Review

What a show!!  It really was an emotional rollercoaster of ups and downs but thankfully there were more ups than downs. We billed this show as ‘The Super Show’ and it lived up to the expectations and even exceeded them.  People often ask me the secret to the success of Enterteasement and tonight’s show was the perfect example of how to put on a great night.

What you need:

• Great Comedians
• Great Burlesque
• Great “Magic”
• Great Venue
• And most importantly…a great audience.

I’m happy to say, we ticked all 5 boxes and put on what I’d consider to be a 5 star show.

THE SHOW

JOJO Sutherland Compere

We’ve had JOJO headline and compere for us on many occasions and she’s always done exceptionally well.  For the last 10 years (probably more) she’s been one of the best comedians in the country.  However, 2015 has been ‘The Year Of The JOJO’.  She’s written a new set and can honestly say I’ve never seen her funnier or happier on stage – it’s where she belongs.   JOJO was originally headlining for us, but due to a slight mix up with times we had to ask JoJo to compere at the very last minute.  She agreed and 5 minutes later she was on stage and had the audience in the palm of her hand.  Although the Enterteasement audience are brilliant it can take them a while to warm up as there’s still that fear factor about “what is burlesque? Am I going to have to wear a gimp mask”? (yes, I was once asked that once) This accompanied with an earlier start to our shows than most other comedy shows can make it challenging for the compere.  However, a combination of the audience being brilliant and JOJO being amazing the audience were in stitches from the moment the her hand touched the mic.

To spice things up for JoJo we had a table of  18 & 19 year old lads who were hammering down the Vodka Red Bulls to celebrate their friend’s birthday. One of the guys wanted to be part of the show and started to heckle (to be fair it was more shouting out than heckling but they just wanted a bit of extra attention).  JoJo welcomed the 19 year old and his cheeky charms were no match for the roasting he received – all with comedy effect! After this…they didn’t want any more attention – job done.

RAYMOND MEARNS Comedian

The man is a genius.  I’ve been attending comedy clubs since I turned 18 and I can safely say in my time involved in comedy there’s no one like Raymond.  Most acts spend years working and tweaking their set to have  twenty minutes of gold dust.  They’ll then tour with this twenty minutes and never change it over a lifetime.   The people you see on the TV who have a new set every week have a team of writers.  Raymond on the other hand is tuned into Comedy FM.  At last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Festival, he performed a different one hour set every night for the full 3 weeks. So unlike most Homo sapiens he can pluck twenty minutes of comedy gold out of anywhere and everywhere which annoyingly is often a lot funnier than a set a comedian has worked on their whole life.  Annoyingly he can whip of a 20 minute set off the top of his head that is often a lot funnier than a set a comedian has worked on their whole life.  This time Raymond decided to deliver a set about being on a cruise ship.    He managed to get about 3 minutes of laughs just describing the size of a cruise ship and another minute of laughs describing how many decks there were on a cruise ship.  All was brought to a marvellous finish with a story about a trampoline. It was simply brilliant, the audience loved it and he exited the stage to massive applause.

Kieron “The Internal Contortionist”

A few months ago I was contacted by Paul Nardini, a former World Champion Of Comedy Magic, who  recommended, Kieron,  an act he’d met at a convention.  Kieron is a very highly respected magician and magic creator.  However, for the past year he’d been working on a regurgitating act.  He was speaking to Paul and had explained how it was difficult to find venues to book him as it was such an unusual act.  Having performed at Enterteasement, Paul thought we might like his act…he thought right – we loved it.

Kieron had travelled up from Bristol that day and arrived at 6:30pm.  At this point he had still never performed in front of a live audience

He took to the stage and drank 2 litres of water in one go.  If you’ve ever tried downing a pint, you’ll appreciate how difficult this must be.   After showing his mouth empty he regurgitated some water and spat this over to the front of the stage, receiving screams from the audience.  This was then repeated and finally he regurgitated the rest of the water into a bucket.  This was a great start to the act as lots of people think regurgitating is a magic trick where things are concealed in the palm of the hand.  Although in theory objects can be concealed in this way, liquids cannot so this was a highly entertaining and functional start.

Next up he threw out bread?  Eh?  Yeah a loaf of Warburton’s Tostie Bread was opened and slices were thrown out into the audience.  I don’t know why but there’s something funny about an outsider flying through the air.  Kieron then crumpled up a slice, rolled it into a ball, put it in his mouth and in full view of the audience it vanished down his throat.  After the scream and the audience had taken their hands away from their faces, Kieron regurgitated the bread.  This received a massive round of applause.

Now Kieron doesn’t advertise himself as a Regurgitator, he’s an internal contortionist.  His next trick explained the difference.  He brought an audience member on stage and for comedy value, practical value…and just plain avoiding a law suit he dressed the girl (Gemma) up in a bin bag and some marigold rubber gloves – it was kinda like one of the outfits from a low budget sci-fi film from the 70’s.  Gemma was asked to put her fingers all the way down Kieron’s throat and inspect his mouth and again this had a comedy effect and it did explain that he wasn’t hiding any objects under his tongue etc.

Next three buttons of different colours were put into his mouth and he swallowed these one at a time and brought them back up one after the other.  There was a slight error here because the audience member had asked for the red one to appear first but the purple one appeared.  Kieron was quite visibly annoyed for making this error but the audience really couldn’t have cared less as he had just swallowed three buttons, moved them around inside himself and made one of them re-appear, all with his mouth open!  Kieron covered this with a great line explaining the problem that

” I’m colour blind on the inside”

The next two buttons were brought up in correct order and again this got a very strong response from the audience.

Next up were the Polo Mints.  Two polo mints were swallowed and internally the mints were linked then regurgatated.  This is an excellent effect that magicians often perform with their hands so doing it inside your body is even more impressive.

For the big finale, a silver dollar was produced from his mouth and one of the buttons was dislodged from his nose with a pair of pliers.

I suspect we’ll see more of Kieron, he’s working really hard on this act so I’m delighted to say that Enterteasement were the first to host it.  When you see him on the TV in a few years you can say, “I was there first”

ROXY STARDUST Burlesque

Roxy performed 2 acts for us the first was her Granny Stardust routine.

GRANNY STADUST

There’s always that fear factor for our burlesque performer because for most people this will be their first experience of burlesque.  However, this is where Roxy comes into her own.  Roxy has been involved in burlesque for years, she also hosts her own burlesque shows and she has trained in Performing arts in New York (as well as Glasgow)  so one of her real strengths is interacting with an audience.  In this performance of Granny Stardust she performed as if she was an old lady who instead of taking one of her own pills had accidentally popped an ecstasy and downed it with some Red Bull.  Remember that scene in Dirty Dancing where Baby sees how the staff dance when they’re out of sight?  Well this is how I like to think what happens at the old folks home when visiting hour finishes.

