcom."

And she's not a complete stranger to large venues. She has appeared on several high-profile charity bills in recent years, including a role in a new Blackadder sketch with Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson at a Prince's Trust fundraiser at the Albert Hall in 2012.

Whether that's sufficient preparation for a tour to which fans flock in their thousands to see Hart and Hart alone, remains to be seen. Christian Knowles sees no reason to doubt it. "Even for experienced standups, the first time they do an arena it's a massive learning curve," he said. "But in the end, as long as the show's good, they'll find their feet quite quickly."

"I've seen standups who've worried about adapting their material to that scale, when in fact the best advice is, 'no, just do your show'. If Miranda's got a good show, I see no reason why she can't be just as funny on a big stage as she is on TV."

My, What I Call, Live Show opens at Bournemouth International Centre, from Friday until Sunday, then goes on tour.

#theguardianstage #standupcomedy #comedy #brianlogan #miranda hart #entertainment #article

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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Wisecraic comedy organises stand-up comedy events in Newbury.This page will provide you information concerning the stand-up comedians performing, dates, places.

Click on the title for more info!

#comedy standupcomedy entertainment humor newbury thatcham basingstoke london maidenhead oxford nightout goodnight event danmitchell christia

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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We would be very grateful if you could answer our survey (it will only take a couple of minutes!) Thank you in advance

#StandUpComedy #survey #surveymonkey #wisecraiccomedy #humor #entertainment #uk

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A little message to you all for last Friday night!

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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#wisecraiccomedy #standupcomedy #event #Newbury #show #gig #ashleyfrieze #glennmoore #georgeegg #davechawner #newburyrfc #thatcham #berkshire #humor #laughs #fridaynight

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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#wisecraiccomedy #standupcomedy #event #Newbury #show #gig #ashleyfrieze #glennmoore #georgeegg #davechawner #newburyrfc #thatcham #berkshire #humor #laughs #fridaynight

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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#wisecraiccomedy #standupcomedy #event #Newbury #show #gig #ashleyfrieze #glennmoore #georgeegg #davechawner #newburyrfc #thatcham #berkshire #humor #laughs #fridaynight

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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#wisecraiccomedy #standupcomedy #event #Newbury #show #gig #ashleyfrieze #glennmoore #georgeegg #davechawner #newburyrfc #thatcham #berkshire #humor #laughs #fridaynight

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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Stand-up comedy night last Friday night @Wisecraic Comedy @Newbury RFC starring Dave Chawner as the opener, Glenn Moore as the middle act and George Egg as the headliner! Show hosted by our devoted MC Ashley Frieze

CLICK ON LINK TO SEE THE PICTURES

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wisecraiccomedy · 10 years

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The science of comedy: can humour make the world a better place?

Academics are considering how comedy can be socially beneficial

Stuart Jeffries - The Guardian, Tuesday 11 February 2014 19.13 GMT

Jo Brand says it's great to see academics taking an interest. Photograph: Rex Features

'You know what's not funny?" said the comedian Chris Rock once. "Thinking about it." As if to prove the point, last weekend's Playing for Laughs symposium at De Montfort University in Leicester brought together academics, practitioners, educationalists and service providers to investigate how comedy can be used as a force for good within communities in Leicester and beyond. Laugh? Not often, but thanks for asking.

Thinking about comedy is becoming a big academic industry. Last year, Dr Sharon Lockyer set up the Centre for Comedy Studies Research at Brunel University, London, and even an academic journal, Comedy Studies, published in print for the first time later this year.

The speakers at De Montfort University included comedian and adoption campaigner Joy Carter discussing how comedy can be used to tackle issues of transracial adoption; Karian Schuitema of the University of Westminster discussing the role of comedy for children with special needs; and Liselle Terret, of Coventry University, on how comedy could be used to challenge social ideas on women and the mental health system.

Tell me a joke, I ask one of the speakers at the conference, Geoff Rowe, founder and producer of Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival. "I don't tell jokes," he replies. "I pay professional comedians to do that for me." Oh dear. Oh well. Here's mine: How many comedy conference delegates does it take to tell a joke? A not inconsiderable number.

I never said it'd be funny."Over the last five to eight years there's been a shift in the public perception of academics studying comedy. It's becoming regarded as a worthwhile area," says Lockyer before her symposium talk entitled Exploring Comedy and Disability in Live Performance. Comedian Jo Brand, the Brunel alumna who is the CCSR ambassador says it is "great to see that comedy is being taken seriously".

