Attention: this post is specifically for the purpose of plugging my shows this week
Live in London or Brighton? Next Level Sketch and The Highchurches are waiting for you
Happy spring everyone!
I’ve got two lovely shows happening this week and I reckon you, the person reading this email, should come along to at least one of them.
Next Level Sketch at Hoopla Impro on Wednesday 22nd April
I’m super excited about this one. NLS (Next Level Sketch) has been bolstered by SNL (Saturday Night Live) making sketch comedy flavour of the month for the first time since about… erm… 1993. To celebrate, we’ve booked loads of guest acts who don’t do sketch comedy (genius clown Julia Masli, brilliant character comedians Susan Harrison and Jess Carrivick), and one that does - Jonathan Oldfield, he of a thousand Radio 4 shows, and one-half of alternative sketch comedy power couple (honestly, this is a thing) alongside Lorna Rose Treen.
This month is also Hoopla Impro’s 20th anniversary celebration festival, which has led to many exciting things, including - genuinely - Next Level Sketch getting a mention on Radio 1’s Newsbeat - thanks to Hoopla’s Mandeep Singh for bigging us up! Has all this translated to ticket sales? Sort of - this month’s show is selling well, but there is still space for your respective, collective, newsletter-reading bottoms. It might be worth buying in advance, though, particularly as I’ve no idea where my card reader is.
The Highchurches play the Green Door Store in aid of Grassroots Suicide Prevention on Thursday 23rd April
We’re super honoured to be performing at Green Door Store in aid of this important local charity. Big thanks to Sam for reaching out and putting us on the bill. We’re performing alongside Belver, who are a really, really, brilliant folk group whom I’ve been lucky enough to sing with via Brighton Folk Choir and other local folky rabble-rousing nonsense.
The Highchurches don’t have any gigs in the diary after this one, so it’ll probably be the last time to see us for a few months. Not that we’re going on hiatus - we have lots of new songs and we’re figuring out how to play them!
Some recent reviews for you to enjoy
Alternative Comedy Memorial Society at The Phoenix in London
Is ACMS a cult? There are some similarities. Cults have charismatic leaders. ACMS has Thom. Cults have very strict rules, beliefs, and duties. ACMS has permitted heckles, including “I drew you a cat”, “We appreciate what you’re trying to do”, and “Would you like a woman to sort it out?”.
Cults feature mind-numbing techniques, such as meditation, chanting, or speaking in tongues. ACMS has a man dressed as a dog, repeatedly moving awkwardly to the same snippet of music, and another man with a green sock on his hand repeatedly shouting “brontosaurus” to the tune of the Macarena.
This second man is on twice.
Cheerbleederz, Tiny Stills and Top Shortage, Bristol Exchange
With the cold light of hindsight, [Top Shortage] were more PiL than B52s, but they had that low bass groove / furious shrieking thing down fabulously. With songs about bus based transphobia (“We should nationalise them. Buses, I mean. It feels like we’ve nationalised transphobes already.” BAM!) and other less specific howls of legitimate fury at TERF UK in 2026 (“You are as constructed as I am”, “They call you a paedophile”, “What the fuck is a country anyway?”), this is definitely a band worth keeping an eye on.
The Cock Tavern, Mare Street, Hackney
In Hackney for a gig at The Empire, and my first time at The Cock in Mare Street for years. I remember: the shithole it was before, clinging on for years with an overwhelming air of despair; the seemingly inevitable demise after its last handful of woodbine-smoking regulars died off; the expectation it’d be knocked down and replaced with a block of unaffordable flats; and the excitement when it unexpectedly reopened as a cask ale place, with original features lovingly restored, at the height of the Hackney microbrewery craze.
What made The Cock’s refurbishment different to so many other Hackney pubs at the time is it reopened as a proper boozer, welcoming to all in the community, rather than some pricey hipster hangout with tables made out of skateboards or whatever.
That’s it for this week. Take care and remember to look up from the screens that surround us once in a while. This advice is mainly to myself.