Stand Up For Cider – 22 July 2022
A very busy day for Genius……Nipped to Wookey Hole to set up the comedy night and meet the acts. Drove back late afternoon and then up to the CICCIC for the 3rd Heat of Stand Up For Cider! Or as our resident MC David Arnold says….. Season 9 Episode 3!
A sell out audience, some wonderful regular guests but also a large number of newbies too. It was also an awesome night for our fabulous sponsors. Representatives from Berrys Coaches, Walpole Dunn Accountants and Sheppys Cider too. Plus our gorgeous Sally from Design Bean who also helps with the scoring and judging, along with our lovely Ges. Dream Team. Trish and Tim O’Connor ran the night and kept the acts to the schedule.
We had 9 Acts at this heat. First up was Richard Jay, Richard has taken part in SUFC a couple of times before. Very funny, old-school material. Charming and popular. Next up was Troy Orchard, a young Bristolian told a fab joke about his Jamaican/Irish roots!
Chris Yates jumped on the stage, dressed in black…. ginger hair and introduced himself as an influencer on the dark web! Very clever material and he held the audience in the palm of his hand and delivered some killer jokes in a fab style!
Keefy was next up. Very good material including jokes about a Rugby Team Morris Dancing as the UK version of the Haka! Followed by a very naughty joke about Peppa Pig.
Ridwan Hussain took to the stage. He had travelled all the way from London on the train. Some confident material and one to watch in the future.
We had a beer break and time for the audience to rest their chuckle muscles and fill up their glasses. The CICCIC bar staff are wonderful. This venue is the home of Taunton Comedy Club too…. The original and BEST!
First up after the break was Kris Davies from Swansea. Kris has taken part before and I really noticed the improvement since last time. Very assured presence and great jokes. Including one about Thrombotic Piles that made me spit my drink out!
Next up was Jacqui Doherty. She is a TV extra and has popped up in lots of telly shows. Lovely joke telling style and some great material.
Jacqui was followed by Mo Clarke – this was only her 10th time on stage! She ought to keep going and keep learning and gigging. It takes enormous courage to do stand up comedy.
Finally, our 9th act took to the stage. Phil Wathern, very tall and cuddly! At the beginning he did an awkward joke by staring for an uncomfortable amount of time into the eyes of a lady on the front row! Luckily, she has a fantastic sense of humour and was without doubt our best laugher of the whole night! She also happens to be one of my best friends and she got tickets for 4 and didn’t tell me she was coming. Back to Phil….he talked about being an unhealthy person and I wish I could remember the joke about a kebab and a fox! Hopefully he will repeat this joke when he appears in the Final on 25th November.
My Sally and Ges gathered in the audience score sheets and Tim and I counted up the scores. While we were counting the club was treated to an outstanding performance by our headline act Ricky Balshaw. Ricky is an ex-para-Olympian and has cerebral palsy. He made a big deal of the steps up to the stage and had a funny dig at me for making it difficult for him! Cheeky! His self-deprecating material is some of the best jokes I have ever heard. I have booked Ricky at several gigs over the last few months across Somerset. Even though I have heard some of the material before I look forward to hearing it again. He has added and improved everything. Every audience have loved Ricky as much as I do. This night he had them on the edge of their seats with anticipation of what was coming next. I love to watch the audience laugh and react to Ricky the way I do. A whole room of smiling faces and massive laughs! Ricky travels all across the UK to get stage time. We will be seeing much more of him on future Genius stages. If you see his name on any comedy posters, get tickets, you can thank me after!
David brought the night to a close in his usual, charming, funny way! We love David and are delighted to say we have managed to contract him to do all the Stand Up For Cider shows in 2023! We will be announcing the dates soon.
The next Taunton Comedy Club is on 3 September at CICCIC – Grab your tickets quick! Then the next heat of SUFC 2022 is on 30 September. See you then!