Her second act was a Mini Mouse routine.  Again another comedy routine where she started off as a Hollywood Mini Mouse and performed a comedy strip tease.

2 very good story telling performances that got the audience on side and in the swing of things.

MIMI FATALE Burlesque

MIMI Fatale is relatively new to the burlesque scene and has been taking lessons with the Academy of Burlesque.  Our team went on a staff night out to see one of their performances and we instantly fell in love with the her act.

MIMI comes on stage as Lucy – the bored checkout girl.  The music played is a mixture of classic elevator music and tannoy announcements.  Lucy is playing the part of any checkout girl, she’s on autopilot, she reaches in takes out a tin of beans and places said tin on the shelf. She carries out this process until she removes a chocolate dessert.  When she touches the chocolate dessert she music changes and she is temporarily transported to a fantasy land.  As she lets go of the chocolate, she is brought back to reality and continues to stack the shelves.  Every now and then she accidentally touches the chocolate and is temporarily transported into another dimension.  Eventually she gives into temptation and she eats the chocolate.  Whilst in this fantasy land she stops being Lucy the check out girl and transforms into MiMi Fatale the sultry burlesque dancer.  The M&S uniform is removed and when there’s no clothes left, there’s also no chocolate remaining and therefore she is brought back to reality and realises she’s in the supermarket wearing next to nothing.

Lovely story, full of comedy, original, sexy – a great act.

Note:  My girlfirend says that that’s what every girl goes through when they need chocolate – it must be interesting being a girl.

RUBY TRIX Burlesque

Like MIMI FATALE, RUBY TRIX is a student & performer for Academy of Burlesque.  When we saw her act we knew instantly that it was right up our street.  Although her act is very original, has a lovely story telling thread for me it was all about seeing the Queen dancing.  When I think of the Queen, I visualise a wee old woman who occasionally waves a hand so to see her on the stage all fingers and thumbs just melted me inside.

However, as it’s not all about me here’s how her act went.  The queen took to the stage and with the national anthem, “God Save The Queen” playing through a radio.  Now as you might be aware, this isn’t going to go down very well with most of the audience.  However, her radio started hissing and whilst tuning it back in ‘Dignity’ by “Decon Blue” started playing.  It’s a song that gets everyone on the dance floor and the queen wasn’t exempt she started dancing and the audience started singing along – what a great atmosphere! Everyone started clapping along.

However, the radio broke again and next thing the queen is back sitting on her chair and listening to the national anthem again.  The audience weren’t happy, however, the hiss started again and this time when tuning it a different song was played “I Want To Break Free” by Queen.  She lifted a newspaper and it was about the YES campaign and Scotland’s hope to break free.  Not only was this very crowd pleasing to most of the audience, this is also when she started removing her clothes in time to the music.

A fantastic crowd pleasing burlesque act.

BRUCE FUMMEY Comedian

Bringing the show to a close, was the current Scottish Comedian Of The Year  Bruce Fummey.   Despite winning the contest I feel (as do many others) that  Bruce is one of the most underrated comedians in Scotland.  He’s also one of the most intelligent people in comedy.  By day he’s a physics teacher and in his spare time he’s an avid historian specialising in Scottish history.  If you mix these 2 together with his Scottish / African background you get a delightful set full of topics other comedians can’t touch. His proud boasts of being “The Best Comedian on the Afro Celtic Circuit” went down superbly well.  But I think the audiences favourite part of  Bruce set was when he managed to do a whole section on Scottish independence and link this in with Ruby Trix’s performance as the Queen”.  This received a massive cheer from the audience and was a great close to the night.

BACK STAGE GOSSIP

This was actually one of the disaster shows of all time.  To list everything would be too long.  On the night one of the speakers wasn’t working and after a lengthy troubleshooting process my sound guy discovered it was a dodgy cable.  It’s one of those things that happens once in a while and in the last 4 years at the Admiral we’ve been quite lucky.  What’s next though – the microphone didn’t work.  We didn’t get this working till after 8pm.  Luckily we had a good sound tech on board and the Admiral were really helpful and we worked towards a solution that the audience probably wouldn’t have noticed anything was wrong (hopefully)

Missing items:  One of the burlesque acts had arrived 3 hours prior to her performance and around 40 minutes before she was due to be on stage she performed a last minute check only to discover she had forgotten to pack….pants! Luckily she only lives about 15 minutes away but she had to shoot off and returned 30 minutes later waving them as she came in to say “I’ve got them”

Act of the Night:  JoJo Sutherland.
Really hard to pick tonight as there were so many outstanding acts on the bill.  But I thought she was marvelous and several of the comment cards agree.   Plus she swapped last minute from Headliner to MC and that really helped us out.

BIG THANKS

Star.  This was her first show back since becoming a mammy.  In the previous few shows before giving birth she was massive (I really hope she doesn’t mind me saying that).  So there were some tasks she couldn’t perform in the last few months.  However she returned on Saturday and I was slightly worried that she might be rusty or have a bit of Baby Brain.  There was nothing to worry about – she was more focused than ever and ran the majority of the show single handily.

Lindsey:  Although it was her friend’s birthday and she couldn’t stay the whole night she still wanted to attend, do the door and make sure everything was running okay.  As we were a bit short staffed and I was dealing with the technical issues, Lindsey stayed an extra hour and ran the front of house.

Stuart Crawford:  I genuinely believe Stuart is the Best Cabaret Photographer in Scotland.  When I look through the photos I really feel that he captures the moment and the images this month were the sharpest images he’s ever uploaded.  Plus he’s written most of the funny captions this month as well.

Chris Matthews:  This man is my hero.  He’s been voted number 1 wedding DJ in Scotland for the last 2 years and is one of the most meticulous and professional people I have ever met.    For me Enterteasement really came to life a few years ago when we introduced the black sparkly curtain.  Chris donated that to us…just because he likes the show.  Not only that – he donated his services free of charge on Saturday and we received a glowing report on the music choices.  Not only that but he worked meticulously and came up with a solution for all the technical issues.  He did this with a smile on his face which considering he was only meant to be there to play some music is a testament to his professionalism.   Not just a great DJ, but a great person and one I’m lucky enough to call my friend.

