Come the the House of Comedy for late night laughter with …

Elle Bert

Elle’s comedy career started in August 2016 at an open mic night in Southampton when after a few too many gin and tonics she wrote her name down “as a joke”. The joke paid off as the audience liked the cut of her gib and the venue even asked her to return the following week as comedy had always been seen as the “dark horse” of the open mic circuit.

Since August 2016 Elle had performed and compered all over the country to audiences as small as 2 and as big as 600. She’s been on the same bill as some comedy greats and even ran her own monthly comedy night at The Stable in Winchester. She’s picked up awards, won gong shows and even gained a world record along the way.

Winner Solent Comedy Gong Show - 2017, Winner Fifty 50 Entertainment Gong Show - 2017, Funny women - One to watch - 2017, Guinness World Record - Longest Running Stand Up - 2018, Winner Blackout at Up The Creek - 2018, Bath New act Finalist - 2018, Bath New act Finalist - 2019

Darcie Silver

Finalist of LGBTQ Comedian of the Year and winner of the G&B Girl-Power Grant Darcie is one funny woman.

With one liners & short jokes covering being trans and just about everything else imaginable she’s been described as one of the most exciting new comedians on the circuit. Her material is occasionally so dark you can’t quite believe she’s saying it. She doesn’t disappoint.

“Very Funny Stuff” - Russell Kane

“Transgender icon in the making” - Tony Slattery

“Very Talented Joke Writer” - Garry Delaney

Phil Kay

Phil Kay burst on to the comedy circuit in 1989, when he won the new act contest So You Think You're Funny in only its second year.

His unpredictable, freestyle approach won him a Perrier nomination in 1993 and the award for best stand-up at the 1994 British Comedy Awards, and he was given his own Channel 4 show, Phil Kay Feels..., in 1997, which was recorded in front of a live audience to try to capture his manic energy. Phil has been seen all over the TV with Russell Howard’s good news being one of these!!

El Baldiniho

El Baldiniho is a magician and prop comedian performing on TV, in comedy clubs , at festivals and at corporate events across the UK and beyond and recently seen on Britain’s Got Talent, where he got 4 yeses! With over 300K YouTube views and a growing social media profile , El Baldiniho is one to watch.

Alex Martini

Alex Martini is a London-based Italian-born stand-up comedian and like all Italians, he's crazy, loud & proud. He's knowledgeable about food & drinks and all the other things the Brits aren't good at! Expect loud volume and unpopular opinions!

and The Winner of the Open Mic

Cult With No Name (often abbreviated to CWNN) is a musical duo from London, UK, formed in 2004, comprising Erik Stein and Jon Boux. Influenced largely by electronic music, post-punk and modern classical music, they refer to themselves 'post-punk electronic balladeers'.

CWNN's music has been described as difficult to categorise. However, they have been compared to Roxy Music, Tuxedomoon, the Pet Shop Boys, Colin Newman, Nits, David Sylvian, and Scott Walker, amongst others.

Hardeep Singh Kohli is a writer, presenter, comedian and broadcaster known for his love of food and hilarious anecdotes. He’s a regular figure on British television, appearing frequently on The One Show and recently presenting a cooking series with Masterchef’s John Torode. His book, Indian Takeaway: One Man’s Attempt to Cook His Way Home (2008) is a funny, conversational adventure depicting contemporary India and a celebration of his multiple cultural identities.

Born in Glasgow in 1969, Hardeep lived with his Sikh family in the UK as his parents emigrated there from India in the 1960s. Indian Takeaway destroys the feeling of ‘otherness’ born from his experiences as a Scot. He says, “I would be asked time and again where home was and they would laugh when I suggested Glasgow. Implicit in all of their interrogations was the accusation that I did not belong, that I was other, that my home was not here. To them I could never be Scottish.”

Hardeep wrote, directed and starred in Channel 4’s Meet the Magoons (2004), which was nominated for a Golden Rose at the Montreux Comedy Festival, and wrote, produced and presented In Search of the Tartan Turban (Channel 4) – which explored his cultural identity as a British-Scottish Asian and won a children’s BAFTA, spinning off into the Channel 4 series, Hardeep Does…

His television career continued successfully with £50 Says You’ll Watch This, Get 100 (CBBC), Loose Ends, appearances on Question Time, Newsnight Review, a celebrity version of The Apprentice, Celebrity Masterchef and Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4. He currently writes a column entitled ‘Hardeep is your love’ for Scotland on Sunday and occasionally writes for The Guardian and The Independent.

One of the UK’s foremost poets, regularly anthologised and headlining festivals nationally and internationally. A BBC regular, Salena Godden has written and presented several arts and music programmes – a film of her poem Titanic was aired as part of BBC poetry programme We Belong Here. A short-fiction Blue Cornflowers was shortlisted for the Guardian Short Story Prize 2016. Her essay Shade was published in 2016’s literary sensation The Good Immigrant, which won the Reader’s Choice Book Of The Year Award. A new piece Skin was commissioned for The Essay and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in February 2017. Her live album LIVEwire showcases a broad range of her work and has attracted rave reviews since launching with indie poetry label Nymphs and Thugs. The LIVEwire limited edition vinyl launches with the N&T ‘Summer of LOVEwire’ UK tour in spring 2017.

