Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival (part 2)

In a lot of ways working at a comedy club is much like working anywhere else; it can be stressful, mundane and tiring. But in other ways it is a lot more fun than a regular job. Last night for example some of the Just the Tonic crew headed over to the City Rooms in Leicester for the launch party of the Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival 2014 brochure. OK, so maybe it isn't even 2014 yet and the festival doesn't start proper for another 72 days but that's not going to stop us having a good old knees up.

Of course there is something far more important here than getting a bit giddy and taking photos of promoters with their tops off; the official launch of the Comedy Festival Box Office. You can now book tickets for hundreds of shows from the box office website.      

Now the question on your lips will be 'what shows should I book to see?' (of course it might not be that but let's assume that it is). Well fair comedy fan let us delight you with another selection of some of the shows we're most looking forward to hosting.

Tim Vine's Chat Show

Parkinson, Frost, Paxman: superb interviewers with a knack for exposing truths and getting to the very core of people. Tim Vine is nothing like them! Enjoy the combination of Vine's silly humour and hilarious anecdotes for two hours of comic brilliance. We have already sold out our allocation of tickets for this show meaning the only to get some is through the DLCF website. Book early or you will miss this Edinburgh Fringe sell out show.  

11th Feb - Just the Tonic Leicester

Romesh Ranganathan - Rom Com

For just £5 this show is an absolute steal. Romesh is currently setting the comedy world alight having won the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the year 2013 following that up with a nomination for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe. Come watch Rom Com (awarded best show at Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival 2013) and see what all the hype is about. Now appearing as a regular on Channel 4's 'Stand Up for the Week'.

8th Feb - Just the Tonic Leicester

Paul McCaffrey - Work in Progress

You may recognise Paul from BBC3's 'Impractical Jokers' but we know him as one of our favourite comedians on the circuit. We book him as often as we can because he always delivers the funnies (if you saw him at our Leicester venue last month you can attest to this fact). Being a work in progress we don't know much about this show but we're sure it will be worth every penny. 'A total natural, his storytelling is utterly unique, never anything less than gut-bustingly hilarious' GQ

7th Feb - Just the Tonic @ The Regent's Club 
Joke Thieves

This is a show any good comedy fan will love. Take a bunch of comedians, get them to do their normal routines then make them all swap; live on stage. Sometimes chaotic, sometimes beautiful, always laugh out loud funny. This was a complete sell out at the fringe this year and we're looking forward to hosting this unique event at both our main venue and our new venue on Regent's Road.

 8th Feb - Just the Tonic Leicester
21st Feb - Just the Tonic @ The Regent's Club

Hopefully that's given you a few ideas. There's plenty to get excited about.

Catch you on the flip flop
JTT 

Interview with Paul Myrehaug

 We promised you we'd bring you the odd exclusive interview and we weren't lying. This week we caught up with hilarious comic Paul Myrehaug about moving from and working in his native Canada as well as his experience of this year's Edinburgh Fringe.  

__________

JTT: Being a comic means traveling all over the place. Does the nomadic liftestyle suit you?

Paul:Yes. Over the last two months I honestly don’t think I’ve been in my bed for more than two nights straight. Today I woke up in Copenhagen and flew here. I like it; my main priority when I moved to Europe was to travel as much as possible, so I’m still in the zone where I like it but I can see me getting a bit tired now. The travel in Canada is tough too because it’s such a big country. The flights and drives are long and hard. So I’m just starting to feel like I could use a more solid base.

JTT: What could you see yourself doing?

Paul: I’ll never not do stand-up. I guess trying to get a writing gig or something like that. Opportunities are definitely be more in Canada than here in the UK because I’m still a bit of a new kid here. I’ll probably try to move in that direction but certainly not right away.

JTT: Was it hard starting when you moved to the UK?

Paul: I would never say in Canada I’m a household name but it’s easier for me to book gigs there. It was hard though, it was a cool challenger because your nervous to do all the gigs again. I don’t have the currency over here to be like ‘oh that was a shitty set’ and the club owner to be invite me back. I’m still only getting to know everyone so a shit set means I’m not coming back. That fear makes it fun. 

JTT: Are you doing xmas shows in Canada?

Yeah I’ll be doing no comedy clubs, just Christmas parties in Alberta. It’s in the middle of the country where I was born and raised but it’s also where all the oil is. So all those oil Christmas parties and functions there’s normally more gigs than there are comics so it’s a good place to be around that time. It scares the shit out of me every time! It’s a little different because you’re booked to do 45 minutes to an hour and you have to be corporate clean the whole time.       

JTT: Do you think Canadians have a slower style of comedy to English comedians?

Paul: Definitely. I think that’s because of the landscape. We’re all slower storytellers because you’re forced to do a lot of time quickly. If you have a car in Canada you can be opening a club within 3-4 years of starting comedy. I was dong half an hour sets early, way too early so I think when you have five minutes of material and you’ve got to fill half an hour you’re talking super slow, doing these stupid stories from high school, so I think that’s why we all have that slow drawl. It’s a completely different speed here.

 JTT: How close do you feel your on stage persona is to the real life you?

Paul: It’s starting to become more level now. Guys that have been doing comedy a long time say it would be at least ten years until you start talking even closely to how you should be and I’m hitting that time about now. I think it’s like a blown out personality of what I really am. On stage I’m the guy I’d like to be if I could have no filter, it’s who I’d like to be because it’s juvenile and juvenile crap makes me laugh.

JTT:You did Big Value this year. How did you find it?

Paul: It was nice because I was going to Edinburgh to do another show [The Canadians of Comedy] and that was on at 11pm so that was all I was doing and then I got invited to do Big Value pretty late in the game. My manager was like ‘You might as well’ because I’d never done Edinburgh before, I’d never set foot at that festival. Then when I got up there I was really thankful that I was doing the show because it was a room of 100 people every night. Obviously out of 30 shows you’re gonna have a few that don’t go perfectly but most nights were awesome. They were really fun, such a good experience. All of a sudden I wasn’t fearing the festival anymore, so then when I went to do late and live and shows like that I had material I knew would work for those crowds.

JTT: Was there a reason you chose not to do a solo show at the festival?

Paul: When it came down to it my manager said ‘no one knows who you are’ so he didn’t like the kind of venues I could get [if doing a solo show] then we got the phone call about the triple hander and thought we can go back in a year’s time to do an hour. I want to go up there next year to do a solo show but looking back I’m so happy I didn’t do an hour. Without seeing it first, my game plan for going up there probably wouldn’t have been a great fit for doing an hour, having never seen a one man hour show before. In North America there isn’t anything really like it, we have fringes but [one man shows] aren’t popular in the mainstream at all. So I had no fucking idea what one was but now I do. 

 __________

Make sure to look out for Paul when he returns to the country in February!