Perhaps it is, but what's most intriguing about Lockyer's work is that it considers how comedy can be socially beneficial. "The media fixates on comedy controversies where comedy has been deemed to be problematic or offensive," says Lockyer. "You can see that in the controversies over the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, the film Borat and what it did to Kazakhstan, and Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand."

Those examples seem to bear out venerable theory of comedy set out by the Chuckle Brothers of philosophy, Plato and Hobbes, namely that we're always laughing at someone else's expense. Or, as Hobbes put it in Human Nature: "The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly." Thus understood, comedy isn't just Mock the Week, but invariably mocks the weak.

But must it? Psychiatric-nurse-turned-comic Rob Gee, one of the speakers, says: "Every joke has a target and therefore every joke has the potential to be cruel or hurtful. It also has the opposite." But what could that opposite be? Gee has organised award-winning workshops in sports centres and acute psychiatric units aimed at adults with severe and enduring mental health problems, and is often invited to schools to teach kids improvisation and sketch performances. He says: "The idea that comedy could be therapeutic or give people skills seems absurdly worthy, but that's exactly what I've been trying to do."

When Gee visits schools to give comedy workshops, he finds the best students of comedy improvisation are nine year olds. Why? "They're already a little worldly wise but they aren't yet concerned about being cool like adolescents are. So they're very creative and unafraid and savvy. Some teachers run scared of allowing comedians to teach their kids, but they shouldn't be so sceptical." Why not? "Think of what a huge problem it is getting boys to read and write. When I teach kids about sketch comedy, they love to write down their sketch ideas. It's one of the few times you can see them enjoying writing. So learning how to do sketches helps improves their literacy, their confidence, their self-esteem."

What would Michael Gove say? "It's the antithesis of the traditionalist view of what should be happening in schools, but given that most of the jobs that our kids will be doing in the next 50 years haven't been invented yet, it seems important to train kids to be flexible, have self-esteem, be literate, rather than follow a traditional curriculum – comedy can help with those things."

Chris Rock … knows what's not funny. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

But still, the idea of comedy as socially beneficial remains a stretch. "It's counterintuitive, I agree," says drama lecturer Roger Clegg, who organised the symposium. "But think of it this way. Most standup comedians started in the playground when they were bullied. It starts off as a defence mechanism and ends up as empowerment. That's why it can be a force for good."

"What I've really noticed in my research," says Lockyer, "is a rise in the bullied or demonised or oppressed taking ownership of comedy directed at them, subverting it and using it to make people laugh with rather than at them." Her latest academic paper Exploring the Potential of Disabled Comedians in Improving the Lives and Experiences of Disabled People consists of interviews with disabled comedians and their audiences. "In the past eight years there's been a rapid rise in the number of really talented disabled comedians. I think one big impetus was the foundation of a group called Abnormally Funny People set up by Simon Minty in 2005. They did a really successful Edinburgh run. Thanks in part to them, some disabled people have seized that sense of empowerment comedy can give them.

"That said," Lockyer adds, "I'm not saying comedy can change the world for the better."

But maybe it can. Maybe it already has. "Remember those HIV campaigns in the 1980s with TV ads showing tombstones and icebergs?" asks Leicester comedy festival's Geoff Rowe. "When I was a teenager I didn't get my education from those ads or from government leaflets, but from comedians. It was Lenny Henry, French and Saunders, and Rik Mayall doing things with condoms and cucumbers who really educated me."

Thirty years on, Rowe runs the Big Difference Company, that similarly tries to use comedy to raise awareness of social, health and environmental issues. "We do projects to improve public health and reduce health inequalities. That can mean projects to do with quitting smoking, alcohol, healthy eating and we often work with the NHS to targeted groups – primary-school children, minority groups and men."

But isn't there an inverse relationship between funny and informative? When Rowe hires professional comedians to do comedy routines about cancer, surely it isn't the subject matter but the prospect of being subjected to improving messages that is liable to be a turn off? "You'd think so but some of the best comedy shows I have been to have tackled cancer. They're really life affirming and positive experiences."

In collaborating with the NHS, Rowe's professional comedians are often required to perform sets in front of health professionals to make sure the material is medically accurate. "They are the toughest critics and those are probably the worst gigs anyone will ever play. But they're worth it. After public gigs, members of the audience will come up to me or the comedians and say, 'I think I've got lung cancer,' and we can be a signpost, directing them to the medical people who can help."

The late Monty Python's Graham Chapman notwithstanding, Leicester hasn't exactly a reputation for comedy excellence, but now it is at the forefront of using comedy to remedy social ills. "Other cities specialise in dance, theatre, music or film. For good or ill, I hope good, Leicester specialises in comedy," says Rowe.