THE ADMIRAL:  The staff at the Admiral have been great with us over recent years.   They really support what we’re doing with the show and their staff are really friendly and easy to work with as well.  When I’m talking with other people who run shows I’m often reminded how lucky we are that have a venue pushing us forward rather than holding us back.  On Saturday they were, yet again, a joy to work with and helped us out with mops and it was good to see their bar staff laughing along when the comedians were on stage and cheering when the burlesque performing.

On a personal note:  I think I needed this show to re-ignite the passion and to drive things forward for the remainder of 2015 and expand in 2016.  There’s a lot of competition out there but the fact so many people choose to spend their weekends with us is really humbling.  I feel blessed to have the plethora of acts to choose from and our audience of regulars who are ever present. 
Long may it continue.

next show August – more news coming soon!!

Howdy, this is more of a reflection on the weekends events rather than a show review.  One of the things that really sells our intimate venue is the personal touch.  so I thought I’d just share  my thoughts on the weekend.

So this show was billed as ‘The Super Show’ and when I woke up this morning there was one word in my mind:  Perfect.  I don’t know why this word was there but as I thought about both shows and spoke about certain aspects of the show it was a word I continually used but not for the reasons you might think.

Perfect:  When something cannot be improved upon it is said to be perfect.

Enterteasement will never be perfect; but, every month we try and do something slightly better than the previous month.  Whether that’s a better venue, acts, staff, equipment, prizes etc we’re always looking for that extra 1%.

Was this weekend perfect?

Unfortunately not.  Don’t get me wrong it was an excellent weekend, we’ve had rave reviews, people asking when the next show will be and many of our regulars saying it’s one of their best ever shows.   However,  we’re only at about 80% of where I think we can be and we’re working towards it.

Things we got right

As predicted, the Saturday show sold out 2 days before the doors opened.   When you consider there’s venues  & companies out there struggling to fill rooms half our size of ours it’s an amazing achievement that we can continually pack the room and sell out before the doors open.

The show ran perfectly on schedule on  Saturday.   We’re normally a few minutes behind schedule but ever break and act started and finished on the exact minute it was mean to.

Charity:  We raised £165 for Bwindi Community General Hospital in Africa.   Also, this was not a case of ‘donating money’.  The money was raised by my mum who has been making new scented bath products (bath bombs, scrubs, body butter) so everyone left with something for their money.   It’s also great to see my mammy doing something she loves and she’s constantly improving tweaking her designs / ingredients etc to make them even better.   Hopefully she can change this from a hobby into a profession.

Things that went wrong

I forgot to bring my magic props on the Saturday so had to improvise my set.

My headset broke. Sound check done, fresh battery installed, 2 minutes into my stage time – Broke – sigh.

We accidentally turned all the power off on the Sunday, nobody noticed and just thought it was part of the show

Drinks spillages:  On the Saturday we had more drinks spills than ever.  When people knock over a drink they never tell us they just sit in a pint of beer.   Nobody knows why.

I had spoken to 2 different ladies on the phone regarding reserving seats and assumed it was the same person so we made a mistake there.

Perfect Moments

This is why the word perfect kept coming into my mind.  Among all the good things and bad things there were some perfect moments
Kelly:  I’ve known Kelly since before Enterteasement began.  For the first 2 years she couldn’t make it to the shows as she always had the kids and lives over an hour away.  But she finally made it to a show, she loved it and she’s become a regular ever since.  Not only does she come to the shows, she sits down the front, she screams for the burlesque, laughs at the comedians and posts nice things on the page.  We have a few people like Kelly but this month she graduted as well (clever cookie) So my mum decided to make her a special present and have it specially wrapped.

When Kelly Saw the specially wrapped pink box she said to the guy she was with, “I hope I win that in the raffle”  Not knowing she had already won it simply for being a genuinely lovely person.  She sent me a photo of her kids faces as they were all excited to try out the bath bombs.

Sukki Singapora:  In today’s society we tend to promote beauty models over role models.  Sukki is one of the few people who could do both.  Her skin is so clean she actually looks photoshopped.  If I was to describe her performance I would say it was perfect.  Before the shows, she shares our event, she turns up early and is a joy to work with back stage.  Her manners & conduct are impeccable truly one of those people who does everything right.  However, although she’s performed all over the world and is a global star in burlesque she’s one of the most humble, down to earth people you could meet.  When she’s not being amazing on stage or getting up early in the morning to go to the gym she’s doing charity work.

Jaggy Pickles:  Mike and Linda come to Enterteasement every month.  I get to speak to Mike for a couple of minutes every night; but it was only on Saturday that I discovered this is their one night out a month and every month for the past 2 years they have spent that night with us.  Mike is quite happy to offer us the money to take the back booth for the next 6 months.

Early Burd and Photo Bomber:  Again, they’ve been coming every month for the last 2 years but what I’ve only started noticing is that they go around my staff and offer them a drink before the show! How perfect is that.  We’ve always wanted to give people that personal experience but I never expected that we’d be receiving the personal experience from our guests.

Christopher Beattie:  A guy I went to school with had the perfect excuse for not bringing his wife to the show – she’s expecting their first child – very, very happy for you bud – that’s one lucky child 🙂

Yum Yum:  Last month one of our old regulars never got into the Admiral because her sister had forgotten her ID.  As they were already out in town they went to another bar and she got chatted up by another guy and on Sunday they had their 1 month date at Enterteasement.

Rebooking:   The Saturday show finished at 10:30. At 11pm we had someone book tickets to the Sunday show who had just attended the Saturday show.  That’s right, knowing how good a night it was he decided to come back the next day and watch the same show again.

The Show

Scott Agnew

Consistently strong both nights:  Scott’s got one of those lovable styles that even when he’s picking on someone in the audience you know it’s just a bit of fun.  He poked fun at The English, flirted with the guys and had a great time on stage.

Not only was Scott very funny but he’s also looking great since he gave up the booze…that was until he heard we had a bar tab and had a few Desperados 🙂

A great performance from one of Scotland’s best compere’s

Gary Little

Was excellent on the first night.  As we start an hour earlier than most comedy clubs the opening spot is never an easy one and many comedians really struggle.  Gary did his strong tried and tested material on the Satuday night and blew the roof off the place.  Gary is one of the few people who can do this.

On the Sunday he did a mixture of his strong material and newer stuff.  It was good to see Gary out of his comfort zone trying some new material, unfortunately as I’d introduced my mum as being there raising money for charity his anti-charity material didn’t do as well as it could have.

Still – good to have Scotland’s top headliner on our Bill, we’ll need to get him back in 2015 in his proper role as headliner.

