Bringing the best stand-ups to Midhurst
Epic Comedy is promising to bring the very best of standup comedy to Midhurst this year.
After a successful debut in February, they are back for April and are booked through until Christmas.
The man behind it all is
Paul Cox, comedian and host of Epic Comedy: “After a tremendous opening night we will be back in April with our hilarious headliner Hal Cruttenden, Star of Have
I Got News for You, Live at the Apollo and the Royal Variety Performance. Hal’s recent tour has received rave reviews. Hal will be supported by Will Mars (Show Time at the Apollo and Stand Up for Comic Relief ) and Ada Campe.”
Tickets are £12 available at www.epiccomedy.co.uk. The show will be in the theatre at Midhurst Rother College on Saturday, April 23. The door opens at 7pm.
“Epic Comedy is a stand-up comedy club that I have set up. First and foremost I am a comedian. I’m based in the area and I’ve been looking for a couple of years to identify an area that doesn’t have this kind of entertainment. Portsmouth, Waterlooville, Havant, places like that are all extremely well catered for. So I was looking and I am a bit of a walker and I was walking through Midhurst and I thought this could work. I started researching and started talking to local people and it turned out that Midhurst didn’t have anything like that so I wanted to set up something in late 2019 actually. But obviously that didn’t work because of the pandemic. So I then started this up in October 2021, just starting work on the promotion, and then we had our first show in February 2022.
“This is stand-up comedy. This is the cream of the crop of the UK comedy circuit, people that have been on
Live at The Apollo and that have been on the comedy panel shows – and I am bringing them to Midhurst. It is the short sort of show that you would usually have to go to Portsmouth or Brighton or London to see but I’m bringing it to the villages where it is not usually available. I knew from the start that it had to be very much a community project. You’ve got to engage with the local people and make them realise that it’s something for them; that it’s not just something that you’re bringing in cold and saying ‘Here it is.’ I spoke to people about what they would like and I asked people what they really really enjoyed and it worked really well.
“For some people February 2022 was the first time that they had gone out since March 2020 and they absolutely loved it. They just enjoyed it. It was a cheap evening out and for people that love to be entertained and to escape from this world it was just great. I am a comedian myself and I have gigs with a lot of the people around the UK. I asked them whether they would like to come to this and everyone said yes, assuming they are available.”
Paul is delighted to move out of all the lockdowns:
“Like a lot of creative people I just went online and created videos. I did something called Funny Walks which was just me walking around and doing like a stream of consciousness, just talking. It was a way of doing stand-up and performing new material without having an audience but just creating an audience through social media. It didn’t go viral but it was a lot of fun for me and for the people that listened. It was just a way of being able to create a bit of normality.”