Charmian Hughes
A prescribed comedy course aims to assist people suffering from trauma.
Comedian in residence at Bristol University, Angie Belcher, has worked with health advisors and psychology theories to develop comedy courses that may help people deal with trauma.
"Old Dogs, New Schtick, Great Gig" – that's the subtitle of this Sunday's gig at the Cockpit Theatre featuring entertainers who know the comedy business inside out and back to front. I'd call them seasoned comedians but that makes it sound as if they are covered in salt and pepper.
When I was a kid, I saw a terrifying Hammer horror film about an immortal evil beautiful white queen of a lost African kingdom. In petrifying hissy fits, she throws screaming love rivals down bottomless pits of fire. In the nightmare finale she shrivels to her real age of two thousand years old in front of her horrified young lover.
Laughing Horse Comedy has launched its programme of shows today for its 2020 Edinburgh Fringe line-up that has been taken online. The spirit of the Fringe will continue online this year, with a month of comedy shows, plus children’s shows, cabaret and spoken word.
Earlier today I saw a show called Come Look At The Baby, which is basically a baby sitting on a chair gurgling and grinning for thirty minutes. Cute of course, but round the corner on Cowgate you will get a lot more sense out of Charmian Hughes, aged 60.
About five years ago, while compering new material night at the Hob in Forest Hill I saw an act I didn’t think I’d seen before. He was so good I couldn’t wait for him to come off stage so I could immerse him in my golden largesse of advice hewn from over two decades at the coalface of comedy, some of it headlining the legendary Guilty Pea Club to well over thirty people, some of it from MCing Glastonbury Festival’s most challenging arena- The Soapbox By The Clanging Toilet Stage.
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There has been an intriguing resurgence in interest in the early days of alternative comedy in recent years. Stewart Lee has namechecked various veteran acts, Alexei Sayle has gone back onstage and the death of Rik Mayall also prompted a re-assessment of the era that comedy almost forgot.
There has been a lot of interest in the history of alternative comedy in the last few years. Stewart Lee has championed various early comics and Alexei Sayle has revisited his Comedy Store glory days. Maybe the death of Rik Mayall made a lot of comedy fans of a certain age think about what excited them about live comedy in the first place.
Charmian Hughes is a south London comedian who worked in advertising before going into comedy. Her latest show Raj Rage tells the story of Hughes' recent trip to India in search of some family history, neatly weaving together present and past into one comical whole. She performs Raj Rage at Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival on February 14.
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