Sukki Singapora:

Simply perfect!  A true world class performer who is a joy to work with on and off stage.  Her acts were exceptionally well received with many avid burlesque fans saying “She’s in a different league”.  Sukki’s performances are classy, elegant, fun and performed excellently.

Both her acts has Asian elements to them with the first having some rice poured over her (I’m sure this is normally champagne and the next having oriental looking fans.  Both acts were excellent.  We hope she comes back again.

Stakatto Blue

Stakatto will never be perfect and I don’t think she’d have it any other way.  She’s constantly pushing herself to learn new tricks and push her boundaries with more complex routines.  Her improvement with the hoop in the last 3 years is simply outstanding.

Her latest routine had her standing on one leg and still managing to perform with 4 hoops!  She’s also added a little bit more of a burlesque element with music choice, dress etc so it fitted in really nicely with our night

Chris Dinwoodie: 

How do you review yourself?  On Saturday I managed to scrape by with 4 things that just so happened to be in my car.  I had no intention of performing these tricks but I performed them and nobody noticed I was winging it so all good.  Sunday I felt far more comfortable with my own act.

However, I never perform to my best at Enterteasement because I’m always stressed out.  It’s something I look to improve upon in 2015.

Des McLean:

Back when I had a “real job”, working in IT, we used to listen to Des do his phone call wind-ups with my particular favourite being the Glasgow Ned Character of Plunge McNugget and the fast talking old woman Ina.  Des Incorporates many  voices into his set with stories of Tommy Sheridan days and a focus on tanning.  Des isn’t like other comedians, he kinda goes in and out of his set using voices and characters wrapped up with a high energy performance.

It was Des’ first time performing for us and at The Admiral for someone who has travelled the world, sold out 1000+ seated venues etc to walk into The Admiral and immediately say “This is a comedy club!”  Is always nice to hear.  Comedy is performed in many venues but The Admiral has a Stage, lights, is a nice size etc.

SUNDAY SHOWS

We’re having one more Sunday show in November. Unless it sells out I’m afraid we’ll have to pull the plug.  The Admiral doesn’t normally open on a Sunday so having to bring in 3 staff and a partner isn’t providing enough bar sales to justify opening.   We’re also not making any money off the Sunday show and need about another 30 paying customers to make it all worth while.
If it sells out, we’ll continue, if it doesn’t we might look for a smaller venue that’s already open so if you guys want it, please get behind it.

Final Thoughts

The main star of the show on both nights was the audience.  No shouting, heckling etc just loads of big laughs, screams and claps.  I must admit, I’m spoiled with how good they are but after ever show comedians come up to me and say “What an amazing audience”  So for all your guys who come along thank you.

Because of our excellent audiences, the acts all love performing with us and tell other acts that we’re a good gig we’ve been able to attract other big named acts and bring back our regular acts who like working with us.

Final Thanks

Jackie – my girlfriend for helping out selling the bath goodies

My mum for making the raffle prizes

My hard working team who make the show run smoothly.

Stakatto for inspiring me to get off my lazy ass and start learning new magic and to start pushing myself again.  New act coming soon!

Next shows

Fancy Dress Comedy Show November 25th with Billy Kirkwood, JellyBean Martinez, Damien Crow, The Wee Man & Rosco McSkeleton
Enterteasement: November 8th & 9th. with Raymond Mearns, Stu Who?, Chris Forbes, Hettie Heartache, Lou-Leigh Blue and Todd Various

WHAT A SHOW – The comedians were hilarious, the burlesque dancers were amazing, a chicken moon-walked and people ate marshmallows. The acts were great, our staff were great, the audience were fantastic -(only 2 spilled drinks the whole night) What’s even more amazing is that a quick nosey around Facebook revealed the rest of Glasgow’s comedy audiences were rude, heckled, talked through the acts etc…we  had people helping out bringing drinks back to the bar and turning the fans on and off for us!

Before the show

Tickets went on sale a little late for this show for several reasons

• Being too thick to figure out how to install the new booking system
• Enjoying those mystical 4 days of summer often known as “Glasgow Summer”
  

So I was a bit concerned that we might be empty but in the last week the tickets started flying out and we sold out on Thursday, 2 days before the show.  I had every faith this show would sell though as it’s a very strong line-up with lots of our favorite acts.

SHOWTIME

Billy Kirkwood

Take a genuinely nice, funny guy, throw in some Red Bull and a mild case of ADHD (the condition, not the Rock Band) and you’ve got Billy Kirkwood. Billy just done a gig in Inverness then drove 3 hours straight to Enterteasement.

Before the gig started, a phenomenon occurred, people raced for the seats at the front. People are normally scared to sit at the front of a comedy show in case they get picked on – with Billy, you want to be in the front because he leaves you with that feeling that he’s everyone’s best friend. Billy done all his funnies and even played a game of Cuddily Bunny (Fluffy Bunny for anyone outside Ayrshire) where our resident front rower Derek was defeated by Enterteasement newcomer Tracy (I think that was her name)

Yet another Word class performance from a man truly at the top of his game right now.

GARY DUNN

Gary’s always goes down well with our audience…and let’s be honest , if you’ve got a moonwalking chicken you’re acts pretty much going to be safe no matter where you go. ‘Colin The Chicken’ dances, did stunts and eventually found a spectators chosen car. There’s a point in the act where you find yourself completely forgetting it’s attached to wires and 2 bits of wood and you realise you’re laughing, screaming and showing genuine concern for a puppet.

Then he made a human puppet from a spectator. The spectator was excellent and he played along to the songs and dances. The whole act was held together with joke after joke and got us off to the perfect start.

SANTA / GRAHAM MACKIE

Mackie’s been in the comedy industry for a long time and even when he’s slagging off Billy Connelly and telling horrible jokes about his daughter he still looks like a big cuddly Santa. Graham told one of my favourite jokes of his about the Shawshank Redemption happening in Greenock Prison. The highlight for him had to be when he got heckled. Graham does a lot of compering and is a match for anyone throwing an insult his way but on this night a comment from the audience flew under his radar and took him by surprise. He was telling a story about going to a make-up counter to get some foundation for his daughter, an audience member (Gemma) said “Uh Oh”. Nobody else heard this but it gave Santa a short fit of the giggles. Hopefully she’ll stay off his naughty list at Christmas and not end up down his celler (You had to be there)

VENDETTA VAIN

Vendetta was the first real top professional that we hired and since then she’s always been one of our favorite acts. She’s moved to London now so we don’t a chance to see her often; but, when she’s available we’re always the first one to snap her up. She did her Russian dance for us which has really unusual music that encourages the audience to clap along to. This ends with a fan dance and the trademark Vendetta pose. Most girls, do a quick pose then run off stage but Vendetta poses for a perfect picture and well deserved round of applause.

