Bright Club #5

After exams and stressful times we thought you might appreciate a bit of a blog!

Bright Club #5 was a roaring success (as per normal, after all we are academics and strive for excellence). We were at the best comedy venue in Scotland, the exquisite Stand Comedy Club, where the following pieces of excellence occurred.

New to Bright Club compere Chris Forbes opened proceedings, getting to know our audience including Ratboy and the hypnotising American.

First on the board was Carwyn Edwards with a slightly strange obsession with drugs (he assures us it is all above board) who gave us multiple new ways to describe having an erection.

Next, was a face we hadn’t seen in a while. Alan Kelly returned to the stage after being a backstage helper for the last few shows. His triangles were as sharp as ever as he broke down all the stereotypical angles of an engineer.

Burns enthusiast Jonathan Henderson’s parody Tam O’Chunder had the whole place in stitches and gave the audience good advice on how to avoid some of Glasgow’s ‘finest’ citizens….

Also returning to the Bright Club Glasgow stage was Eleanor Morton with her ukulele and awkward social skills. Luckily for us awkward social skills make amazing comedy!

Rachelle Pascoe-Deslauriers talked us through the big bad scary world outside academia where there is a possibility of being jobless!

Alasdair Houston works in a laser factory and was as awesome as his job title is!

Energetic performer Kenny Wraight (which is why there is no photo) has an obsession for learning. Keep coming to Bright Club so we can help people like Kenny carry out their obsession in a safe working environment!

See you on the 14th June when we go to the Science Festival!

Bright Club IV: Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Oops, seem to have fallen behind on the ol' Bright Club blogging!  Time for a long-overdue update.

At the end of last month, Bright Club made its debut at Glasgow International Comedy Festival, which is in its 10th year of bringing quality comedy to the weegie masses.  The show coincided with the spring heat-wave (mind that time you wore shorts, in March?) and the audience were thirsty for beer and banter.  Prior to the big event, Zara "the zoo-lol-ogist" had a wee word with STV - you can read all about it here.

Bright Club "veterans" Zara Gladman, Gemma Flynn, Pete Gwynne, Paul McGuinness, Hari Sriskantha and Jamie Gallagher reprised their sets for what turned out to be a highly entertaining show at The Stand, supported by the ever-gallus Raymond Mearns.  If you sit in the front row, expect pelters - "Rat boy" learned the hard way (but got his own back by signing up to perform at our April show!).

Video evidence of the Festival fun is expected to surface soon, so stay tuned!

Bright Club Third Edition: 1st March 2012

Hello readers! This is how Bright Club - The Third Edition went down:

Bright Club organiser Claire Hoyda welcomed the crowd to another sell out show and introduced compere, Sian Bevan, MA (that's a Masters in Creative Writing, by the way.... postgrads FTW!)

First up was historian Struan Logan who shared stories about his favourite historical figure, Teddy Roosevelt: a man so cool, he makes Chuck Norris look like a pansy.

Virologist Richard McGonigle turned up the heat with tales of love and phallic microscopes!

Lewis Roy’s specialist subject was post-apocalyptic literature: did you know that the dementors in the fourth Harry Potter book were actually a metaphor for nuclear war?

After the break we had a bit of a break from the humanities and science with musical act, Jay Bharaj whose hit "Pub grub" rang true with more than a few audience members.

Alistair Gemmell, the particle physicist had a "smashing" time discussing his work at the large Hadron Collider!

Alison Eales, self-proclaimed BeeGeeologist gave us a lesson in disco. Did you know The Beegees wrote "Islands in the stream"? Mind blown.

Jamie Gallagher is a hot chemical physicist - literally! Jamie discussed his research into crystals which convert heat into electricity... and proved that radiation poisoning can actually be quite fun (?!).

I want to finish by saying a big thank you to all those who came along, to all the organisers for making the night happen and to Iain Hepburn who filmed all the sets - relive the night here on youtube!

Bright Club is back on March 26^th at The Stand as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival, hosted by Gallus Glaswegian, Raymond Mearns. See you then!

LOLLA LOLLA! if you're rolling with me (C'MON!) AYO! it's yo boi, Jeffrey Atkins Laughing A Whole Lot, A.K.A, JA LAWL. You may remember me as millenial rap phenom and a sometime Steven Segal co-star (Half Past Dead is available on DVD at all good entertainment stockists, b!) What you may not know is that when I'm not serving 28 months for tax evasion and gun possession, I like to partake of the finest stand up comedy. And I ain't even fronting b, after seeing February's Glasgow Bright Club, I was so amped I had to call up my girl Ashantee-hee and flip our 2001 classic 'Always on Time' to commemorate what a ballin'- ass time I had in their company and let y'all know what is up. IT'S MURDAHHHHHHH!

