Enterteasement has been and gone and what a night.  Even if I do say so myself that was one of the best shows we’ve ever put on.  The atmosphere was electric,  every act nailed it and we couldn’t buy a better audience! If you were one of our audience and would like to leave some annonymous feedback please take our quick 10 question survey Click here to take survey

Highlights

Sukki Singapora was leaving the venue and two of our audience members chased her down the street for an autograph!  (yes boys and girls…she is that good!)

Joe from the front row described the night as “The best night of his life“.  He’s trying to book the whole front row for next month!

Two of our regulars take it in turns to buy tickets and they never spoke to each other as they both turned up having purchased two tickets each (four instead of two!) and had that lovely moment of, “didn’t you get them last month, no I thought this month was my turn”

Our raffle contained an adult version of the classic Rubber Duck known as ‘Duck With A D**K‘.  At the start of the night everyone thought that was too rude and a bit tacky, at the interval people purchased the tickets for the other prizes and at the end when the tickets were drawn…everyone wanted the duck and the first thing chosen was old Ducky himself.  Everyone in the audience was secretly disappointed!

The Show

Ray Bradshaw Comedian

Lots of people think that the MC for the evening will interact with the audience and attack them by making fun of them etc.  Ray’s at the totally other end of the spectrum.  He talked to our rather rowdy audience as if they were pensioners on a Sunday afternoon;  nice, relaxed and very friendly.

He shared stories about his recent charity adventures in his ‘Challenge Ray’.  My favourite had to be an interesting encounter involving tattoos, cage fighting and naughtiness.  Not only did he make everyone laugh throughout the show but he kept everything on time as well.

Ray’s fairly active on twitter / facebook so please follow him to keep up to date with his challenges.

Woody the Magician

Disclaimer:  Woody the magician is also the reviewer of the show so this may be a little biased.

It’s challenging to change from Enterteasement organiser into Cheeky Chappie Magician.  I think this was apparent when I got on stage and found 2 spare chairs in the audience and tried to get some of the people standing to sit down.  I decided to do some of my tried and trusted routines using my ropes  and the cup and ball.  For the cup and ball I lucked out by getting an excellent spectator called Brian who made the routine come to life with Keith (the other spectator).

My Big finale was a trick with a spike where I get audience members up to move the spike about and I successfully managed to destroy all the cups except the one with the spike under it.  People love and hate this trick because it’s awesome but really scary as well.  Overall, I was happy with the performance.

Harry Garrison

Making his debut performance for us and what a debut it was.   Comedy music acts are generally well received and can get by on the novelty value; however, Harry is a not only a very talented musician / singer…he’s also very funny.   The expression “He had the audience in the palm of his hands” is overused these days; but, Harry had everyone holding onto his every word.  Every time he finished a song there was a fear that it might be his last. Then as he started another one everyone got excited again then laughed, screamed and clapped.  He could have gone on for another 30 minutes and the audience would have been with him every minute of the way.  A great talent, very likeable funny and we can’t wait to bring him back in 2014.

Scarlet Fever Burlesque

This is Scarlet Fever’s fouth appearance for us and they never let us down.   Really interesting choreography, excellent music choices, costumes – the full shabang.  They are a neo-burlesque or new burlesque themed act.  They use modern music ; chairs and masks as props instead of the more classic fans and feathers.  Their second act for us was especially powerful as they performed with very eerie white masks and appeared from the audience.  They built lovely suspense and no one really knew where it was going and then boom! Tainted Love came on the atmosphere in the room was electric!

Sukki Singapora

Where do we start with this girl, She’s not on a different level, she’s on her own level.  She’s one of those few people in the world that’s as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside and trust me – she’s absolutely stunning.  Spoke to one of the Superfans and he said, he caught her eye when she walked in and his heart skipped a beat.  She performed 2 acts for us.  The first was a fan dance which worked beautifully as it mixed the Asian fans with classic Jazz track, the second act was more upbeat which was great because our audience were suitably warmed up by now and received applause whoops and cheers throughout.  Both acts were great, well thought out and totally original not only a true world class performer but a joy to work with!

