Comedy returns to the Tory fringe

Just booked my ticket for Comedy Unleashed at the Comedy Store in Manchester on Monday.

In 2011 and 2013 Forest hosted two comedy events at the same venue.

The Comedy Store booked the acts after I explained that we wanted comedians with a libertarian or anti-nanny state bias.

For our headline act I really wanted the Australian comedian Stephen Hughes who I had seen doing a very funny routine about health and safety.

In another clip found on YouTube (no longer available, oddly), he was equally funny (and scathing) about the perceived threat of passive smoking.

Hughes wasn’t available unfortunately so The Comedy Store suggested two other comedians and an MC, with each one doing 20 minutes.

The MC was Manchester comedian and DJ Justin Moorhouse and the other acts were Ian Stone and Canadian Tom Stade.

Moorhouse got laughs just by expressing his incredulity that he was performing at an event on the Conservative fringe. He also had several well-earned digs at some Tory boys in the audience.

But the star of the show was Stade who the week previously had appeared on Live at the Apollo.

Of the three, Stade was the only one whose act genuinely qualified as ‘libertarian’, and he certainly pushed the boundaries.

I was laughing but feeling a little nervous even before several members of the audience walked out.

I wrote about the event here.

‘Afterwards,’ I wrote, ‘several people came up and congratulated Forest for being "brave" to host such an event. (Until then I was quite relaxed but that had me worried!)’

The best response came from a former councillor who tweeted:

Forest fringe at the Comedy Store is possibly the best ever in my 14 years at conference. Smokers showing antis how to do it.

Paul Scully, for it was he, is now MP for Sutton and Cheam and deputy chairman of the Conservative party!

I therefore considered the event a success, although I was a bit disappointed at the numbers (130), and two years later, when the Conservatives returned to Manchester, we decided to do it again.

This time Stephen Hughes was available and the Comedy Store booked him as the headline act, along with two comedians I had never heard of, either before or since.

To make it more attractive we combined Stand Up for Liberty with two preceding events, also at the Comedy Store.

The first was A Beer and a Fag with Farage, an ‘in conversation’ type event also featuring the IEA’s Mark Littlewood.

That was followed by a drinks reception and then it was time for the show.

I can’t remember how many came - I think we got around 200 and the comedy was probably overshadowed by the ‘Farage effect’ - but I’m glad we did it (and Stephen Hughes was brilliant).

Our final comedy event (Stand Up for Freedom) took place in Birmingham in 2014 when a packed hotel room was entertained by Comedy Store ‘veteran’ Alistair Barrie and ‘support act’ James Delingpole who was billed a ‘guest speaker’.

All three comedy events were a big hit with audiences but, after the third one, we did question their worth beyond giving people a good time and maintaining Forest’s profile at party conference.

All this, of course, was before the rise of allegedly ‘Tory’ or right of centre comedians such as Geoff Norcott, Simon Evans and others, so apart from Stephen Hughes sending up anti-smoking activists and public health officials, there was no real ‘message’ in the comedy.

(Then again, is there a message in Norcott and Evans’ comedy? Probably not.)

Anyway, five years after Stand Up for Freedom, comedy is returning to the Tory fringe via Comedy Unleashed, ‘the home of free-thinking comedy’.

The Manchester event follows an identical event at the Labour conference in Brighton.

To be honest, I was a little surprised - when I booked my ticket yesterday - that it wasn’t already sold out.

The auditorium at the Comedy Store in Manchester has a capacity of 300 and it’s a relatively short walk from the conference centre, but as we discovered in 2011 and again in 2013 it was quite a hard sell, even with Nigel Farage and Stephen Hughes on board.

I hope nevertheless that it’s a success. I’ll let you know.

Below: Response to our 2014 comedy night, Stand Up for Freedom

Highly recommend @AlistairBarrie - left leaning guy playing to a very dry @con4lib @Forest_Smoking #cpc14 crowd. And really fucking funny.

— Emily Barley (@ThinkEmily) September 29, 2014

@AlistairBarrie @con4lib @Forest_Smoking absolutely lashed. 'Dry' politically!!

— Emily Barley (@ThinkEmily) September 29, 2014

Brilliant comedy night featuring @JamesDelingpole and @AlistairBarrie !! #CPC14

— Drusilla (@FreezeRayGirl) September 28, 2014