Comedy

Reading Comedy Festival

By Phil Creighton
September 30, 2009

Doctors in Reading are on stand-by, with operating theatres primed and ready and nurses ready to mop brows. They’re expecting an influx of patients with sides split, tickled ribs and damaged funny bones.

The reason? Reading Comedy Festival is getting under way this weekend.

The two-week laughterfest promises more laughs that you’d ever find in a Christmas cracker factory – and better punchlines too.

From the opening night on Friday to the closing event on Saturday, October 17, a mixture of top comics and up-and-coming acts will be making Reading laugh longer and louder than ever before.

Reading’s carnival of comedy includes Tim Minchin, Simon Amstell, Andy Parsons, Alistair McGowan and the Grumpy Old Women, as well as sold out dates from Jimmy Carr and Rhod Gilbert.

Getting the show on the road is Terry Alderton, interviewed right, the former Southend goalie who holds the record for the most standing ovations at London’s Comedy Club.

The event closes not with a headliner but Reading’s hugely popular open mic contest, where the stars of tomorrow will get their moment in the spotlight – but only one of them will be crowned Reading’s best new comic.

Alistair McGowan will return to Reading to perform his latest show and is promising sharp observations, poetry and romance, animals

and surrealism, wordplay and ‘greenery’ as well as impersonations of footballers and film stars.

John Pinette, who once supported Frank Sinatra on tour, will make a very rare UK appearance with a stand-up show that promises big laughs as he explores the little things that cause him to lose his cherub-like demeanour, such as getting stuck at the back of the dinner queue, being confronted by stupidity or made to exercise.

David O’Doherty will be making a welcome return to Reading having absolutely stormed his two gigs at the Comedy Festival last year.

This time round he’s promising standing up, sitting down and a song where he tries to seduce the entire audience.

There’s also some drama courtesy of dinnerladies at The Hexagon – you can read more about it on page 12.

Most events will take place in South Street arts centre, The Hexagon or Reading’s Concert Hall, but this year there are a number of fringe events taking place in smaller bars, including Big Jack’s Readingburgh Festival. Big Jack Lyn has extended his popular monthly comedy club to peform extra sets in Afrobar, down Merchants Place.

Jongleurs Comedy Club nights are back this year and look out for Comedy Writing Workshops at Central Library and the Comic Art Masterclass which features sessions from Beano artist Kev F Sutherland.

Terry says he’s on fire

The first act at this year’s Reading Comedy Festival is said to be one of the funniest comics on the circuit – but, as Phil Creighton found out, don’t ask him for a DVD

Elm Park. It’s a far cry from South Street Arts Centre, but it’s the first time that Terry Alderton set foot in our corner of this green and pleasant land.

The comic was there to cheer on Southend, his football team in another tense nail-biting game of footie.

Of course, he might get the chance to see the new Madjeski Stadium should Reading’s season continue to pan out rather badly.

“I’ve never been,” he tells me, “but I went years ago to the old one.”

It’s not his only taste of Reading – “I worked in Jongleurs years and years ago,” he recalls. “It seems a much more rough and tumble ‘whay hey!’ type of place.”

The 38-year-old comic from Chigwell, Essex, is one of the first acts in this year’s Reading Comedy Festival and he’s looking forward to it.

“It’s quite exciting to be one of the first, but also quite worrying because it might not have warmed up yet,” he says. “To be part of anything is nice. I’m also part of the Manchester Comedy Festival – it’s always nice to be part of the bigger festivals,” he adds, giving our maturing comedy festival some praise.

His press blurb describes him as “an outstanding and unpredictable comic”, promising top-drawer improvisation, a disregard for conventions, vocal dexterity and stunningly accurate impressions.

Not only that, but it continues “he’s one of the few comics who can bring a crowd to their feet, night after night”.

But how does he class his comedy?

“Years ago I would have described myself a middle of the road happy chappy Barrymore type of bloke. Now I don’t really know what I am. I don’t know,” he confesses.

“I kind of think I’m like a ventriloquist without a puppet.”

It sounds intruiging – and he ups the ante by revealing that he is better seen live than on a DVD.

“People keep asking me if I’ve got a DVD coming out but I think I’m a much better live comic than I’d ever be on a DVD. I’ve watched myself back and think ‘this is alright’, but I remember the gig as being absolutely electric.

“You’ll live the moment with me,” he adds. “It is better [live] there’s no doubt about it.”

And the sincerity in his voice as he says it means he believes this strongly, even though it must be tempting to make a quick buck as comedy videos have sold in the millions before.

His quick wit and unpredictability means that he likes a certain kind of audience: unjudgmental.

“I think most comics will say that,” he confesses. “Intelligent audiences that are not judgmental are the best. You can expand what’s going on in your mind because they’re far brighter than you are, they go with you and find the irony with you without some going, ‘Your content is messing with my mind’.”

That’s quite a challenge to any comedian, and it must make heckling Terry interesting.

We start to talk about his new film, The Flirting Club, only for a large burst of static on the line to break up the call. Apologising, I call him back and he sympathises with my predicament.

“It becomes a bit of a plague technology … It’s brilliant when it works, when it just works it’s great,” he says, enthusiastically as I rather rudely rush him away from my faux pas and steer conversation back to the film.

The Flirting Club, which will be released later this autumn, sees him play a German called Gunther, although “I played him as a South American in rehearsals,” he reveals. “But then I said he should be German and so Gunther was born.

“I really enjoy acting,” he says before adding, “I love both sides of the camera.”

Despite his fame, he says that he’s actually a really shy person and prefers “doing stuff I really like doing”.

Finally, to close our interview, I ask him why people should come and see him at South Street on Friday, as part of the Reading Comedy Festival.

“I’d love you to come to see it,” he says. “I’m on fire at the moment and I’m storming at the moment. I’m really on fire.”

So if you see fire engines heading down South Street don’t worry, it’s just Terry being hot stuff.

Terry plays South Street on Friday. For tickets, call (0118) 960 6060 or log on to www.readingarts.com.

For daily updates log on to www.readingcomedyfestival.com

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