Alternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives – Launch Celebration

The first academic collection focusing on the history and legacy of the alternative comedy movement in Britain – this event will bring together academics and performers for a lively late afternoon of fun and discussion on alternative comedy and its past, present and future.

The panel – featuring Ray Campbell, Oliver Double, Brian Mulligan and Sophie Quirk  – will be chaired by Sharon Lockyer (Director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research) followed by performances with veteran alternative comedians Charmian Hughes and Ray Campbell (AKA “Buddy Hell”).

Click here to register your place

Ray Campbell: is a contributor to Alternative Comedy Now & Then: Critical Perspectives. He worked as a professional stand-up comedian under the name of “Buddy Hell” and has been an occasional promoter of comedy and alternative cabaret from 1987 to the present. Ray continues to work as a comedian, and he programmes and comperes a monthly cabaret club called Radical Seminar at the West London Trade Union Club in Acton. He is currently a Teaching Fellow in Humanities on the Integrated Foundation Year programme at Royal Holloway and teaches stand-up comedy at Goldsmiths College. His research interests include comedy and the avant-garde, humour and discourse, cultures of resistance and subversion and the comedy of the African diaspora.

Oliver Double: is a co-editor of Alternative Comedy Now & Then: Critical Perspectives and a Reader in Drama at the University of Kent. Before becoming an academic he worked as a stand-up comedian on the national comedy circuit (‘Delightful’ -The Guardian), and set up the Last Laugh, Sheffield's longest running comedy club. He continues to perform occasionally and comperes the Funny Rabbit Comedy Club. He has written a number of books, chapters and articles on stand-up comedy and popular performance. He helped to establish the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive, based at Kent’s Templeman Library and he presents a podcast about it, A History of Comedy in Several Objects.

Brian Mulligan: is a contributor to Alternative Comedy Now & Then: Critical Perspectives. Brian joined Skint Video in 1983 on a zero-hours contract to help out Steve Gribbin and stayed for a decade. Skint Video were founder members of Red Wedge Comedy, Artists against Apartheid, and The Mary Whitehouse Experience on Radio 1. In the gig economy, they toured extensively on college/arts centre circuit slotting in club gigs somewhere, as well as being veterans/survivors of Glastonbury mud/heatstroke and Edinburgh rain/rain. They performed over 200 shows in aid of good/lost causes. Brian currently produces and performs in the cabaret troupe Newsliners.

Sophie Quirk: is a contributor to Alternative Comedy Now & Then: Critical Perspectives and a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on the politics of stand-up comedy. She is the author of Why Stand-up Matters: How Comedians Manipulate and Influence (2015) and The Politics of British Stand-up Comedy: The New Alternative (2018). Chaired by Sharon Lockyer, co-editor of Alternative Comedy Now & Then: Critical Perspectives and the Director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research (Brunel University London). The panel will be followed by performances with veteran alternative comedians Charmian Hughes and Ray Campbell (AKA “Buddy Hell”).

Charmian Hughes: started out on the alternative comedy circuit of the 1980s and has been working as a comedian ever since. She’s a delightful eccentric, whose accordion-based cover version of ‘Je t’aime’ has to be heard to be believed. Everyone very welcome. We look forward to you joining us for a lively event!