Her second act was a balloon pop act to the track Rhinestone Cowboy. In complete contrast to her powerful first act this one was more about fun. Every time a balloon popped more of Vendetta was revealed all followed by another fantastic pose. Great acts – thanks Vendetta – hope to see you again soon.

DAIQUIRI DUSK

Daiquiri has been flying the flag for Scottish Burlesque for the last 7 years. In the last few years she’s done great things and now is not only a burlesque performer but a burlesque teacher, writer and maker of nipple tassels – don’t you just hate these multi-talented people!?

One of her many claims to fame is a Britain’s Got Talent performance where she received a standing ovation from Amanda Holden. So if it’s good enough for Amanda, it’s good enough for us. Her, Bonnie Lass act that starts with a cheeky Scottish poem then finishes with a Highland dance burlesque act.

Excellent and well received.

MICHAEL REDMOND

Michael is an Irish comedy legend, I don’t know if he ever had his marbles but he’s definitely lost a few over the years and the madness just adds to the comedy. Who could get 5 minutes of comedy out of eyebrows? However, one of the best laughs of Michael’s set was a heckle. He was doing his set and was talking about how small jockeys are and someone shouted:

“Are they small or far away” ( A reference from Father Ted talking to Dougal about cows – Michael Redmond was Father Stone in one of the episodes)

Surprisingly as well he also done a bit in his set where he asked the audience who he looked like. In my 14 years attending comedy clubs and watching it on TV I’ve only ever heard 2 comedians do a “Who do I look like?” segment. Maybe the audience had a “he looks like a…” feel to them. Great set and a wonderful applause & screams at the end.

THE TEAM

Our team, yet again, were fantastic! For this first time ever, I don’t think I was stressed on a night and I think this is only the second time we’ve had Cupcake, Star and Lindsey working together. It’s great having people who are great at what they do who genuinely care about what they do.

Charity: You guys Raised £75 for charity via Bathbombs, Minions and raffle. Most of this will go to Bwindi hospital and some will go to a local donation.

Audience: It’s not quantity…it’s quality, but when you have quality and quality – you’ve cracked it.

Chris Matthews: Took 9 people for a night out, Derek, Tamara, Chris Whitehead, Jaggy Pickes, George & Ann Price, Ryan & Kelly, Neil & Jo, Ricky & Carly, Jackie(aka wee burdie) Jo and Gemma, Zoe’s party of 6, Alan King….and the rest of the 120 people were all fantastic.

SADLY: Kev from the Admiral is leaving for pastures new. He’s been great for us, discovered a way of setting up the chairs with the canter passage & has helped out with the sound.

Next show – See Billy Kirkwood on our Woody’s Comedy Club Full Launch night on
May 30th www.woodyscomedyclub.com

Enterteasement: September 13th with yet another great line-up including 2 acts we’ve never seen before. One of Holland’s top magicians & one of the founding members of The Funny Farm.  Tickets go on sale soon.

May 10th Enterteasement Review

What a night! What a SHOW!!! The acts were incredible, the audience were perfect – I’m just sad to say it’s over! Here’s a wee re-cap on the journey.

The Story

We always try to put on the very best line-ups with the resources we have and over the we’ve had some quite spectacular shows. However, this month was one of those months that for some unbeknown reason some of the elite of the Comedy, Magic & Burlesque world were free. It’s been our biggest show ever and the first time we’ve actually provided travel & accommodation for the burlesque acts. (Travel = Train, accomodation = they stayed at mine). This was our most expensive line-up and to balance things off a little we increased the price by £1. Boy you guys didn’t like that!! and it showed in the ticket sales! After our February & March show successes where the tickets sold out in up to 3 weeks before the show I thought this show would have been similar to Robbie Williams doing a warm-up gig for Michael Jackson! But no! The tickets went very, very slowly and for a while I thought we’d actually be empty. However, on the day of the show we sold the last 24 tickets and had a nice busy room.

The Show

STU WHO? Compere / Comedian

StuWho is a very special acts for us. He’s known as The Godfather of Scottish Comedy and he’s been there from the start and literally done it all. TV, massive theatres, working with celebrities, travelled the world etc. Whenever a comedian asks me for advice I say, “Add StuWho on Facebook, watch what he does, find out where he gigs and learn.” He’s a guy who does everything right – When I informed him I’d forgotten to print of the running orders he said, “It’s ok I’ve brought my own” Now that’s professional! It’s always special for me having Stu on the bill because I remember the first time I asked Stu to do Enterteasement, he hadn’t heard of us as we were still quite new and he’s one of the acts who normally only plays the big clubs / theatres. To my surprise he was free and he had a question / condition. it wasn’t changing rooms, poster, description – a bowl of blue smarties. He asked:

“Is it a fun gig?”

I said yes and he signed up and luckily for us he loved the gig and has been back twice since then.

Before I (Woody) took to the stage to go over the house rules I was a little worried as the audience were really quiet and there was a lack of energy in the room. I said to Stu “I’m a bit worried as there seems to be a lack of energy in the room” Stu simply replied, “Well I’lll f***in fix that!” And that’s exactly what he did.  Stu took to the stage and with a commanding performance took charge and got the show the audience laughing and ready for the first act.

Great compere!! – Kirsty Wilson

COLIN CLOUD – Mentalist

A Trendy Sherlock Holmes walked onto the stage and after some lighthearted interaction with the audience he chose 2 people at random to come on stage. One audience member was to think of a word and the other was to think of a card. It just so happens one of the people he picked was Gary Meikle – one of our comedians from March. It was quite funny to see Gary who’s got great stage presence on stage sh***in himself as he was so excited to be involved in the trick and worried people might recognise him and think he was a stooge. Colin, Successfully read what card Gary was thinking of and what word the woman was thinking of.

He then gave the audience the chance to think of any question they wanted. He picked the birthday girl and figured out she came from Irvin, had 2 cats and knew what the names of the cats were.

He finished on his signature piece which not only amazes me; but, really annoys me as I’ve seen it several times and I can’t figure out how it’s done. Colin asks a member of the audience to think of a Surname and just by looking at them figures it out. It almost too perfect; but is one of the closest things to real magic I’ve ever seen. Great performance from one of Scotland’s future big named stars.