StuWho Comedian

Stu is one of the most respected comedians in Scotland and is one of the reasons we actually have a Scottish Comedy Scene.  Years ago when there was no such things a comedy clubs / comedy night.   Stu and guys like Fred McCauley were doing gigs in pubs and setting the rules for how comedy nights should run.  He’s been performing comedy for over 20 years, been on TV, performed in front of thousands and  every time he gets on stage he gives it heart, soul & passion.  It’s incredible to think a man in his early sixties heavily medicated to fight off a baw bag of a cold performed with more intensity than many a healthy twenty year old could dream of.   25 minutes later he even threw out  a song and left the stage with a thunderous applause.

What’s more I awoke on Sunday morning to find Stu had described us as 10/10 and the finest gig in the city at the moment.  Wow!  Friggin Wow!!! That makes all the hard work worthwhile and inspires us to keep improving.

After Party

We met Mini Me!! Yes, Enterteasement were invited up to meet the man himself, we even fist pumped his little hands.  To round off the night in perfect style there was only 1 thing left to do…Get Sukki Singapora a fish supper and a can of diet Irn-Bru.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone involved.  Pamela our superfan for having another birthday with us and being perfectly well behaved.  We bought her a cake and candles and we friggin forgot to bring it out – doh! However, the balloon horse made up for it slightly (Pamela loves horses!) .

The front row were excellent, really good crowd on Saturday.  We even had the self policers!  i.e. normally when our audience chat during the acts we have to ‘remind them to be quiet’.  However, the audience never gave us a chance because on the rare few moments there was chat they immediately turned around and gave a “Shhhh!”

Staff

Star: the manager
Jamie: the assistant
Iain: the sound guy
Samantha: the lady of the door
Stuart the photographer: http://www.stuartcrawfordphoto.com/

Acts
StuWho?:  http://stuwho.wordpress.com/
Harry Garisson:  http://www.facebook.com/mrharrygarrison
Ray Bradshaw: http://www.raybradshaw.co.uk/
Sukki Singapora: http://www.sukkisingapora.com/
Scarlet Fever: http://www.scarletfeverpoledancing.co.uk/
Woody the Magician:  http:www.topclassmagic.co.uk

Next show: December 14th.

Tickets already going fast!

• Chris Henry:  5 star reviews from his Edinburgh Fringe Show
• JoJo Sutherland:  Dark and hilarous comedy from one of the funniest women in the Uk.
• Graham Mackie:  Scottish Comedian Of The Year Runner-up
• Dolly Tartan:  Pint sized princess
• Daiquiri Dusk:  International Burlesque star
• Rachael Renegade: International Sideshow magic/burlesque performer

If you were there and have a few minutes, please fill in the survey to help us know how we’re doing
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More Seats

We purchased 4 chairs for the venue, we know it’s not much but that’s 8 feet that didn’t wake-up with a hangover from the night before.  We also now have another 6 stools brought down from upstairs so we’re going to try to keep this for every show.  So 12 extra people got seats for this show.  Sorry we’re not fully seated yet but we’re over 80% seated and we do limit the ticket sales to ensure there’s not too many people standing.

The Show

Bruce Morton Comedian

Bruce took to the stage and was chatting to the audience.  Since we start at 8pm rather than 9pm we usually get off to a slow start and the audience are a little nervous of the compere.  Bruce came on nice and relaxed and done a great job compering and kept the show on time.  The highlight had to be the tooth joke that he started in the first section and kept it going throughout the whole night.  The piece about the “he said, she said, you said, we said”  was also incredible and received a great round of applause from the audience.   Once they were warmed up it was time for our first comedian.

Susan Murray Comedian

Susan came onto the stage and in a strong English accent announced she was from Glasgow…it’s actually true!  She moved to England to further her career and the English accent has infected her 😉 So the audience were a little confused at first but she won them over.  Her chat with the audience was excellent.  We discovered that one lucky gentleman in the audience perhaps didn’t love his partner but she did love…erm, pleasing him.  He seemed happier to inform us of that than she did though.  Next up was a lovely looking young thing in the front row.  Conversation moved into tattoos and the girl in the front row very innocently announced that she had 2 tattoos, 1 Japanese symbol and one butterfly.  Susan asked her, “Where’s the tattoo and she responded, “On my arse”  Her timing was brilliant but unfortunately she wouldn’t show us it.

