Unless you’ve recently had your funny bone removed, you’re probably aware that Brighton is currently playing host to the Paramount Comedy Festival, a fortnight of fun featuring more than eighty shows by some of the world’s best comedians. But if the idea of parting with large amounts of money doesn’t strike you as particularly funny, you’ll be pleased to know that there is a way to see the festival’s best comics for free. And it doesn’t involve forging tickets.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week the Paramount Comedy Channel filmed an entire series of their stand-up show ‘Comedy Blue’ in two nights at the Corn Exchange, and entry was free on condition that you laugh like a drain and don’t smell like one. I went along on Monday night, little realising that when they said ‘free tickets to a TV comedy recording’, they meant five shows filmed back to back, lasting four and a half hours. I was barely home before midnight. It reached the point where they actually had to bribe us with free sweets and money to stay till the end.
Fortunately I'm anyone's for a Gummy Bear, so wild horses couldn't have dragged me out of there, and having sat myself in a prime position at the end of the second row, I had a camera stuck up my nose so many times I think I'm now officially the face of Comedy Blue. I might have to get myself an agent when it's broadcast in the new year.
For a free night out, it was great value for money. Compere for the evening was Irish comedian Jason Byrne, who was impossible not to love. Warm, funny, and with a gift for the ad lib, he was pretty much the perfect host. It can’t be easy keeping the energy up for four hours, but the man managed it.
The first act on was Craig Campbell, (or Crack Cowbell, as I thought they said at the time), a bearded Canadian in odd trousers who got the evening off to a good start. He was followed by Kitty Flanagan, an Australian comedienne who was possibly my favourite of the entire evening. And not just because I like cats. She pointed out that New Zealanders talk like stroke victims, and came up with an ingenious way of using parent/child parking spaces at the supermarket. I could have happily married the woman for her sense of humour alone, but I have a girlfriend and she knows a lot of offensive jokes, so there's really no need.
Show Two brought us Jim Jeffries, an Australian veteran of 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' who provided one of my highlights of the evening with an anecdote about his father and a train load of Germans. I couldn't repeat it, but trust me, it was funny.
Then came Gary Delaney, the first Brit of the night, who specialised in fiendishly clever one-liners. Much like myself, but without the fiendishly clever bit. He came out with lines such as "I live next door to a family of anorexic agoraphobics. I bet they've got some skeletons in the cupboard."
Gary was followed by an angry American whose name I completely failed to catch. He was in a bad mood to start with, so he won’t be happy that I don’t know his name. After Mr Angry came the festively named Jarred Christmas, an endearing Kiwi who commented that "On the beach in New Zealand you can build sandcastles. On the beach in Brighton you can build... castles."
After Christmas we were let out of the auditorium for twenty minutes to eat free sweets and write our filthiest jokes on a piece of paper. The best ones were filmed at the end of the show, but sadly mine wasn’t quite offensive enough to make the cut. I need to work on my filth.
The second half saw the arrival of Carey Marx and his cuddly bear Parsnip, who was there to soften the blow of his owner’s risqué (yet funny) material, after whom came Paul Chowdhry, another of my personal favourites, who bore a striking similarity to Prince (the pop star, not the heir to the throne), and began by saying "I won't be doing any of my early stuff - Purple Rain, etc".
Paul was great from start to finish, as was American Scott Capurro, who was by far the most offensive act of the night. Some of his material was verging on the illegal, but he also happened to be brilliantly funny. Unless you were the young chap in the front row who probably needs counselling after being picked on mercilessly for twenty minutes.
The penultimate performer was Dave Hadingham who looked and sounded like an east-end criminal who smokes sixty a day, but who actually came out with some of the cleverest gags of the evening. I warmed to him immensely. Which is more than I can say for Andre Vincent, the final comedian, who never really did it for me I’m afraid.
By this time it was approaching 11:30pm, and much like anyone reading this article, we were all wondering when it was going to end. Fortunately the TV producers had foreseen that situation, and at the start of the night had given us each a raffle ticket, with a cash prize of £125 on offer to anyone who managed to stay till the end.
So with half the audience trying to order a mug of Horlicks from the bar, Jason Byrne picked a bloke out of the front row, spun him around on the floor, poured the tickets into his mouth, and got him to pick the winner by choking. Sadly I didn’t collect the cash, but with more than four hours of comedy and a guaranteed TV appearance, it was well worth going. If only for the free Gummy Bears.
