Around the Horn - The Horn April 2008
Fiona Macleod
Events Manager
The atmosphere was buzzing: people rushing to grab the best seats and buy drinks; staff selling raffle tickets; comedians preparing themselves backstage and a lone rhino wandering through the crowd!
Save the Rhino held its first ever comedy night on Monday 21 January and it was a huge success, sparking rumours that it will be back soon.
It took place at the renowned Comedy Store in Piccadilly Circus, London, and the demand for tickets was incredible. The event sold out but the phone didn’t stop ringing, with people trying to get tickets for the hottest night of the week. The doors didn’t open until 6.30pm but the queue for the few returned tickets (in the rain) started at 4pm.
When the 400-strong audience was seated the show was opened by the hugely talented Adam Buxton doing his “famous guy” routine, which the audience lapped up. He was followed by Vicky Frango with her hilarious impressions of slimy Greek waiters and public school clubs; Dan Clark, who kept the audience laughing with a section about Facebook and text messaging that many of us could relate to. Why do we always send kisses at the ends of texts when you wouldn’t actually kiss the person in real life? The first half was rounded off with Paul Kerensa, whose comparison of the Churchill Insurance dog with the real Churchill was just hilarious.
Jack Whitehall, the very talented newcomer, opened the second half to a great response. The audience loved his style and he was also a huge help to Save the Rhino with his organisation of the night. Then the extremely funny Tom Basden bought along his guitar and sung about everything from reincarnation, to Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Richard Madeley.
The evening closed with the hugely popular Noel Fielding (from The Mighty Boosh). Noel hadn’t done stand up for a while and admitted to being slightly nervous when he first appeared on stage, but he soon got into the swing of things. He had the audience in stitches singing about bluebottles and recalling the time he chased a unicorn to the end of the earth only to discover it was a horse with an ice-cream cone on its nose! He also loved the rhino sitting on stage and made many references to it including how it reminded him of when he and his friends used to stick rose thorns on their noses and charge at each other like rhinos. And as Alison, one of our dedicated supporters (see page 17) said, “It was really good and we had a wonderful time. The icing on the cake was the final act – who obviously went on much longer than anticipated.”
The evening was held together by Geordie regular at The Comedy Store, John Fothergill (aka John “For the Girls”) who kept the audience laughing in between the rest of the comedians and helped out with our raffle, raising a bit extra for the rhinos. Thanks so much to The Zetter for donating a meal for two at their restaurant in Clerkenwell as star prize.
Overall the evening was a great success. We raised a lot of money (over £5,000) for Save the Rhino and everyone had a fantastic evening. So a huge thank you to all the comedians who took part and made it a night to remember, and thank you to all of our supporters for attending. See you there next year…
Reviews from the comedy night can be read by following the links below:
Evening Standard
the london paper