Our beautiful coastal town, is an incredibly diverse place to live, embracing people from all walks of life together with different cultures and religions. It also hosts a wide range of music, theatre and festivals, from Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday to Jack in the Green and May Day and the Bonfire parade, celebrating Hastings Day, where the evening is lit by torches of fire and the sky with fireworks.
Amongst these, this year saw the 10th anniversary of The Hastings Comedy Festival and was to be our first taste of what it has to offer. We were a bit late to the party, so many comedians and so many venues, but with other things planned that week, we only managed to book tickets for the first evening.
The venue, The Printworks, is tucked away in the corner at the end of a small quiet street and was originally home to the Hastings and St Leonard’s Observer newspaper. We have only visited once before, when it was a very 60’s psychedelic evening, crammed to the rafters, with the dj pumping out music from the stage.
This evenings visit was a little more sedate, the bar at the back serving cold drinks, overlooked the neatly positioned rows of seats, standing by for an evening of laughter. We chose our position and the room slowly filled around us, excited voices chattering in anticipation of what was to come.
We had tickets for two acts, both at the same venue, so the furthest we would need to venture would be to and from the bar 🍻
The first, a female act unfortunately had to pull out days before she was due to perform. However the organisers quickly found a replacement and transferred our tickets to him. His act was a work in progress, as he had been preparing for the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Sadly most of his script was in paper form and he still had quite a bit of work to do to before heading for Edinburgh! Some of his jokes and tales, were incredibly funny, but for many he lost the thread, or the place on his sheets of paper and for a while also lost the crowd. Towards the end of his set, he abandoned the paper and reverted to old, trusted stories, and regained the crowds attention 😂👍
Im sure once he’s polished his set, he will hold the crowd throughout his show.
Fortunately for us, with the second act in the same venue, we didn’t need to vacate and apart from a visit to the bar, we were able to stay in our seats. Smug with our central view and pints in hand, we relaxed as some of the crowd departed and newcomers arrived, jostling for the best of the remaining chairs.
We had seen the next act once before and his hilarious outlook on life, ensnared us from the moment he stepped on stage, so we were anticipating much laughter for the rest of the evening.
Tom Houghton, the son of a high ranking, highly decorated, very talented army officer, makes light of his very privileged upbringing and his tales of weird and wonderful adventures become totally relatable in our ordinary world.
Today we were taken on his journey (true or imaginary) to “find himself” after an exhausting tour. We went back packing, through hostels and scuba diving. Along the way we enjoyed a whirlwind tour of all his escapades and interactions with new found friends. We laughed until we cried at his “upper class” antics.
As he “found himself” and returned to Blighty he transported us back in time, to when his family found themselves living within the walls of the Tower of London. As a teenage lad, home alone and distracted whilst running a bath, he managed to flood the apartment. We could all relate to the situation, BUT flooding even a small part of such a historical building 😲 the gasp reverberating around the audience quickly converted to intense laughter.
He cleverly steered us back to the present and his Asian adventure. Somehow as his time with us drew to a close, we had gone full circle, back to where we began, but now with aching jaws and lifted hearts.
Tom is a fabulous comedian and a great entertainer. Worth grabbing a ticket to his upcoming tour.
We had a fabulous time at our first Hastings Comedy Festival, and as we parted company decided to be more organised next year and look to see more of the acts on offer.
At the end of the month we are heading to our first Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where we anticipate a lot of the venues to be as intimate as the Printworks.
😂 Exciting, fun times 😂