Preview: Bristol Comedy Garden 2018

Bristol Comedy Garden returns in June for its seventh instalment, with its winning formula unchanged: five nights of top comics performing in a big top in Queen Square, with bars and live music providing the backdrop.

This year’s lineup includes the brilliant Shappi Khorsandi, Josh Widdicombe and Reginald D Hunter, plus Mark Watson, James Acaster, Bristol’s own Jayde Adams, everyone’s favourite Teutonic export Henning Wehn and many more. As ever, there will be bars and gourmet street-food stalls aplenty, giving the Garden that proper summer festival vibe.

Cass Briggs co-produces the Garden with her brother Will. Who’s she particularly excited to welcome this year? “Lolly Adefope, from TV’s Taskmaster, will be joining us for the first time. She’s been having an amazing year so far and so will be more than match-fit by the time she joins us in Queen Square. I’m really looking forward to seeing her take on the Big Top crowd.

Lolly Adefope. Pic: Tom Jamieson for HUCK

“Our headliners are all guaranteed winners: with them I know I can just sit back and be royally entertained. So it’s our middling acts like Yoriko Kotani, Jen Brister and John Kearns that I like to see the most. These acts are all on an upward trajectory, and the energy they put into their writing and performances is palpable.

John Kearns

“A perfect example of this was Tom Allen’s set with us last year. He absolutely stormed it – it was a very special moment, and we’re expecting big things from him again this time round. And I’m thrilled to have this year’s Comedy Garden rounded off by the always-outstanding Henning Wehn, Germany’s self-appointed Comedy Ambassador to Britain who’ll no doubt provide a welcome distraction to our relationship with Europe.”

Tom Allen

Any changes to the format this year? “We’re very much in a ‘if it ain’t broke…’ frame of mind with the Comedy Garden: we’re seven years strong and seem to have found the winning formula. Of course there’s some fine-tuning each year so that everyone can have the best time possible: but ultimately, we seem to have proven ourselves to our audiences from Bristol and beyond and tickets are flying out. People either come along because they love a particular act on the bill, or because they trust that every act we book will give them a really good time. Either way, sales so far show that the good people of Bristol are definitely up for a laugh.”

And how does the process of assembling the programme work? Does Cass draw up a wishlist of comics and contact them? Or is the Comedy Garden now so widely esteemed that comics are queuing round the block? “Ha ha! Of course it’s the latter. Actually, although acts love coming back and word has certainly spread, we still have to go through the sometimes agonising process of seeing who’s available across our dates.

“We start with a (usually fantastical!) wish-list that gets twisted and tweaked into our final programme. It can be tricky striking the balance between acts that we love, those that will appeal to our audiences and who’s available, and there certainly isn’t an infinite list of names. We focus on structuring the lineup in such a way that our audiences will always witness something new and fresh and – of course – very, very funny. ”

Bristol Comedy Garden takes place from June 6-10 in Queen Square. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristolcomedygarden.co.uk

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