The calm before the storm.
Welcome back to another month of stuff.
Kicking off May
… at the Picturedrome and The Duke of Wellington. Here we had Tom Houghton and Markus Birdman pulling double duty. Topping off the bill at the Drome we had Lindsey Santoro and Adam Beardsmore, at the Duke it was Brendan Dempsey and Cerys Nelmes.
Really good fun at the Duke again with a crowd that was ready for some comedy. I took a night off from the photos on this one leaving it the professional Stuart Hogben. Mike had also left a sealed tub of celebrations in my boot from our last gig, between us and the acts they were devoured in record time.
NERD ALERT. Couple of friends Ash and Andy joined me again for this night, we ended up taking Tom Houghton back to Northampton train station after the gig. In the car on the way back we had a really good chat about Tom’s tour and then things took a quick turn when he mentioned playing Magic the Gathering. There was this unified laughter in the car from the three of us as years ago that’s essentially how we met. So we absolutely geeked out for the remaining drive home reminiscing on that game and the hours and money spent in our early 20’s. Tom has an open invite next year when he comes back, we’re ready to dust off the cards and battle!
Pictured below: Cerys Nelmes
WEEKENDER UPDATE
So we’ve made a change to our line up for the Weekender, we now have the incredible Andrew Maxwell. As seen on Live At The Apollo (BBC One), Have I Got News For You (BBC One), Celebrity Juice (ITV2) and Mock The Week (BBC Two) and I’m A Celebrity Get Me Outta Here (ITV). Book. Your. Tickets.
May Brad? Brad May!
Let’s start with some honesty, this night was a slow sell. Potentially impacted by Bank holidays, the Delapre event the following week, a little bit of sunshine, or maybe a comedy overdose. But the incredible acts we had, Eshaan Akbar, Kyrah Gray, Kelsey De Almeida and Jamie Allerton plus a super nice audience who were up for it from the start, made for a really enjoyable evening.
What was also really nice was just catching up. I haven’t seen Kelsey for years since he moved to Australia and we also established we hadn’t seen Eshaan since pre-lockdowns. Eshaan is one of the nicest guys and funniest acts around. First time I went to the Edinburgh Fringe I saw his show in the upstairs of the Guilded Balloon, it was one of my favourite shows that year.
A rising star certainly worth keeping an eye on though is Kyrah Gray, I think a few people who saw her that night will consider going to see her full hour at our Weekender event in July off the back of it, really good stuff.
Pictured below: Eshaan Akbar showing off his new tattoo.
Flashback - Joel Dommett in a marquee
Our second ever Comedy Crate Weekender in 2018 was one that will stick with me for a while. It was so busy and so tiring. I remember that Summer we were all posting flyers in the baking heat weeks before the event. Me and my wife even got kicked out of the Balloon festival for flyering.
One of our headline acts that Weekend was Joel Dommett, Joel was featuring a bit more on TV at this time and his profile was very much on the rise. Little did we know, just how much. For that year we opted to use a marquee that was built into the Black Prince garden, we used the back room as a temporary green room. Joel had come up to Northampton relatively early as he was travelling with Steen Raskopoulos who was also performing earlier that day.
As one act finished, we had a half hour interval, I was initially at The Charles Bradlaugh and was then heading over to the Black Prince to swap over, high fiveing Mike as we passed on the street (not sure this actually happened). When I got there the marquee was already filling up quite quickly. People were keen to get their seats. I was trying to support with checking wristbands and people just kept on coming, all the seats had gone and I was advising people that they would need to stand at the back. I then had to head over to the green room, to check on Joel and let him know we’ll be good to go shortly. When I next looked inside that marquee it was full to the brim, the walk way was full, the back was full, people were standing at the entrance of the marquee just to get a view of the stage. If this was the inside of a venue, I think the health and safety police would have had a field day.
Joel then came over to me and had a quick look in the room. I could only apologise that the only way to the stage was through the mass of people waiting to see him. It was insane. I ended up having to turn people away, saying you can stand outside and listen, but I can’t squeeze anyone else in.