Cat Aclysmic Burlesque

Cat Aclysmic came on stage and I don’t think she’s ever looked better.  She performed a very classy burlesque act and it was a great start to the show and allowed the audience to relax into the whole burlesque thing.   Cat came back onto the stage to perform one of her new signature pieces.  Not many people do comedy-burlesque and even fewer do it well but Cat really does it exceptionally.  She had her new devil routine and kept the audience guessing what was going on but the big finish was just amazing!  I won’t spoil it – just go and see it.

Dee Christopher -MindReader

Dee opened with a classic mind-reading effect in which vocal tonalities and body language are measured to see who is telling the truth.  3 white stones and one black stone were handed out to audience members and Dee successfully managed to find who was holding the white stone.  Next up was the chance to win a member of the audience.  A female was brought onto stage and chained up.  4 male audience members were then brought onto stage and 5 keys were displayed.  If the audience member chose the correct key it would unlock the padlock and they could keep the girl.  After 4 unsuccessful key choices were made, Dee revealed the only remaining key fitted the padlock and the women was freed.  Dee then closed with a cludo type experiement where a murder weapon was found amonst different people’s

Rosie Whine – burlesque

Rosie came onto the stage and her energy was fantastic. She really knows how to engage with the audience.  Burlesque is about telling a story and rather than simply taking off clothes her clothes were her act!  Yip, her outfit was an octopus and as each tentacle/ leg / arm (whatever an octopus has) was removed to show more of Rosie.  It was a fantastic act and a fantastic performance – this was only Rosie’s first performance for us but it certainly won’t be her last!

The Reverand Obadiah Steppenwolfe III

The reverend came on and immediately started slagging off our manager Star.  His dark style isn’t for everyone but it’s certainly original.  Jimmy Carr once said his favourite type of laugh was when someone laughed then groaned after it because they felt guilty about laughing.  That’s what The Reverend’s whole act is!  Skilfully offensive and very funny.

Backstage Gossip:

Facebook Friends

We’ve known of Susan Murray for 3 years and Dee Christopher for over a year.  Because these guys are down in England we don’t really get a chance to see them so it’s good that Enterteasement can bring us all together. 

Highlights of the night

1) Returned home to a friend request from someone who was at the show.  She mentioned what a great time she had.  She has always wanted to see burlesque and her friend bought her a ticket for her birthday.  She has now decided that she wants to take burlesque lessons and she’d like to perform for us one day.  This makes us very happy.

2) Our lady of the Door, Lisa, held her camcorder perfectly still for 20 minutes to film one of the acts…only to realise she forgot to press record.

Bad stuff.

The CD player at The Admiral is very sensitive and one of the acts music wasn’t playing correctly.  Luckily…a copy was sitting in her account and after borrowing a phone from the photographer this was downloaded and played no probs.  How clever these people are – if it were up to me…I would have found someone in the audience to sing it…good job I’m not in charge of the technical stuff.

Thoughts…we had some people saying that they found The Reverend Obadiah quite offensive.  Quite offensive?  He’s very offensive – that’s his act.  That’s why in all the advertising we said he was “offensive, evil and a writer for Frankie Boyle”.  So…we’re sorry but we put a lot of thought into our shows hence why we had the devil act (dark) with the rev (also dark)  We describe what the shows will be like description before coming to the show.

Thanks

Star & Jamie Louise for taking care of everything
Lisa, Lady of the door, for being a great door person and a terrible videographer
Stuart Crawfod Photography:  www.stuartcrawfordphoto.com
Alice Black Sound: http://www.facebook.com/AliceBlackSoundAndLights?fref=ts
Dee Christopher Mentalist: http://www.deechristopher.co.uk/
Bruce Morton:  http://www.brucemorton.net/indexbm.htm
Susan Murray: http://www.susan-murray.co.uk/
Reverend Obadiah: http://www.thereverendobadiahsteppenwolfe.com/

Next show November 9th – hope to see you there guys 🙂

BOOM! Now that’s what I call as show! Due to a bad case of procrastination the tickets went on sale 10 days before the show…and we still sold out 48 hours in advance!!