Absolutely loved the mind-reader guy never seen anything like that before – Margaret McGeoch

LULU ROXX – Blonde Burlesque

All the way from Newcastle the World Burlesque Games Best Newcomer 2013 came to stage with a fantastic act involving Maracas, an umbrella.  . Not only is Lulu beautiful but you can tell as soon as she walks on stage that she’s a trained dancer. Every step was clearly thought out, she interacted with the audience, flirted and had lots of high impact moves to get great reactions from the crowd.  Her first act was of a cheecky Swedish girl who came on with the a trench coat and stripped while teasing the audience.

Her second act  was more fast paced with a bump and grind edge and big impact moves.  This had the big finish of some glittery champagne which covered some of the audience.  Most of whom loved it except the girls with the fake tan in the front row.

That bendy blonde girl was amazing – I want to marry her – Hazel Murray

TILLY TASSLE – Burlesque

LULU’s partner in crime came to the stage with the same level of class, beauty and stage presence. Now I have to appologise becase I’m not uptodate with my gymnastic terms so there were cartwheel / handstandy type things, splits and bending in ways normal people can’t bend. All in time with the Boom Town music and totally spectacular. This act started slow, then there was a music change into a higher energy act The finish for this act was a champagne finish (one of the classics in burlesque) and it was an excellent way to finish the first half.

Her second act introduced an Enterteasement first – ‘Talcum Powder’  This was combined with some glitter and hidden in a large feather fan.  When she waved this it created a glittery smoke that temporarily covered the audience.  The act started slow but after a music change she changed tracks to a more upbeat song and introduced a mixture of acrobatics and balletic dance movement creating a circus inspired spectacle.

 Smoking hot burlesque – best I’ve ever seen

ROSCO MCSKELETON – Comedian

Real Name Rosco McClelland, Rosco used to be a Stand-up comedian, pretty good and decided to do the Skeleton as a one off at Halloween. Unfortunately for him it went really well, it was unique, original and a breath of fresh air for the Scottish comedy scene. If you haven’t seen it, imagine a Glaswegian Jack Dee with a skeleton painted on his face. He takes to the stage and in a very deep voice he delivers his terrifying true tales to the audience. His slow delivery creates a tension in the audience as they’re dying to laugh but at scared to miss the punchline.

it was absolute class! loved every minute of it as did our audience. One of his punchlines caused our photographer, Stuart Crawford, to buckle over nearly dropping his camera in the process.

Also, something that surprised me was the amount of women who came up to me after the show to say,

“See that Skeleton – he was so sexy” – numerous women

JANEY GODLEY – Headline Comedian

Janey has been on our bucket list for 2 years which is quite ironic because after crossed her off the bucket list I added, ‘Buy new bucket’ to my shopping list.

To my surprise Janey has never performed in The Admiral Bar (we bit of trivia for you – Billy Connelly has – sadly not at Enterteasement) So I think she was pleasantly surprised when she walked through to see seats a stage and a full room of happy punters (that’s quite a rarity). I’ve never seen Janey do the same set twice – she just opens her mouth and funny comes out. When the audience stops laughing she starts again. It was one of our strongest headline performances we’ve had at Enterteasement with her twitter jokes and stories of her husband going getting great reactions.  We’ve now had 7 female comedians and 2 female comedy magicians and after each show people always come up to me and say; “I don’t normally find woman funny but she was amazing”. I don’t book people to ‘tick a box’ I book people I think our audience will like (rant over). They didn’t like Janey they loved her! She walked off stage to a tremendous response and it was a shame she had to run to another gig as she would have heard yet another great reaction when Stu closed the show.

[after seeing Janey]  Need more botox, my laughter lines are now back.  Mrs Murray

PHOTOS

For over 120 photographs visit www.facebook.com/enterteasement

Funny stories

Kick the bucket: After the burlesque girls done their champagne routines, I mopped the floor – the novelty value seeing a man with a mop seemed to make some of our female audience members happy. The novelty value quickly wore off for when I ended up breaking the fu**in bucket – doh!

Born Winner: At the start of the evening I introduce the house rules and some bits of housekeeping.  One of which is that you can win free tickets by filling in the comment cards.  When I walked off a male asked if I was collecting the comment cards yet.  I said “well the show hasn’t started yet so you how can you have any comments about it? “  He’s responded, “I just really want to win the free tickets” 

Real men wear pink: Regulars come in different shapes and sizes but one of our guys Mike, has asked to take booth 1 for the next year!  Very impressive.  Mike turns up every month but we’ve noticed that he’s got a thing for his favourite white shirt.  So on his reserved sign last month we wrote, “We think you should wear a pink shirt next month”.  As Mike’s a real man – he own’s a roofing company, we thought – there’s no way he would wear a pink shirt.  However true enough – he arrives wearing a pink shirt and 007 cufflinks just to keep his manly status 🙂

Strange answer: Colin Cloud asked an audience member to think of someone they knew.  He then said, “And when was the last time you thought of this person?”  Any normal person would think about this for a while and probably not know and say “last week”, “I don’t know, “a while ago”.  Our audience member was more specific, “When did you last think of this person”  He instantly responded “Friday”  (Maybe you had to be there – but it was funny)

AFTER SHOW

We went upstairs and had a drink and all just really had that feeling of “that was brilliant”

We received the following comments:

“Best Enterteasement Ever”

“Best Burlesque you’ve had at Enterteasement”

“Best Stand-up Comedy Show i’ve ever Attended”

“Miles better than The Stand”

“Best night out I’ve had in 3 years”

“Colin looks trendier every time”

“What’s it called when you want to pump a skeleton?”

After the show the girls came back to mine and what lovely girls they are. You look at these 2 stunnng girls and you think DIVA and you’d be wrong – amazingly down to earth. As they’d been travelling the whole day and performing at night I was going to take them out for something to eat and where did they choose? McDonalds! When they left, the tidied up and made the bed and couldn’t have been nicer or been less hassle.

See Our Acts Again?

If you would like to see any of our acts then please add them on facebook check them out as they tour all over and why not spread the love by hitting the like button on their page and telling them you enjoyed their act. That would be your good deed for the day and would encourage them to grace our stage oncemore.

STUWHO: https://www.facebook.com/stuwho

JANEY GODLEY: Can be seen gigging all over Scotland and you can listen into her award winning (and very funny) weekly podcast done with her daughter & fellow comic Ashley Storie.

http://www.janeygodley.com, http://janeygodley.podomatic.com/

ROSCO MCSKELETON: Skeleton Comedian: https://www.facebook.com/ihbihuibgvgigigv

COLIN CLEOD: (Mind-reader) Performs at the Stand Monthly & lots of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe www.colincloud.com, https://www.facebook.com/ForensicMindReader, https://twitter.com/Colin_Cloud

LULU ROXX: Blonde Burlesque Girl: Part Of The Headline Honey’s who travel the UK.

https://www.facebook.com/missluluroxx,

TILLY TASSLE: Dark Haired Burlesque: Part of the The Coquette Collective (Mixed Burlesque troupe)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tilly-Tassle/526950934056344

Audience

without you guys there wouldn’t be a show, so massive thanks to all of you including:

The party of 13 for Kirsty Gale. She send us a facebook message to say the day after to say:

“We all had a fab night last night! Thanks again for helping with the tickets!”