(Chorus)
Bright Club, ballin' out of control
More benefits than the dole
Why not give it a go?
Tell your fam, friends and foes

[Zara Gladman]
Give it up for the Gandalf of Bright Club,
Keeping house in order, everyone show her love!
She eat so many shrimp but never the crayfish,
Zoo-lolz by the barrel, served up on a plate (DISH!)

[Gemma Flynn]

G.Flynn, so svelte and seductive
PhD, problems being productive
I'm talking thesis, as well as ovarian,
Babies and chapters, the Stand is no place to be contrarian!



Next in line, Elaine Malcolmsom.
Educating minds, she's dry as talcom, son!
Powder. Like chowder, her set was premium,
Bag her for life (WHAT!)
MAKE HER MY WIFE (C'MON!)

[Dan Ridley-Ellis]

Dr. D.R.E, but this ones from the east,
In love with the trees, beard like a beast,
'til now JA only ever smoked trees (REGRETS!)
Conservation conflicts with JA's love of cheques (PAPER!)
Shout out to all my Edinburgh set (NAPIER!)



[Guy Jones]

Guy Jones, cooking-up laughs in the lab,
Chems and pervs unite under Emma Watson's lab-
-ia, E-I, E-I, Oh-oh,
If Guy's math right, JA there e'ernight!

[Pete Gwynne]

Pete Gwynne be strollin', he drollin',
Audience's rollin', bowled over like in bowling,
The human xan with that lean, zen master of stress,
Ain't slanging trees, he's smoking intellectual sess.



[Paddy Kondracki]

Watch Drack rock the mic, watch Drack rock the mic, watch Drack rock the mic PSYCH-
Lol-ogy, how deep can he go?
Freudian slip, what a brother know?
Lean back on the couch you're in safe hands (BRIGHT CLUB SHOW!)

(Chorus)
Bright Club, ballin' out of control,
More benefits than the dole,
Why not give it a go?
Tell your fam, friends and foes!

Videos

Re-live some of Thursday night's laughs with these videos:

Alan Kelly

Laura McNamara

Alan Logan

Shaun Killen

Paul McGuinness

Bright Club Glasgow makes its debut!

We did it: Bright Club made its Glasgow debut last Thursday, with a storming sell-out show at The Admiral!

At 6 o'clock, the pub was already bustling with academic comedy enthusiasts, eager to procure one of the last remaining tickets. At 7.30 on the dot, the queueing began...

"Please let us in!" Tensions are high as The Admiral reaches capacity

By 8 o'clock, the crowd were settled and ready for Bruce Morton, our all-drinking all-smoking weegie comedy Godfather and host for the evening!

"So how did you lose your tooth then, Bruce?"

The first slice of zoology humour was delivered by astacologist and notorious attention-seeker, Zara Gladman.

I should have used Bruce's 'cray-dar' line

Next up, Alan Kelly, an athletically-gifted engineer with a penchant for triangles took to the stage.

Acutely funny

After triangle engineering came cell engineering: we all learned a thing or two about how to generate bone, courtesy of Laura McNamara.

Generating bone: cell culture or short skirts?

Alan Logan closed the first half by helping us face our irrational (and rational? but not integer) fear of mathematics.

Pastry allergies and slutty Field medalists

After what Bruce would describe as a "very successful interval", we were joined by silly-songstress and seasoned Bright Clubber, Eleanor Morton

Her song about "awkward social situations"certainly rang a bell with the academic crowd

Cod's gift to comedy - Shaun Killen - was up next, with fart jokes, Star Trek and gill-gags a-plenty! He certainly knows his audience...

Worf in the Holodeck... shudder!

From underwater to the underworld: Paul McGuinness gave a fantastically dark account of life as a criminologist, and some home-truths about what men really want.

The truth about "Foxy Knoxy"

And to finish off.... Matt Winning proved that the economy is definitely to be laughed at.

Who knew climate change was funny?

Congratulations to all of the performers and a huge THANK YOU to everyone who came along! It was a most excellent evening.

See you at the next one.... speaking of which: if you are interested in performing or helping to organise Bright Club Glasgow II, please get in touch! Contact the crayfisher on: z.gladman.1@research.gla.ac.uk

Until next time!

Snooze ya lose! But here's another chance....

Advance tickets for Bright Club Glasgow's debut sold out in just a few weeks! If you missed out, there's another chance to book yours online on Friday 4 November at 2pm: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/138243 <- get ready to refresh the page, it's going to be busy!

A small number of tickets will be available on the door on the night (doors at 7:30 pm). We're expecting queues so get down to The Admiral early, you won't want to miss this!

With just two weeks to go, excitement is beginning to mount... everybody's talking about us!