The comedy festival returns to Chapelfield Gardens for four nights of stand-up featuring big names, old favourites and upcoming stars. Prepare to split your sides.
Norwich next week welcomes the return of one of the biggest comedy festivals this summer.
Laugh in the Park, organised by Red Card Comedy Club, takes over Chapelfield Gardens next Thursday and runs for four nights.
An offshoot of the monthly Red Card Comedy Club held at Carrow Road, the festival has become an annual fixture in the city social calendar — apart from 2012 when organisers Derek Robertson and Andrew Bunn decided not to go head to head with the Olympics.
This year it again promises to be a proper comedy event, featuring a host of top stand-up talent and big names all on stage in a marquee.
'We have put a lot of effort into the programming and have tried to put something in for everyone – a bit of established, a bit of up-and-coming and a bit of the unusual,' said Derek. 'Four shows across four evenings, each with four acts – a host and three of the best and funniest comics in the land – will be entertaining in our lovely performance marquee.'
Outspoken and alarmingly honest Tiff Stevenson coming to Norwich's Laugh in the ParkThe festival starts on July 27 with a night headlined by Hal Cruttenden, a familiar face from Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week, as well having presented two series of his BBC Radio 4 sitcom Hal. He will be joined by Irish hip-hop comedy duo Abandoman, who will create musical songs and sketches at lightening speed based on audience interaction, Tiff Stevenson, while MC for the night is larger than life character David Morgan.
Topping the bill on July 28 is multi-award-winning comic as well as bestselling writer Mark Watson, a TV panel show regular and star of his own cult Radio 4 series Mark Watson Makes The World Substantially Better and Mark Watson Talks A Bit About Life. He is joined by provocative but self-depreciating stand-up Ian Stone and riotously funny musical duo Jonny & The Baptists. High-octane observational Aussie comic Damian Clark will be MC for the night.
Expect the unexpected as Noise Next Door head for Norwich's Laugh in the ParkA favourite from the regular Red Card nights Terry Alderton tops the bill on July 29, mixing nonsense, mayhem and his trademark incredible loose-limbed physicality, alongside Ninia Benjamin, one third of BBC's award-winning hidden-camera comedy show 3 Non-Blondes, and Canadian comic Sean Collins. Red Card original host and a popular gag-smith John Mann will be attempting to keep order.
The Sunday night finale on July 30 is already a sell-out and boasts a headline slot from Russell Kane, madcap comedy improv troupe The Noise Next Door and East End geezer with regulation shaved head and no-nonsense Cockney comic Jeff Innocent. Norfolk adventurer and comedian Tim Fitzhigham, a man who can claim to have paddled a paper boat down 160 miles of the River Thames and rowed a bathtub across the English Channel, will be introducing things.
• Laugh in the Park takes place at Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich, from July 27-30, £22 adv/£25 door, 01603 508050, www.redcardcomedyclub.com
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