Chris Whitehead: Chris has been at our last 3 shows but he is a special audience member. He draws some of the acts. We asked him why he does this and he said, “I go to a lot of shows and I get so much from them that I just wanted to give something back” What a great attitude!

Ashish: Has now been to the last 3 shows and says they just keep getting better.

Byron & Fiona: These guys came to see StuWho about 7 months ago and fell in love with Enterteasement. They come most months now and bring different people with them and always look glamorous.

The Superfans / Hardcore regulars / the ever presents . Tamara & Derek, George Price (who came on his lonesome), The Early bird & photobomber, Neil – who never told me it was his birthday!! (ya fud – I owe you a pint!), his crew is so big it now has sub-crews from Jocelyn. Oh, and where’s Stephanie?- That’s 2 shows she’s been missing, if it hits a third show I’m reporting her missing.

John Brown: John attended our very first show and this is him finally coming back!

Ami Lee:  Booked the booth at 5pm on the day of the show.  Found the gig because someone in the group had said she had seen Janey and wanted to see her again.  Ended up with one of them being a burlesque dancer and wanting to perform for us – small world.

JAGGY PICKLES: Our main fan who can be found on booth 1 – he loves the show so much he’s just asked if he can take the booth until further notice 🙂

Big Thanks To

Our Team: Cupcake, Star, Amanda, Stuart Crawford, Lindsey Leeper.
The Admiral:  Who’ve been great with us – we heard great things about the burgers!

Next Show

JUNE 14th – Tickets on Sale Soon

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
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z3TXLPY

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?

If you were at the show, please take 2 minutes to complete our quick anonymous survey.
Click here to take survey

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.

Click here to take survey

We’re officially 2 years old!  Anyone who has organised a 2 year olds birthday party will tell you: “Expect the unexpected”.  It makes more business sense for us to kid on the night went really smooth but where’s the fun in that.  If an episode of Eastenders didn’t have a disaster or 2 in it then everyone would watch Hollyoaks so here’s some of our Drama from the evening so you can get the inside scoop and also see just how hard we work to keep it all together.

If you were there could we ask you to take a minute to fill out our anonymous survey here.

Click here to take survey

So the run up to this show was a scary one.  Being the birthday show I really wanted to make sure it was a strong line-up and booked some cracking acts.  All comedians were headline acts and all the dancers are headline acts when they perform on bills…plus I’ve been known to headline a few shows over the years myself.

However as things work out this show was full of disasters:

Tickets – Last month on the Monday before the show we had sold 94 tickets.  This month we had sold 8.   As it turns out there was another wee gig on called Rockness and there were 4 other shows on like ours that night plus all the comedy clubs around as well.  On top of that…it’s sunny and people like to be in the garden when it’s sunny.  This by the way is why Scotland has produced so many world class comedians and so few footballers in recent decades.   Also, the despite putting up 20 posters in The Admiral we never sold a ticket at the venue…mainly because the tickets got lost – doh!

Staff:

• Stu Who There was a mix-up about timings so Stu was going to have to do the middle spot to allow him to headline elsewhere  sorry for any confusion.
• My regular door girl Mel has been taking burlesque lessons and was making her debut over at another night
• my Event Manager, Star, was away Graduating.
• Mhairi my assistant manager at 5:20 on the day of Enterteasement txt me to say she wasn’t going to be able to make it – awch.
• Wullie the photographer who helps me set-up getting help up (not by gun)at a previous engagement  so he wasn’t able to help out with the setting up of curtains banners etc.
• Gavin Webster got slightly lost and didn’t appear till the start of the show.

Believe it or not there’s a lot more but I’ll leave it there for now.
So with the room assembled…I’m gonna be honest…I used cello tape to assemble a few things that don’t normally require cello tape.

The Show

We started at 8:02 and the audience were pretty cool, we had a mad man down the front with 4 teeth and spoke a variation of Glaswegian Klingon so that’s always interesting.  We went over the rules, don’t talk during the acts and cheer through the burlesque.  Now while I’m doing this I’m thinking to myself, “Woody you’ve forgotten something really important” and I had – see normally at this point I introduce my team of 2 assistants and photographer so everyone knows we actually work there.  However, as I didn’t have any staff and there wasn’t a photographer at this point there was no one to introduce.

Viv Gee

The comedy world is full off all different types of people but Viv is just amazingly nice and she’s an exceptional compere.  About a month ago I was at a gig and viv was compering for 15 year olds and she ended up breakdancing on stage!  Comedian, Actress, Poet & breakdancer – god knows what else she can do but 1 thing we need for our shows is adaptability.  People turn up for the comedy, magic, burlesque and others have quite clearly there to hide from the police for a few hours…we get a mixed bag but it keeps it interesting.

So Viv did an AMAZING job in my honest opinion because it’s a job where you need to judge the crowd, think on your feet and adjust the timings on the night.  So the show had started and she was off.  It was her birthday the next day and the amount of comments I had about Viv was great mainly from a bunch of my friends who came to the show who have been saying for years “Female Comedians Aren’t funny” But after the event they were converted and want to know where they can see more of her.  Well done Viv.

Gavin Webster

Gavin is a comedian from Newcastle and he’s one of my all time favourites.  One of my friends actually turned up just to see Gavin perform.  In the comedy world, Gavin has one of the loveliest reputations.  Virtually every comedian I spoke to who had worked with Gavin insisted on telling me there “Gavin Story” So I was all glad to have him.

It was weird though because he went on stage and not everyone took to him at first.  Which I thought was strange because Gavin Headlines all the big venues and I would consider him a real 5 star performer.  He wasn’t dying or anything like that but he wasn’t tearing the roof off the place as I thought he would.  Sometimes you just get a quiet comedy crowd…however, I think Gavin sensed that the audience were still a little cold and told jokes at the start as I’ve seen fellow Newcastle comedian Peter Kay do the same thing.  So after 5 minutes, they were laughing after 10 minutes he had them and by the end of it he had them all holding their sides at his panda tale.

