Former Ealing Schoolboy At Comedy Festival

Viv Ellis enjoys a night out in the big top at Walpole Park

© Tony Briggs

The 2017 Comedy Festival opened last weekend in Walpole Park.  Well by the time you read this, we’ve had the Blues  festival and about to have Jazz ….

Going since 1994, the comedy festival is a popular Ealing summer attraction – along with the beer,and music. Tickets go like the provervbial hot cakes (which were on sale outside) Over the years the 1200 people in the big top have been entertained by some of the biggest names in the comedy world. 

Opening night was superbly MCd by Paul Thorne who wasted no time in lunching into some savage – but very funny – banter with the audience.  The boredom of the Central Line journey once you reach “The Actons” – but how it’s all worth it at the end of the journey when you reach the rarefied and sophisticated area of Ealing proper – made all the more classy and cultured thanks to Ealing property prices.

Jo Caulfield –  is a regular here and was superb as ever. The brunt of a lot of her jokes is aimed at her – and her friends’ husbands. Though she had a lot to say about how some of her female friends cope with suddenly being cast adrift into Singledom and how she likes to help.

She guides one friend  through the “5 Dees” that hit when a relationship splits ”Denial, Depresision, Distraction Drinking and  …..Dogging”

And onto Julian Clary. I Think I am probably the last person in Ealing to know he went to St Benedicts School. That got a mention last night albeit not with a great deal of affection – as it was the first time, he says, he came to know the word “Mincing”.

He looks a lot more “grown grown up” now than those early ‘80s appearances in bondage gear and leather (well, he IS a children’s author) but he is just as rude and just as cheeky and the 1200 in the big top loved him.

He joked about a sparkly, fake MBE he was sporting - as his ‘Mincer ‘of the British Empire, about his being “Lord of the Mince” etc. He now boasts that his 30 years in showbiz –qualify him as a Counselor to other showbiz personalities like Jeremy Clarkson – who he’d like to replace on “Top Queer”  Well I bet he wouldn’t wallop any staff.

Viv Ellis

25th July 2017