The unique combination of John Dipper’s 14-string viola d’amore, Dave Malkin’s finely honed guitar and remarkable vocals, and award winning storyteller Nick Hennessy’s passion for reinventing tradition visits the places where the sophistication of Purcell meets the soul of English folk. breathing new life into our much overlooked cultural inheritance.

Distinctively English, albeit with an exotic twist ... that little bit different from anything else out there.’ - Living Tradition Magazine

"John Dipper's duets with the guitarist Dave Malkin are perfectly judged, the latter's occasional unassuming vocals adding just the right measure of grit. Exquisite..." - The Sunday Times
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"The combination of the viola’s rich, sonorous tones, and Dave Malkin’s guitar and voice is a winner. On ‘King Storm’, the pair hit on an unusual ambient soundscape, starting simply with Malkin’s dark vocals set against sparse viola harmonics, before a glorious duet ensues." - Acoustic Magazine

Nick Hennessey:

'Compelling' - The Times
‘Spellbinding’ - Southbank Centre, London
‘Captivating, powerful, perfect’ - The Oxford Culture Review

A sketch comedy show for and about the weird and wonderful people of Forest Row and the surrounding areas. Biting sketches and sensational musical numbers

Max Porter’s first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers won the Sunday Times, Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers’ Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. It has been sold in twenty-nine territories. Complicité and Wayward’s production of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers directed by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy opened in Dublin in March 2018.

Discussion with Kirsty Lang, Peter York, Peter Jukes and Patrick Howse

Peter York is an author / journalist / broadcaster and a management consultant – a Capitalist Tool.  Under both hats the subject of social groupings and market segments is his major preoccupation.  His earliest and best-known description of a social group came in his best selling book ‘The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook’, which he co-authored with Ann Barr.  Since then he has charted the fortunes of many elite groupings, from designers (‘chic-graphique’) to Television Types.  He believes that while sociologists and market researchers are forever studying The Rest Of Us, the people at the top have escaped scrutiny for too long.  

Peter started writing as Style Editor at Harpers & Queen and over the last 30 years he has produced a flood of broadsheet articles and 11 books.  He has also contributed to television programmes from ‘The Tube’ to ‘Newsnight’ and made some of his own, including two series, one on style and one on The 80s and a number of single ‘authored’ documentaries, including ‘The Rise and Fall of The Adman’, all for BBC2.

Patrick Howse worked for the BBC for 25 years.
The bulk of his career was spent as a news gathering producer covering wars, riots and other events around the world, which involved being shot at, tear-gassed, pelted with stones, bricks and bottles, punched, kicked and spat at. He also had a narrow escape from a rocket that came through the ceiling of his office in Baghdad, where he was bureau chief between 2004 and 2009 at the height of the violence that followed the US-led invasion.
After leaving the Corporation in 2015 he trained conflict journalists from international news organisations, and now earns a living as a freelance writer, editor and poet. His first collection of poems, Shadow Cast By Mountains was published by Hayloft Books in 2017, and the second, The Road Taken, will appear later this year.
He’s been a vocal critic of the BBC’s coverage of Brexit, in particular what he feels is their misplaced obsession with ‘Balance’.

Kirsty Lang is a highly experienced interviewer, presenter and moderator

With 30-years in journalism, both as a foreign correspondent and a TV news anchor for BBC World and Channel 4 News. She has written for The Financial Times, The Mail on Sunday, The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Radio Times. Kirsty has been a visiting professor at the University of Columbia, New York in the School of International and Public Affairs. Next year she will be teaching a course in public diplomacy and soft power at UCL, University of London.

Gavin Esler is a Scottish journalist, television presenter and author. He was a main presenter on BBC Two's flagship political analysis programme, Newsnight, from January 2002 until January 2014, and presenter of BBC News at Five on the BBC News Channel.

In conversation with Stephen Colegrave

David Hencke - Chair
Joanne Welch - the organiser of BackTo60
Jackie Jones - Labour MEP for Wales
Dr Davina Lloyd - from Back to 60, who its providing diplomatic advice to UN in Geneva

Yvette Greenway - is Joint CEO and co-founder of SOS Silence of Suicide, the mental wellbeing Charity who have supported Back to 60 members for 3 years. Yvette is also an active campaigner, assisting the Back to 60 movement, the vaginal mesh and sodium valproate scandals and other, less prominent, but equally important, cries for justice and accountability.

Otto English

Hardeep Matharu

Tina Gharavi

Mike Stuchbery

Peter Jukes

CHAIRED BY Stephen Colegrave