I’ve wanted to go to the Book Club for a few months and finally made it down this week. And how glad am I that I did?
I’d heard it was like the “Vic Reeves Big Night Out” was when it was a cult underground comedy. A secret comedy show, hidden underground, literally, as the Lowdown is underneath the Albany at Gt Portland Street. They’ve only been around a year, and having taken the show up to Edinburgh it’s fast becoming the hot comedy “ticket”
We arrived and queued to find we should have reserved our seats by calling in advance. Luckily being near the front of the queue we were first in the queue to take the places of the no-shows. Once in, with a beer in hand, we went to stand at the back of the tiny venue; the few seats that there were, were all taken. I bumped into Graham, head of comedy at Channel 5, a fellow Perrier Judge. I’m guessing I might bump into a few of them as I go to all these comedy shows.
The evening is split into 3 sections. Starting at 8pm. Each of the acts does a turn. At 9.15ish there is bar break. (Though beer is available throughout.) Then everyone does another bit. At 10.30pm, having overrun, there is another break. Quite a few people sidled out the door at this point to catch the tube home, with it being a week night, the older folk obviously wanted to make it a relatively early night. I guess they had a few hours of comedy by this point. Then there was another set from everyone, before time was eventually called at somewhere around midnight.
The Book Club itself is hosted by Robin Ince. Who Dave described as a grey haired Geordie recently, after he saw him at some charity event. Not surprisingly we couldn’t work out who he meant, as Robin is in no way a Geordie, and he missed off the fact he wore specs, another vital clue. (I draw you attention at this point to the fact the game nothing-lookie-likey was invented by Dave’s observational skills.) Robin is a comedian’s comedian. If you’ll know him from anywhere it’ll be as Ricky Gervias’ preferred warm-up act.
He reads from books that he’s picked up from charity shops on his travels. There is a cheer when he goes to read from Stormy Vigil. A Mills and Boon classic. She is a journalist having to write a piece on Lighthouses. She goes to a Lighthouse. There is a man. They don’t get on. They become trapped in the Lighthouse as there is a storm. They don’t get on. Every month Robin apparently reads from Stormy Vigil. As he reads there is some nice atmospheric instrumental music played, adding to the funniness of the reading. He upsets the crowd though by announcing that whilst he was at Edinburgh he finished the book. There were gasps of horror from people at the thought he finished it without them. It was clearly their book.
Other ‘classic’ books he read from were a book about caravanning. A brilliant guide book to massage parlours around Great Britain, published sometime in the 1970’s. Robin did give the ISBN to that one, but I’m afraid I forgot to write it down. And so on. I passed Robin my book during one of the breaks, and that was held up and shown in the next section. My lovely Gyles Brandeth’s Wit Knits. Early 80’s knitting patterns, featuring various celebs posing in awful jumpers – Joanna Lumely, Christopher Biggins, Matthew Kelly… all the greats.
The acts in between readings were Josie Long. I picked up a free copy of Josie Long’s fanzine on the way out. Fantastic mad stuff. She’s quite young but a comic talent of the future no doubt. Nathan Penlington, a poet, and comic. A bit sort of John Hegley, but younger. Just as geeky. Howard Read. Martin White, accordion player, doing songs like A-ha ‘Take on Me,’ corpsing with laughter before he can get to the end every time.
This week saw the first night of a Chat Magazine True Story – a stage production. I’m sure it’ll become a regular feature. They were great as they all acted out the various roles in a story of a couple, one of whom is impotent. Enter a young virgin male who is bought in to service the wife. It all goes horribly wrong when the wife falls for the young lad. Cue scenes of the wife (played by Robin) and the 18yr going off stage to make sex noises. Brilliant.
There was Live Boggle, with everyone in the audience taking part in an attempt to beat Josie Long and Danielle Ward. Both self-proclaimed Boggle Champions.
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the whole evening. Coming in at 4 hours long it’s easy to see why by the time we left we felt we really had become part of a little secret club.
And the great news is they’ve just announced they are going twice monthly. So I’ve just reserved my tickets for the 12th. I can’t wait.
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