I normally set the venue up with help of photographer Wullie;  however, as both weren’t available it was time for Star to take charge and set the room up and with the help of new assistant Jamie and they did a great job.  This show also had more regulars at it than any other show so it was nice to see so many familiar faces.  The 3 real standouts of the night from an organisers point of view were firstly; Stuart Crawford skidding on his knees like a school boy at a wedding to make sure he got the perfect photograph of Miss Helle’s Belle.  I was standing next to the area and when it happened there was that feeling of “That guy likes his job”

The second was a comment from one of our guests.  He approached me and said;

“Do you know, we were at the last  show a couple of months ago and absolutely loved it.  We were planning on going through to Edinburgh and had purchased tickets to go and see another show (I won’t say which show but it’s a big one!)  then we saw this show was on again and we were gutted that we would be missing it…so we just decided to give the other tickets away, buy tickets and come here”

And the 3rd would have to be Anna’s light up shows…yes she had stars in her shoes and they lit up during her full show which made me very happy because I like that sort of thing.

How did we do?

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The Show

Anna Devitt – Comedian / MC

Anna Devitt was our compere this evening.  It was her 3rd time performing for us and she has, as we say in the comedy world, knocked it out the park on her previous 2 shows.  However, she has been down in London working on some top secret projects and hasn’t compere’d a show for 6 weeks.  When she was up in Glasgow, she would be compering 3 – 5 shows a week.  So she took to stage in her own words, “A little nervous and rusty”.  Although the room was a little busy there was certainly a fear of talking to her but one front rower, Anton, broke that trend and that was the show started.   The importance of a compere at a show is often under rated.  It’s a compere’s job to get everybody in the right frame of mind for a good night, get them relaxed and happy.  If the compere fails then it’s a big struggle for the rest of the acts.  This is why at Enterteaement we love Anna.  She’s very natural and talks to the audience and bounces off them and by laughing at herself with a mixture of self deprecating humour, stories of failed relationships combined with a fun flirty style and old fashioned Glasgow pub humour.  Anna’s a fans favourite and one of the Enterteasement all time greats.  (Now hurry up and get back to Glasgow so we can book you again!!)

Susan McCabe Comedian

Susie McCabe.  Susie came to the stage and within seconds had the audience in the palm of her hand.  Who says female comedians aren’t funny?  Well it’s something that we hear lots of after our shows.  People are often approaching us and saying, “Now I don’t normally like female comedians…but she was brilliant” For some reason the ones who make it on TV are normally sh*te.  Susan, on the other hand, has bags of talent and doesn’t do the normal woman stuff. She’s as original in material as she is in style.  Very authentic with tales of her life as a lesbian coming from a catholic family – all very funny, intelligent and non offensive.     Susan is one of only a handful of comedians in the last 2 years to come through from an absolute beginner to be picked up by The Stand, ourselves and many other of the top clubs.  Last year, she was runner up in Scottish Comedian Of The Year and she’s in the final this year and is one of the favourites.  Best of Luck.

Go Go Amy Burlesque Dancer

Amy Comes from USA and she’s performed around the world – It shows!  I’d describe her performance as captivating as you just couldn’t take your eyes off her.  Sometimes you can see dancers counting steps, but Amy just seemed to gaze into the audience and her act just oozed sensuality.  If you look at the wink in the picture this really sums up Amy for me as she’s very cheeky and vibrant and plays with the audience through her performance.   She performed 2 acts for us and both were fantastic

After speaking to one of our regulars he said, “That girl’s got the best boobs in the business” and I have to agree they were quite magical!

Uneasy Alliance Magic Act

Uneasy Alliance are a combination of Magician Simon South and Burlesque Dancer/Magic Assistant/Magician Fleur Du Mal.  These guys are based down England but are visiting for The Edinburgh Festival for several shows.

Anna Introduced Uneasy Alliance as ‘A Burlesque Act’ because there was a wee bit of a mix-up in communication. When they came onto the stage there was certainly a few dodgy looks from the audience.  However, after they started their act all became clear and the audience figured out this was the magic act.

