My friend Eva runs a wonderful comedy night called Scrambled, and beyond that she really genuinely cares about improving the scene. This extends to running some kind of long-term comedy course. You love to see it.
As people who run another night, Alasdair and I were very kindly invited to the end of course showcase, with the intention of hopefully finding some names to book in the future. We are, of course, delighted to attend.
Given the nature of the beast - a night with ten newbies doing often their first ever performances, I think it would be unfair to dissect in detail how they went and to criticise them the way I might other more established acts, so I feel like I want to pull out some general trends.
It’s fascinating to see the natural tendency amongst them towards, I dunno, not quite “joke-shaped jokes” but really obvious patterns. Lots of “or as I call them”s.
It’s no surprise, I think, that the most interesting ones are the ones who have thought beyond that to why are they telling these jokes? One act who was not particularly that funny had nailed their persona and motivation and that was more engaging than one act who had some very unique experiences (and some good jokes on them!) but kept cutting away to generic “married life” stuff. No! Tell me about the stuff only you can tell me about!