{"id":3016,"date":"2012-10-26T13:43:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T13:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/?p=3016"},"modified":"2012-10-26T13:43:23","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T13:43:23","slug":"thing-of-the-week-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/?p=3016","title":{"rendered":"Thing of the week: Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We found ourselves in London on Saturday evening. Being at a bit of a loose end, and in search of cheap entertainment, we decided to visit a comedy club. We&#8217;ve been to <em>The Comedy Store<\/em> before and really enjoyed it, but I didn&#8217;t recognise anybody on the bill this time and the ticket prices seem to have crept up a bit since the last time we visited. Looking  bit further afield, I discovered <em>Chris McCausland<\/em> was headlining at a small comedy club called <em>&#8220;The Funny Side&#8230;&#8221;<\/em>, somewhere near Covent Garden. I&#8217;d heard Chris perform on a <em>Richard Herring<\/em> podcast last year, been really impressed by his &#8220;5 Petes in our pub&#8221; routine, and had made a mental note to check him out if the opportunity ever arose. Tickets were only \u00a312.50. Sorted!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/maps.google.co.uk\/maps?q=The+George,+213+Strand,+London,+City+of+London,+United+Kingdom&amp;layer=c&amp;sll=51.513210,-0.113129&amp;cbp=13,172.13,,0,-12.86&amp;cbll=51.513368,-0.113089&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=The+George,&amp;hnear=213+Strand,+London+WC2R+1AP,+United+Kingdom&amp;ll=51.51321,-0.113129&amp;spn=0.006295,0.006295&amp;t=h&amp;panoid=tUo1pgy0rdBEiozGbnN_lQ&amp;source=embed&amp;output=svembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;The Funny Side of Covent Garden&#8221;<\/strong> is situated on an upper floor of a nice old pub called <em>The George<\/em>, on the junction of <em>The Strand<\/em> and <em>Fleet Street<\/em>. It&#8217;s maybe a bit of a stretch putting &#8220;Covent Garden&#8221; in the name, since it&#8217;s just over half a mile \/ 10 minutes walk from the market itself &#8230; but, hey, I&#8217;m not a local, what do I know? \ud83d\ude42 &#8230; it was pretty easy to find anyway.<\/p>\n<p>The club is fairly cosy, and seats about 80 (not sure where I pulled that number from &#8212; think I must&#8217;ve seen it on their website). They don&#8217;t issue physical tickets; a booking via the web site gets you added to the evening&#8217;s guest list, and your name is checked at the door. The staff were really friendly, and showed us to our seats upon arrival. There&#8217;s a bar at the back of the room (\u00a36 for a pint of guinness and a half of coke &#8212; eek!), though you need to have your hand stamped to exit the room if you need to venture out to the toilets(!)<\/p>\n<p>The stand-up night follows the standard formula of 3 acts and a compere. The night we visited was hosted by <em>Jonny Freeman<\/em>. I have to admit, I&#8217;d never heard of him before, but apparently he appears in a kids TV show about spies, and this is him looking a bit like Nick Cave and advertising Trebor mints:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jueXOeeiLG8?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He was a really, really good compere; very quick-witted, brilliant at bantering with the audience, and a natural host. I was totally impressed&#8230; impressed to a degree where you think: <em>&#8220;we&#8217;ll probably be sitting on the sofa watching this guy on telly one day, and turn to each other and say &#8211; hey, remember that time we saw this guy in that back room of that pub, before he got hugely famous?&#8221;<\/em>. Good stuff. He certainly seems destined for big things.<\/p>\n<p>First act on the bill was <em>Rhodri Rhys<\/em>. His set was a bit of a mixed bag, and he probably didn&#8217;t endear himself by opening with a line about <em>&#8220;It&#8217;s so good to be back in civilisation, I was in Middlesbrough last week&#8230;&#8221;<\/em> before going on to mock the ways of simple Northerners. He then moved into self-deprecating material about the Welsh (sex with sheep. yawn.) and some semi-misogynistic stuff about the prettiness (or lack thereof) of Welsh girls. The set improved later, with some observational comedy about Dinner Parties, Mountain Climbing and Nudism festivals&#8230; but never quite hit the mark for me. Not an awful routine, by any stretch, but I guess a lot of it just wasn&#8217;t _quite_ my kind of humour.<\/p>\n<p>Second on the bill was <em>Roger Monkhouse<\/em>, who was brilliant. My favourite act of the night. There seems to be precious little of him online, but here&#8217;s a snippet from YouTube:<\/p>\n<p> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YbYs3QowjQg?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>His routine mostly covered the woes of being a middle aged male, the bleakness of the economic situation and other depressing things like that&#8230; but delivered in a disarmingly warm, likeable, and irresistibly-genial sort of way, with a healthy amount of audience interaction and quick-witted improvisation. His slot seemed to fly by &#8212; was it really as long as the other two guys?? I&#8217;m definitely going to keep my eyes open for a chance to see him again.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, <em>Chris McCausland<\/em>, whose routine about <em>&#8220;5 petes in my pub&#8221;<\/em> was instrumental in convincing us to go to this particular club on this particular night&#8230; and which he rather obligingly opened his show with:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DUbAtmjr_ak?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>McCausland is &#8212; apparently &#8212; the only professional comedian in the UK who is blind&#8230; but while his disability is referenced in a fair bit of his material, it never feels like it&#8217;s the overbearing feature of the comedy, or like the guy is specifically trading on being &#8220;THE blind comedian&#8221;. He&#8217;s just a really good observational comedian, who also happens to be blind. He&#8217;s got an engaging, warm style of delivery, and the set was highly enjoyable. Good headliner. And the 5 Petes thing still made me laugh the second time around \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><b>Verdict:<\/b> An excellent night out, and very reasonably-priced&#8230; I&#8217;ll definitely consider another visit when we&#8217;re back in the city. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Best bit:<\/strong> Roger Monkhouse. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Worst bit:<\/strong> Wooden dining chairs which felt a little bit hard after a couple of hours, and the fact that the (rather large) lady sat to my right had a buttock encroaching onto my seat for at least two thirds of the show. Awkward! :S<\/p>\n<p>Official Web Site: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefunnyside.info\/comedyclubs\/coventgarden\/index.htm\">The Funny Side of Covent Garden<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We found ourselves in London on Saturday evening. Being at a bit of a loose end, and in search of cheap entertainment, we decided to visit a comedy club. We&#8217;ve been to The Comedy Store before and really enjoyed it, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/?p=3016\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,95,49],"tags":[177,174,178,175,176],"class_list":["post-3016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy-2","category-thing-of-the-week","category-travels","tag-chris-mccausland","tag-johhny-freeman","tag-london","tag-rhodi-rhys","tag-roger-monkhous","tumblog-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3016"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3049,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions\/3049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}