Age on stage
Celebrating age really is at the heart of tonight’s gig, with 4 out of 5 of its comedians aged 50 and over. The inclusivity of the line-up is something that was particularly important to Dani Johns, Age UK Bristol’s Project Coordinator for their Friends Ageing Better (FAB) department. The FAB team manages a range of social activities for over-50s across the city, but it was Dani’s own experiences in comedy that inspired her to organise Laughter Lines.
“I work at Age UK Bristol part-time and then on the weekend I do stand-up comedy, so this is my two passions colliding,” she explains. “I wanted to host Laughter Lines because comedy is for all ages, but I think age representation in comedy is something that a lot of organisers forget about.
“A comedy promoter might book a line-up with an equal gender split, without realising that everyone is actually under the age of 27. They think they’re being diverse, but they’re not. And you really do meet people from all walks of life at a comedy club, so it’s important to have that reflected on stage.”
As the gig gets underway, the diversity of the line-up’s life experiences is soon highlighted: librarian and comedian Mark Hurman brings literary gags, while the audience laughs at material about Liverpool from the city’s own Ian Murphy. Jo Frank, meanwhile, muses on the allure of mobility scooters, before Jack Campbell manages to mine laughs from his time working at a coronavirus testing centre.
Louise Leigh is at the helm of it all, as the compère for the evening. “The majority of comedians on the scene are young, white, straight, middle-class men,” she tells us. “But if we only have those perspectives it can only be bad for the art form. Stand-up comedy is about saying stuff that only you can say. Nobody else has your magical way of looking at things.”