Mark Charlton is project manager for Square Mile, De Montfort University's programme to improve local lives with academic expertise. In one sense it's a typical outreach project of the kind that many British colleges and universities run to make themselves relevant to the local community. But one of its 40-odd projects is unusual. "We asked people in Leicester what they would like from us," says Charlton. "And quite a lot said standup comedy workshops. Why? "Some were determined to become standups but others in the group wanted to boost their confidence and self esteem and make themselves feel good about themselves."

The 15-week course is now in its second year, with DMU alumnus Alan Seaman from Leicester's Ship of Fools comedy club taking on residents with no performance skills and training them to become stars of their own show – or at least perform a 10-minute routine at a local community centre during the comedy festival.

"It's not just standups but a really diverse bunch. One's a really aggressive performance poet and another's quite a gentle poet in the Pam Ayres vein," says Charlton. "Another's a sharp-suited well-spoken Jimmy Carr-like comedian – all great in their own way."

But how can you gauge whether the course has been successful? "Only from feedback from the participants and that's been overwhelmingly positive. We're thinking of taking the course further and putting on a show in Edinburgh at some point. What really struck me is that two of the people who took part had quite severe mental health problems but the rest of the participants became very protective of them. And there were all these people from different parts of the community – different races, occupations, classes, ages – all coming together." Pro vice-chancellor and dean for art, design and humanities of De Montfort University Barbara Matthews says: "If you think about the sense of community comedy gives, then I think Leicester is benefiting from projects like this one and that will evolve over the years."

For Roger Clegg a lot of these comedy initiatives have a topical political significance. "If they're not the encapsulation of David Cameron's Big Society I don't know what is." If Britain is broken as the prime minister suggests, maybe comedy can help repair it.

Dave's Leicester comedy festival runs until 23 February. Details:www.comedy-festival.co.uk

• This article was amended on 12 February 2014 to correct Barbara Matthews' title from vice chancellor to pro vice-chancellor and dean for art, design and humanities.

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George EGG on the 21st OF FEBRUARY at NEWBURY RFC

Who's George Egg?

"A hugely entertaining variety turn" The Guardian

Wildly brandishing the worlds' second largest briefcase containing a battery of ridiculous props, George bounds onto the stage to perform one of the most original, interesting, innovative, and sweetly whimsical comedy performances you are ever likely to see. He has been hailed as 'a Tommy Cooper for the twenty first century' and through tears of laughter you'll see why. A true cross between alternative stand-up comedy and music hall variety.

George Egg has been a professional stand-up comedian for the last two decades. He has an extremely successful solo show with which he has toured in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Austria, France and of course extensively in the United Kingdom, both on the stage and on the television, and more recently has been the support act for Lee Mack, Mickey Flannagan and Jack Dee.

George's Comedy Credits The London Palladium The Comedy Store Jongleurs Comedy Clubs The Avalon Comedy Network The Edinburgh Festival Glastonbury International Festival of the Performing Arts Nordhorn Festival, GERMANY Rheine Festival, GERMANY Moers Comedy Arts Festival, GERMANY Montreux Comedy Festival, SWITZERLAND International Comedy Club, SWITZERLAND Limburg Festival, HOLLAND Tollwood Festival, GERMANY The Blaue Biwel Comedy Theatre, GERMANY

George's TV Credits (Comedy Performance) Late Night Live, ITV House of Fun, ITV Funny Business, ITV Red Velvet, Channel 4 Jim Tavare Show, FIVE Schmidteinander, GERMANY Shau An, GERMANY A Quien Se L'Ocurre, SPAIN Rob's Comedy Club, SWITZERLAND Raymann is Latt, HOLLAND

George's Acting Credits 'The Bill', ITV (twice) 'Two Golden Balls', BBC 'The Mouse That Teased The Wind', Hand Hot Films 'The Infiltrator', HBO 'Ideal', BBC

George's TV Warm-Up Experience: George has performed as a TV Warm Up for the whole of series two of 'Dishes' on Channel 4, 'Ticket to Ride' a pilot for ITV, and 'The 11 O'clock Show' for Channel 4.

George's Writing Credits: George writes all the material for his live show, and in addition has co-written a stage show with comedian Jim Tavare, and another with comedian Martin Soan. Both shows were performed on stage in Germany with great success.

He has also written material for Jim Tavare's Channel Five series 'Jim Tavare', and a number of sketches for series two of the BAFTA winning 'The Sketch Show' for ITV.

George's Academic Credits: George has written for the Comedy Studies journal and has taught on the degree in Comedy at Southampton Solent University.

He is currently working on a number of other projects including a game show, and a short film.

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