Last night, at the Frog Christmas party at Jongleurs, I ate three sprouts.
In fact, it may have been four sprouts.
I ate three of my own accord and for some reason, Andy decided it would be a good idea to pick up one of the remaining ones from the serving dish and made me eat it. The things you do when you’re slightly tipsy :-/
It was a fairly good night, although the company was far better than what was up on stage for the most part. The warm up act/master of ceremonies – Roger Monkhouse (no relation to Bob I’m told) was fairly pants. He didn’t really capture the attention of the crowd, his jokes were pretty piss poor – most of the stuff he did involved heckling members of the audience.
The first proper act, Daliso Chaponda was absolutely fantastic. I’d pay to see him again. Delivery was great and he got the whole crowd going. I believe he could probably carry a whole show on his own.
Pierre Hollins was up next complete with guitar, again he was very good, had a couple of songs that were impressive and again the delivery was spot on. Putting the fun back into fundamentalist – awesome.
Roger Monkhouse did bits and pieces in between and he did improve a little bit towards the latter part of the show. There was a 15 minute interval before the headliner.
Headliner my arse.
Tom Stade introduced himself as an American having lived in the UK for about 7 years. Spent about 10 minutes talking about Brits going crazy when a guy sells meat out of the back of a meat van, some more time talking about chavs in Wolverhampton. A little more time about being married and something about Argos – I’d stopped listening by this point.
When I’ve been to see comedians before they generally do a little reading up on the local area, they’ll take the piss out of some of the worse-off areas or areas with a reputation. Talking about Wolverhampton to a crowd in Leeds who were all from Bradford/Halifax/Huddersfield way was a little lost on them to be honest. Completely disconnected from the crowd.
Looking around the room, there were a lot of people that were just sat looking at him with an expression of “wha?” – he got a few laughs from the merrier parts of the crowd (the booze was flowing freely by this point)
They should have had Daliso or Pierre on for longer – they were certainly much, much funnier. It might have also been an idea to get Aisling up on stage, her heckling was much funnier than the comedian (the staff at Jongleurs didn’t think so – they had a word).
I’d probably go back to Jongleurs, to see Daliso or Pierre perform, perhaps some others too. I’ve always liked stand up comedy – but it’s got to be funny for it to work…. 
The meal was quite nice. There was a choice of either melon balls or paté for starter, turkey or nut something or other for main and christmas pudding or cheesecake for dessert.
Not liking either Paté or melon left me with a predicament for the starter – I decided to go with the melon balls which weren’t bad actually, I’ve figured out that I dislike certain colours of melon more than others. I had the Turkey (of course) for main and the cheesecake for dessert. Rather nice.
The only really annoying thing about the night was that the music in between the acts was played at stupid volumes – it’s the same thing I’ve said before regarding Family parties and such – a conversation I had again with Adam and Andy as we walked back to Leeds station last night. What made things even worse last night was the music didn’t have a point – as background music it was fine, but as anything else – there was no point, tables took up the entire floor space so there was no room to dance and you couldn’t talk to anyone because they couldn’t hear you.
ATTENTION DJ’S
WHEN AT A PARTY, PEOPLE GENERALLY WANT TO TALK TO EACH OTHER – PLEASE SHOW A LITTLE COMMON SENSE AND KEEP THE VOLUME DOWN UNTIL WE’VE FINISHED EATING AND START DANCING.
Thankyou.
/rant
We came home not long after the comedy (hardy ha) had finished. If I’d not been relying on Sue for a lift home I might have stayed out longer. Felt like I missed out on a lot of the company party – the real thing started once the comedy had ended I guess. I didn’t get to say bye to a lot of people which was also annoying. It was so rammed in Bar Risa or whatever the hell it was called that it was a case of weave your way through the crowd, say bye to the people you passed and get the hell out of the door.
I’ll definately be going on future nights out – it’s great to be able to talk to people you don’t have time to talk to at work when you’re all so busy. It also helps with team bonding and such.
I’m ready for Christmas now – bring it on. Just a few more days at work and we’re done.