I was still smoking around this time, and boy did I chain smoke through that entire show. Funny thing being a promoter sometimes. The stress of that whole weekend, we managed to work with someone like Joel Dommett and I didn’t catch a second of that show. Admittedly Mike is probably worse than I am for this, getting caught in the moment and not being able to enjoy the thing you’ve worked so hard to put on, but it happens.
Harry’s Pals
Another Charity event for those lovely people at Harry’s Pals. This time we had Matt Richardson, Lindsey Santoro, Peter Brush and Paul Revill at Pasha’s Bar in Daventry, always good fun. Have you ever seen a room full of adults sing and do the actions to “peel banana, peel peel banana?” No I hadn’t either….
“Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned…”
Last year when talking through some plans with Mike, he said to me “I’d love to book Fesshole". My response at the time was “who?” We can’t always be in the know, right? Mike went on to explain about a Twitter account that posts peoples confessions anonymously for comedic effect and they have over a million followers. For example:
“After I lost my Mum I struggled emotionally for a long time. My manager at work noticed, and told me that I needed to do something to 'get over it'. I was outraged, so I lied and told her I was going to counselling and took every other Tuesday afternoon off for 8 months.”
The guys of Fesshole also perform a live show, where they go through some of these confessions and get the live audience involved. I’m always intrigued by something a little bit different, so I was on board straight away…
Roll forward, we had a sold out show at the Charles Bradlaugh and it was a really funny night with some outrageous confessions.
Delapre Abbey
Last year we did a little Edinburgh Preview which was part of the NNFest at Delapre Abbey. This year we were invited back, but this time we were told we could use the big stage for a comedy event on the Friday night. So we had a little chat with our friend Paul Revill of Castle Comedy and decided to do a little collab booking the likes of Gary Delaney, Zoe Lyons and Nathan Caton. Now leading up to this event we were all on edge (mainly just me), about the possibility of rain. This was planned as an outdoor event. Fortunately, Zeus was kind to us though even if we were teased with 20 mins of very light rain early on in the show.
The gig itself was fantastic, if a little bit knackering. We were tasked with putting all the chairs out and packing them all away on top of all the loose flyers and cups on the floor. Pretty sure I heard Mike say his famous line… “It’s not all glamour.” If he didn’t I certainly said it in my own head. (A massive thank you to Iain, Stu, Ash, Phebe, Hannah and Katrina).
During the evening as it got darker we were watching from the sides and noticed this huge flying insect, which we later discovered to be a cockchafer beetle. It spent majority of the night near us, but then there was this hilarious moment it decided to go on stage and go after Gary Delaney. Gary is an absolute pro though, so after a minor distraction and some impromptu expletives, he continued to deliver some incredible one liners and top the night off perfectly. We had a good laugh about it as he came off stage, but for some time we were all freaking out over the size of that thing!
It was a real pleasure to be a part of this event, and thanks to MO Sounds and NN Fest for allowing us to be a part of their weekend.
A Surprising Break
To our surprise, we ended up with the last 2 weeks of May gig free! Which was the perfect opportunity to have a bit of a break. I went off to Bournemouth for 4 days which was lovely! Then came back and headed straight off to Birmingham, where I kindly (and reluctantly) took the wife to see Michael McIntyre. It was good to see Jake Lambert supporting though. Then the week after I took her to see Emmanuel Sonubi at the Royal & Derngate. Even when we’re not working, we seem to get sucked back into comedy somehow. Even Mike and Katrina went out to see a night hosted by friends of The Crate Wayne Chalmers and Pete Teckman to raise money for the fantastic Team Daisy charity during their ‘break’.
I started the blog by saying, the calm before the storm, that’s because May was generally a quieter month for us, but now we’re heading into June and officially into the Festival season. We’ve got loads of Edinburgh Previews around the town and we’d absolutely love to fill these rooms out for the sake of the acts trying out new stuff. We continue to try and plant that flag that let’s the industry know Northampton is a great place for comedians to come and try out new material to comedy savvy audiences. We hope you can make a few of these preview events whilst supporting local venues. Click the link below to find out what shows are coming up around the town and add some to the calendar.
Again, thanks for making it this far down. You didn’t have to, but you did. So give yourself a pat on the back.