What Can We Say About Comedy??

We at the Grinning Idiot Comedy Club Love our Comedy Live, Up close and personal, and we're not the only ones...  Here's a good old run down on how it all got started, the funnies and all that...

Live Stand-Up Comedy... What's it all about?

Stand-up comedy is a style of comedy where the performer speaks directly to the audience, with the absence of the theatrical "fourth wall", a wall may we point out at the Grinning Idiot has protected actors from Heckles for an age. A person who performs stand-up comedy is known as a stand-up comic, stand-up comedian (comedienne if female) or more informally stand up. It is usually performed by a single comedian, with the aid of a hand-held microphone (sometimes, however, the comic will opt to keep the microphone in the stand so he or she may use both hands for visual effect, as is the case of Ron White or sometimes Gary Delaney). The comedian usually recites a fast-paced succession of humorous stories, short jokes, and one-liners, which comprise what is typically called a set (monologue, routine, act or whatever). Some stand-up comedians use props, music or magic tricks to enhance their acts (many use them because they have no jokes, we try to avoid that kind of comedy at the Idiot, though will be booking fantastic musical and magical acts that have plenty of top notch jokes to go with their skills). Stand-up comedy is often performed in comedy clubs, bars, colleges, theaters and to best affect at the Star and Shadow Cinema in Stepney Bank. However, there is no real restriction on where the craft can be performed. Many smaller venues hold "open mic" events, where amateur comedians perform comedy before a live audience, offering a way for such performers to hone their craft and possibly break into the business. In North America, many comedy clubs feature the now-iconic brick wall as the backdrop for stand-up performances.

Many stand-up routines are similar to one-man shows, with the main difference being the expectations of the audience, who, in some cases, expect a relatively steady stream of "laughs". This in turn affects the aims of the performer, who is under great pressure to deliver those laughs (a pressure that actors don't have to go through, damn em!). If the performer cannot coax laughs out of the crowd, sometimes the crowd will poke fun at the comedian, a practice known as heckling, sometimes a crowd member will heckle even if the comedian is doing well, this is known scientificall as "Being a twat".

Stand-up comedy is difficult to master partly because the comedian is at the mercy of the audience, which is an integral element of the act. An adept stand-up comedian must nimbly play off the mood and tastes of any particular audience, and adjust his or her routine accordingly. Stand-up is an art form that is openly devoted to getting laughs from an audience above all else (unlike theatrical comedy, which creates comedy within the structure of a play and with character and situation). The skills attributed to stand-up are diverse; it is often necessary for a stand-up comic to simultaneously assume the roles of a writer, editor, performer, promoter, producer and technician.

One hallmark of a master stand-up comedian is the ability to not only face down a "heckler", but win over and entertain the rest of the crowd with a witty retort. Many stand-up comedians work for years to develop 45 minutes of material, and usually perform their bits repeatedly, slowly perfecting them over time. Actor-comedian Will Ferrell has called stand-up comedy hard, lonely and vicious.

Despite the name, the comedian's posture is one of the least important aspects of stand-up comedy. Some will sit on a stool during all or part of his monologue. A paraplegic can do stand-up comedy just as effectively as as a person in good health. The term "sit-down comic" is usually pejorative in nature. The most important quality a stand-up comic needs is the ability to induce laughter, and you'd be surprised how many stroll on for years without actually succeeding in this task.

With more than 70,000 visitors, German comedian Mario Barth established the world record for the most visitors in a stand-up comedy show on July 12, 2008 in the olympic stadium of Berlin, that's (in my calculation) 636 grinning idiot comedy clubs, if he's luck Mario might just get a booking.

That's Enough Defining the Art For you, Here's some UK Specific info.

The United Kingdom has a long and rich heritage of standup comedians, one which the Grinning Idiot comedy club hopes to support and nurture in the North East, bringing the best International and National acts to the North, but also supporting local talent.

British stand-up comedy began in the music halls of the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable performers who rose through the music hall circuit were Morecambe and Wise, Arthur Askey and Max Miller, who was considered to be the quintessential music-hall comedian. The heavy censorship regime of the Lord Chamberlain's Office required all comedians to submit their acts for censorship. The act would be returned with unacceptable sections underlined in blue pencil (possibly giving rise to the term "blue" for a comedian whose act is considered bawdy or smutty). The comedian was then obliged not to deviate from the act in its edited form, we at the Grinning Idiot comedy club will never censor a comedian, indeed we've booked a few that some clubs consider risky, not us though, as not only do we understand the craft, we also know what our crowds like.

At the end of World War II, many members of the Armed Forces who had developed a taste for comedy (stand-up or otherwise) in wartime concert parties, and moved into professional entertainment. Eric Sykes, Peter Sellers and the other Goons, and Tommy Cooper all began their careers this way. The rise of the postwar comedians coincided with the rise of television and radio, and the traditional music hall circuit suffered greatly as a result. Whereas a music hall performer could work for years using just one act, television exposure created a constant demand for new material, although this may have also been responsible for the cessation of theatrical censorship in 1968.

By the 1970s, music hall entertainment was virtually dead. Alternative circuits had evolved, such as Working Mens' Clubs.  Some of the more successful comedians on the Working Men's Club circuit - including Bernard Manning, Bobby Thompson, Frank Carson and Stan Boardman - eventually made their way to television via such shows as The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. The "alternative" comedy scene also began to evolve. Some of the earliest successes came from folk clubs, where performers such as Billy Connolly, Mike Harding and Jasper Carrott started as relatively straight musical acts whose between-song banter developed into complete comedy routines. The 1960s had also seen the satire boom, including the creation of The Establishment (club), which, amongst other things, gave British audiences their first taste of extreme American stand-up comedy from Lenny Bruce.

In 1979, the first American-style stand-up comedy club, the Comedy Store, London was opened in London by Peter Rosengard, where many alternative comedy stars of the 1980s, such as Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, Alexei Sayle, Lee Evans, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson began their careers.  The stand-up comedy circuit rapidly expanded from London into the provinces. The present British stand-up comedy circuit arose from the 'alternative' comedy revolution of the 1980s, with political and observational humour being the prominent styles to flourish. In 1983 young drama teacher Maria Kempinska created Jongleurs Comedy Clubs, now the largest Stand Up Comedy chain in Europe.

The UK is often considered the stand-up centre of the world, due to the ease with which a comic can make a living. In America or Canada, cities are either situated too far apart, or comedy clubs too few in number for a comedian to make a proper living solely from stand-up. In the UK, however, a city typically has at least three or four venues where comedy is regularly performed, and travel between each city is not very arduous. The appeal of the UK as a base for international comics is evident by a huge increase in the number shows at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, which this year hosted over 700 comedy shows.

In 2008 the Grinning Idiot Comedy Club opened in Newcastle Upon Tyne bringing fine stand up comedy to the masses of Newcastle and the North East, long may it live, and long may you laugh...