Venue: The Three Tuns, Hanover St
This has to be one of the best value shows at the festival. Not only do you get three comedy acts and a short film for your massive investment of £3, but they also bring around lovely hot chips during the show! The venue is at the Three Tuns, which is a regular comedy club and is downstairs in Hanover St. The room is long and narrow but I had no problem seeing and hearing the acts from my point half way down.
The acts change every night and the night I was there (17th), there was a very late change due to illness, so the line-up was Ronnie Golden, Paul Karensa and Jeff Innocent, the short film and finally a special group for the next few nights, the Tea Time Heroes. Ronnie was doing some of the material I had seen in his show with Barry Cryer, but there was also some fresh stuff and on his musical ability alone, he is worth seeing. Paul Karensa is a ginger, apparently the only minority everyone is still allowed to pick on. Very good act. The last minute extra, Jeff Innocent, started looking rather scary but he built up into some very funny comedy.
The film was a future retrospective from an extraterrestrial viewpoint, about the destruction of the Earth (in 2025) at human hands. It was a rather sobering piece for a comedy night, but was sort of the reason the nights are being put on. The last act, the Tea Time Heroes had a very difficult job trying to bring the crowd back to a happy state, and it was a struggle I’m not sure they overcame. So it’s hard to say whether it was due to the film or their sketches.
All in all, this was a very funny group of comedians doing benefit comedy for a very low price, with food thrown in. How much better can it get???