Performers
The House of Fun features some of the best live acts performing today. They have included:
JENNY ECLAIR, one of Britain’s best-loved comedians, as well as an accomplished novelist and actor, is well known for appearing in the tv programmes Grumpy Old Women and Loose Women. The first female solo winner of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s Perrier Comedy Award in 1995, Jenny has appeared in many tv and radio shows including I’m a Celebrity…, Packet of Three with Frank Skinner, Room 101 and Al Murray’s Multiple Personality Disorder. On stage she has co-written and appeared in Grumpy Old Women Live and other West End credits include The Vagina Monologues and Steaming.
HAL CRUTTENDEN, one of the top comedians working in the UK today, as well as a highly accomplished writer and actor. His many tv appearances include The Royal Variety Performance, Live at the Apollo, Would I Lie To You, Sunday Night at the Palladium, Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, John Bishop’s Only Joking and The Rob Brydon Show. As well as his highly successful UK stand-up tours, he’s performed in more than 20 countries, from Canada to Kuwait, and Bahrain to Bali.
Acoustic duo DENNIS GREAVES AND MARK FELTHAM, founding members of NINE BELOW ZERO, go back to their blues roots, performing ‘old style’ blues songs by blues legends such as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo and Leadbelly. They also play unplugged versions of well known Nine Below Zero material.
Comic country singer and global activist TINA C, the creation of Christopher Green, a multi-award winning performer and writer who has performed all over the world. Tina has also performed worldwide, basked in her own tv show and enjoyed five series on BBC Radio;
Fantastic stand-up MARK DOLAN, host of Channel 4’s iconic Balls of Steel, The Mad, Bad Ad Show, presenter of anarchic comedy programme Show Me The Funny, and much, much more
ADAM HESS, one of the most exciting new acts in the country, winning numerous awards including Chortle Best Newcomer. He’s written for Russell Howard, Seann Walsh and the BBC’s Feed My Funny. With a large Twitter following, in 2013 one of his tweets was voted funniest of the year by The Daily Telegraph.
IDA BARR is the creation of Christopher Green, a multi-award winning performer and writer who has performed all over the world. Ida is a music hall singer who has embraced hip hop and rap, reflecting the culturally diverse landscape of the London’s East End, where she has been living in retirement for several decades. The original hip hop gangsta grandma, she embraced a style of music called Artificial Hip Hop, released an album, Slipped Disco, and scored a hit with the grime cross-over Get Old (Or Die Tryin’).
WILDERTHORN has toured the UK with platinum-selling indie rockers Athlete and alongside the likes of St Vincent, Guilemots, Beth Rowley and Iain Archer. His haunting, emotive songs effortlessly enchant.
DAVID WHITNEY was winner of the 2007 Hackney Empire new act of the year and BAFTA winner for Fonejacker. The Spectator dubs David as ‘the silver-tongued warrior’, while Will Self says ‘very funny – I’m going to keep my eye on you’. And Reginald D. Hunter says: “I call Whitney ‘The Wit’. You can’t stop him; you can only hope to contain him.” David is also an accomplished actor and has appeared in a number of films.
SLAPPER are a most memorable experience that ents24.com website recently described as being ‘Serge Gainsbourg meets Captain Beefheart via Lieutenant Pigeon; an unashamed display of disturbing cacophony and special costumerie. A vicar, a stripper, a drinks trolley, what more could you want? It’s a bloody circus. Kind of punk-rock Tiger Lilies, burlesque cabaret.’ Rather says it all really – or perhaps not.
Surreal, irreverent, and downright amazing, ‘rock & roll magician’ (as the NME puts it) PETE HEAT will read your mind, steal your watch and make you belly laugh. Pete is no ordinary magician or comedian, and never presents an ordinary show. Instead of card tricks and dad-jokes you might witness an invisible pizza, a time-travelling Coke can or a psychic weasel. In 2012 Pete took his debut solo show ‘The Magical Adventures of Pete Heat’ to the Edinburgh Fringe to critical acclaim, garnering praise from Rich Fulcher of the Mighty Boosh and radio presenter Iain Lee amongst others – and he hasn’t looked back. Pete oftens performs at private events – anything from Wayne Rooney’s birthday party and the Microsoft launch of Windows 8, to a house party for Elle Macpherson.
Gypsy punk lunatics with a taste for the macabre, BUFFO’S WAKE are a twelve-legged beast hatched in the murky backwater of Brighton, UK. Armed with accordions, violins and a bucket full of gusto, they waltz, tango, mosh and breakdance their way through a wide range of eastern European punk rock cabaret.Festival veterans, they have regularly appeared at some of the UK’s biggest festivals, including Glastonbury, Bestival, Secret Garden Party and Boomtown, as well as live performances on the BBC.