Then the weirdest thing happend.  As Gavin does his sign off and say’s “right guys I’m going to go now.”  Our local mad man says, “See before you go pal can I ask you a question?” A rather perplexed Gavin said “yes” and the guy asked him “What’s your real voice?”

What does that even mean?

So Gavin did another couple of minutes off the cuff about being from Surrey; but, it’s one of those lines that will probably end up in Gavin’s Book under the weirdest thing said to you at a comedy gig section.

Break

As breaks go…it was ok.

Viv came back on and I would love to say what she did but I was in the changing room getting stage instructions at the time so I only managed to hear the laughs.

Stu Who
Stu Was meant to be the headliner but due to a mix up with another venue it made sense to move him to the middle spot.  As performances go he was epic.  Right up our street with a mixture of Glasgow stories and personal life.  It’s not one liner gags it’s just normal pub humour and observations.  From start to finish it was Boom, Laugh Boom Laugh.  Knock out blows to the audience and they loved every minute of it.  The energy in the room was epic – we just wish we had him for longer but fear not people – he had a good time and will be making a return when we return.

Suraya Ahmed

Suraya is a the first belly dancer we’ve had on our line-up.  She came on stage and performed her routine using a stick…what’s ironic about this is that she ended up needing the stick as she went over on her ankle as she took to the stage.  No one in the audience would have known this as she continued regardless but by the time she was backstage she was in considerable pain.  I’ve packed painkillers in the box just in case something like this happened but when Suraya came off stage she asked for…tiger bam.  Funnily enough…we didn’t have any.    Cracking act though and something to keep the night different for the regulars.

Cherryfox

Cherryfox is the second pink haired burlesque act we’ve had in as many shows…believe it or not they are both English and they are the only 2 burlesque acts in the world I know of with pink hair so having them back to back is quite something.  Cherryfox  took to the stage to perform a ‘Sing & Fling’ act.  If you don’t know what this is, she sings…and flings her clothes off.  It’s pretty cool and something we’ve been after for a while but hardly anyone does it because it’s pretty difficult.   Anyhow, we had a minor fault with this in that after our sound check was done a DJ monitor was plugged in so this created some feedback during the high notes.  I’ll be honest – I don’t know what that is but we’ve never had problems before with music in there and we’ve tracked down the cause by the end of the show.

So we owe Cherryfox an apology for not getting this right but most of it was fine and it was well received by the audience…also it helps that she’s stunning.

Vendetta Vain

We love her! Vendetta has her own style when it comes to burlesque and has amazing stage presence.  She’s never officially studied drama or anything like that however here’s a wee bit of theatre trivia you can throw into conversation when your posh friends are visiting.  All theatre goers don’t know when to applaud.  What should happen at the end of a performance is that it should be so powerful that the audience sit in appreciation for a while to let it absorb than after 10 seconds or so everyone should start clapping. What actually happens is that as soon as it’s over everyone starts clapping instantaneously.  The only reason I say this is that Vendetta’s performances remind me of theatre performances and at the end of a performance she stands motionless just letting the audience absorb what they’ve just seen.  Which really is nice to see because so many girls run off stage once the performance is over

This month she performed her Russian act for us which came with the weirdest music I think we’ve ever heard.  It’s not really an Enterteasement cheeky teasy fun burlesque act but as Cherryfox was performing a dark number we went for the Russian act as it was a good transition

At the end of the performance the audience erupted with one of our best burlesque reactions of all time.

Great act!  Unbelievable reaction from a World Class Performer.

Thanks for coming back to Scotland Vendetta

Break

Woody

Right It’s my gig and I’m writing about how I did so this is a tough one.  I’ve performed most of the things that I do in my normal act at Enterteasement and as we had a lot of people coming to this show that have seen me over the years I decided to do something none of them had seen me do before.

Apart from being a magician and Enterteasement organiser I also make a few pennies here and there playing poker.  I qualified for a tournament last year with 180 players and I managed to win the tournament and I got a nice trophy and everything.  People often ask me if I cheat and the honest answer is no.  I was only allowed to deal one hand in the tournament I won and as I quite like all my fingers on my hand I think I’ll continue to play by the rules.  However, I do have a few advantages in that I study the key elements of becoming a good poker player and this is a show I am putting together called “I wouldn’t want to play cards with you”.   On Saturday I displayed the ability of reading people’s reactions with my attraction game.  The girl Nina looked through some famous faces and I asked her to memorise and rate who she wanted the most.  I know this sounds like a bit of a weak tie in but the reality is true.  When a beautiful woman walks into the room a man’s heart rate will increase, the pupils will dilate, the speech rate will change and it’s exactly the same when someone looks down at a good hand  The end of my trick was a comedy one where it was a photo of me and it got a good reaction.

Next I performed my Truth or Lie game where I got 5 audience members on stage and asked them all a question.  The holders of the white ball were to tell me a lie and the holder of the black ball was to tell me the truth.   Luckily for me I managed to figure who was telling the truth and who was telling porky pies.

Poker chip

I have 2 favourite magicians.  One from France and one from America.  Both have routines with poker chips and I’m happy to say I’ve combined them both and managed for the first time I put the poker chip on my unsuspecting volunteers shoulder 3 times without him noticing plus I put on it the back of his hand so I’m happy with that.

Next up with the ability to move cards.  And I performed a classic in magic and managed to get 3 cards into a spectator’s hands.  This trick was recently performed on TV and the magician done it via jumping from car to car.  I upped the stakes by doing it with a Glaswegian mad man who decided to come on stage and nearly rip my headset out of my head whilst trying to give me a hug.  But again it went well.

Overall – I’m quite happy with my performance, there was a lot of new stuff in there and I was a tad stressed out but I got through it.

Overall thoughts…I’m delighted to have a month off.  The last 5 shows have been really good fun and the word is spreading about Enterteasement.  It’s known in the comedy & magic world as a really good gig and the burlesque reactions this year have been far better than the last 2 years so we’re heading in the right direction.

If August – December as as good as February to June then I’ll be happy…but I’m aiming to make this even better.  Thanks for reading, remember to like the page www.facebook.com/enterteasement.

Big thanks to

StuWho: http://www.facebook.com/stuwho?

Gavin Webster: http://www.gavinwebster.co.uk/

Viv Gee: http://www.facebook.com/viv.gee
Surya Ahmed: http://www.facebook.com/suraya.ahmed

Vendetta Vain: http://www.facebook.com/VendettaVain

Cherryfox: http://www.facebook.com/TheCherryfox

Woody the magician: http://www.facebook.com/woodythemagician

We’re back in August – December on the Second Saturday of the month.  We’d ask you to pop your name into the newsletter and we’ll let you know when we’re back.