You Must Be Stoking

So Friday night was our inaugural You Must Be Stoking (name copyright Paul Kerensa 2007 - the 3rd comedy club I've named, with increasing punniness...) comedy night at my local - The Stoke pub in Guildford. And I think we did a grand job. Stephen Anderson organised excellently and has spent weeks nay months planning it and most importantly flogging tickets, so we had a good 140 people in. And on the night we had meself, Andy King and Tony Vino, plus a non-comedian guest, yoyoist and juggler Arron Sparks, who was fab - and if any comedy promoter is reading this, he's a great act to book if you want something a bit different and non-comedy at your gig...

Crucially, Tim the bar manager loved it (I think he loved the bums on seats more than the show itself, but that's fine. And when I say bums on seats, I don't mean we dragged in homeless people). So we're going to be regular - probably monthly - from after January. I shall purvery the British comedy circuit for the finest acts and persuade them to toddle down the A3 to Guildford. Already got a few great acts interested. And I'm open to ideas on this, so please do blog-comment with suggestions - but the way I thought we'd do it is thus:

I compere (this is not open to negotiation, so don't blog-comment saying someone else should do it. Be loyal.)
Opening act - a warm and friendly affable act from the world of stand-up
Middle act - someone a bit different, not a straight stand-up but potentially a magician, poet, music act or drag queen. Alright, I may draw the line at drag queen. Cos, again, I can do that.
Closing act - a world-class reliable Comedy Store type headliner

I think that should work.

Friday's gig differed slightly from the norm in that it was co-sponsored by 3 local churches, so the audience were resultantly half-full of lovely Christians. Which was fine - and I think it says something that although all the acts tailored material to be appropriate and clean and inoffensive, it was still a fab night and the non-Christian audients enjoyed it as much as the theists did. A triumph for the clean joke.

I hear we had one complaint. I won't name, but apparently someone thought it was unchristian to make jokes about 'masticating' while inferring its soundalike meaning. Fair enough - I don't agree, but I can see where this person was coming from, in that it was a slightly bawdy joke if you're expecting 100% blessed you'd-be-comfortable-telling-it-to-Jesus humour. This person also had a problem with a routine about ghosts, cos that's unchristian too - oh now come on, that's hardly off-colour. And thirdly they had a problem with a routine about gambling. But there was no joke about gambling, was there? Well one act talked about Deal Or No Deal, which apparently counts as sinful gambling. Yeah, I can see that evil glint in Edmonds' eye. So no, much as was going to give the complainant the benefit of doubt on the masticating issue, the ghosts/gambling part of the complaint nulls and voids it in my book...

Oh and incidentally, for masturbation mentioned in the Bible see Genesis 38:6-10; for ghosts see Matthew 17:1-8; for gambling see Proverbs 16:33. So ha. If the Bible mentions them, then I reckon we can too...