Simon Started by doing the old ‘Jonny Up The Nose, Out The Throat’ trick he ran around the audience and everyone let out shrieks of disgust.  (After that a card trick was performed but to be honest I was sill trying to find my stomach as the Jonny trick had turned me slightly nostalgic.  When I was younger I loved everything to do with magic and my cousin’s friend showed me this trick.  I’d have been about 7 and he would have been about 16 – that is kinda mad when you think about it).  Then it was Fleur’s turn to perform and she swallowed a large object…it was a balloon.  This is a great effect and has lots of sexual connotations.  After which we had the big finish of Simon putting not one nail into his head…but 2.  There’s only 1 thing worse then watching a nail being hammered into someone’s head…and that’s it being pulled out.  The second nail was removed with Fleur’s mouth.

Is it the type of show you enjoy?  I don’t know myself.  It’s a strange experience.  However, when Anna Came back on stage a spectator asked if she could pull the nail out and Simon let her hammer one in and pull it out again.  Mad!

Miss Helle’s Belle Burlesque Dancer

Miss Helle’s Bell is one of the few burlesque acts around today.  Most of the acts you see are actually modern burlesque or neo-burlesque as it’s known but Miss Helle’s Belle is classic, vintage, traditional burlesque act.  She runs her own 1920’s night in Glasgow and is very much of that era.  The trouble with classic burlesque is that if it’s not performed to a knowledgeable burlesque crowd it can be quite slow & boring and lose the audience’s attention.    However, Miss Hell’s Belle is masterful at doing classic burlesque and kept the audiences attention  for the whole act.  For any of you ladies out there wanting to study seduction, watch this act and the way a glass of wine is poured – very powerful yet playful and stunning as always.  A great act and a pleasure to work with.

Raymond Mearns Comedian

Raymond – The legend of the Scottish Comedy world.   Most comedians have a 25 minute headline set and when they’ve got that sorted they’ll use that for 5 – 10 years and go and tour with it.  Raymond on the other hand could do a 7 night tour and not repeat a joke.  This was the first time I’ve even heard him talk about sex.  A wonderful set including a phone call from a friend during a session which was just magical.   If you look over on the facebook album of photos you’ll see some of the faces and actions he was performing.  Raymond actually looked surprised when some of his jokes were getting laughs at one point which is can only mean he’s been perfoming in Edinburgh recently 😉

20 Minutes of Laughter from Start to Finish and I couldn’t have asked for a better end to the show.  Raymond looked truely delighted when he came off stage as he can now relax without the monthly email from me asking him to perform for us.

Thanks

Acts

Raymond Mearns: http://raymondmearns.info/
Anna Devitt:  http://www.annadevittcomedy.com/
Susan McCabe: https://twitter.com/Squeezysusie
Uneasy Alliance: https://www.facebook.com/uneasyalliance?fref=ts
Go Go Amy: http://www.gogoamy.com/
Miss Helle’s Belle: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Miss-Hells-Belle/105589761964

Staff

Star – manager
Jamie Louise: First time assistant
Mel: Lady of the Door  her last day – we’ll miss you lots Mel!
Alice: Sound Girl https://www.facebook.com/AliceBlackSoundAndLights
Stuart Crawford: Photographer: www.stuartcrawfordphoto.com
Al Coyle: Photographer http://www.parlourphoto.co.uk/
Gary & Jazzy:  for back-up & safety

And you the audience

Pauline: who celebrated her Hen Night with us.  Yes people can actually turn up for a Hen night and behave themselves.
Gillian: who was simply referred to as T**S The whole night and seemed to quite enjoy it.
Lynn: the mad wee lesbian who flashed the audience when she won a prize
George Price: – official superfan who’ll miss next month. First show he’ll miss in about a year.
Nicola:  Who is a past performer who returned as a guest (this makes us feel special)
Carrie:  Who sent me a lovely email afterwards about how much she loved the show

Help Us!

We believe Enterteasement is special but it wouldn’t be anything without the advice of everyone involved.  So Please take a minute to help up by filling in the survey, joining us on facebook, joining the mailing list for the best deals and just spread the word.  We’re back on September 14th and tickets will be on sale very soon.  We hope to see you all again.

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