LUCY CAIT is helping inject UK indie with amuch-needed shot of adrenalin. Her sound is as influenced by turn-of-the-century pop music as it is by modern feminist alt-rock icons like Jenny Lewis and tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus, and throws soaring guitars over Lucy’s dry British vocals. It’s the sound of music past and music yet to come. Above all else, though, it’s the sound of Young Britain. Rich, vibrant and rising above the crumbling legacy that came before.
Musical Comedy Awards finalist LAURENCE OWEN has a musical style that is unusually
dramatic and far-reaching and packed with spiky observations. “Genius – a glorious shot of pure dark satire” says Broadway Baby.
Currently developing tv shows and taking the Edinburgh Festival by storm – James Corden dubs them “Two of the freshest and most energetic performers in Edinburgh this year” – SHIRLEY & SHIRLEY are Joanna Carolan and Pascale Wilson, who filter our world through fabulously twisted minds and deliver a ‘mash-up’ of character, physical and sketch comedy. Be prepared for inspired comic observation, top class creations, and wonderfully dark ideas.
Fast-paced Mancunian poet, THICK RICHARD has been furiously grinding his axe of jet black humour and breakneck poetry to the delight of varied underground audiences up and down the land since 2000. With performances on Radio 4’s Bespoken Word alongside the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, Scroobius Pip and Murray Lachlan Young under his belt, and recent slots supporting Kate Tempest and in 2015 embarking upon his own headline tour of the south, his cynical lyrical wordplay and acerbic comic attacks have earned him much respect from artists and audiences from Edinburgh to Glastonbury. “Stu-fu*king-pendious” says John Cooper Clarke.
FELICITY DUNCAN portrays cleaner Eva, an excerpt from the stage show Gertrude’s Secret. Felicity recently played Liza Minelli to critical acclaim in the play Liza Liza Liza and has previously toured the world with the musical Mamma Mia!. Other theatre credits include Gertrude’s Secret (national tours), An Evening with Gary Lineker (Mill at Sonning), Round the Horne…Revisited (national tour), Romeo and Juliet (Vienna’s English Theatre), The Wind In the Willows (Bristol Old Vic). Television includes Holby City (BBC) and The Bill (Carlton). With writing partner Jon Osbaldeston, Felicity has also created two series of children’s stories entitled The Adventures of PG Woodlouse, broadcast on BBC7’s Little Toe Show.
SCOTT PENROSE is currently President of the Magic Circle, and in the magic world it doesn’t get much more prestigious than that… The award-winning magician has performed all over the world and has also devised stunning illusions for major corporations including GlaxoSmithKline and the Ford Motor Company. Creative/magic consultant for Cirque du Soleil, the world’s largest live entertainment company. he was also magic consultant for Woody Allen movie Scoop, screenplay consultant to the movie Houdini, magic consultant to the film The Illusionist, and the BBCs Comic Relief and Jonathan Creek and numerous other tv programmes and films.
DANNY AND THE MOONLIGHTERS are a young band, at the last count with 12 members of the group, although that may have increased by now. Expect irresistible upbeat, impossibly catchy tunes in a 50s high-school-prom rock’n’roll style.
MISS TESS TICKLE AND THE DRAGETTES have been performing to sell out audiences for some years now, impersonating a variety of different musical and Hollywood divas, marrying them together with comedy and capturing them in the very best costumes and feathers. Miss Tess Tickle is an award-winning drag queen with an equally award-winning cabaret show performing in venues all across the UK and abroad. Dubbed as the ‘North East’s premier showgirl’, shows feature Vegas-style feathers and sparkling costumes.
Magic Circle member and and associate member of The Inner Magic Circle JOHN DANBURY has performed across the world, from Torquay to Tokyo and from Middlesbrough to Miami. He has performed at countless venues and audiences, including Prince William and Prince Harry at the Diana memorial concert and subsequently for Prince Charles at a private function at his home, and on the Orient Express. Having started life as a musical theatre actor the crooning conjuror is known to break out into song at any given moment.
Stand-up comedian and writer, JO SANDELSON sometimes casts herself as Jeff the Cartoonist in a stage act that also makes use of her quick-on-the draw talent. She had a daily topical strip cartoon on The Times and is now an acclaimed illustrator and painter as well as a multi-award-nominated blogger.