'You can tell jokes here you can't tell anywhere else' – inside Leicester's comedy scene
almost 5 years in The guardian
Pun fights in boxing rings, nine-year-old standups and a 19-day joke-a-thon … anything goes in vibrant, diverse Leicester, finds our writer as she continues her comedy tour
It is the home town of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman, Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend, and Mash Report star Rachel Parris. And Leicester does love to celebrate their success: Townsend has a theatre named after her and there is a plaque for Chapman. But it is every February that Leicester’s comedy scene really comes to life. What started in 1994 as a project for De Montfort University students has become the UK’s longest-running dedicated comedy festival.
But things could have been very different, reveals Geoff Rowe, Leicester comedy festival’s founding director. “Our lecturer said, ‘Why don’t you put on a festival of eastern European theatre?’” he recalls. Fortunately, Rowe and his fellow students were avid readers of NME, which in 1993 was championing the “Comedy is the new rock’n’roll” notion. The paper had put Rob Newman and David Baddiel on the cover because they’d sold out Wembley Arena. “Standup comedy sounded exciting,” says Rowe. Continue reading...
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