'Witch' to exorcise cursed comedy club
Run of bad luck at lap-dance venue
A comedian has called in a ‘witch’ to exorcise his comedy club of the bad luck he says befalls its regular performers.Jimmy O'Neill wanted to get a priest to exorcise his Round The Pole club – but says the church refused because it is held in Wigan lap-dancing venue Stilettos.
So he turned to a follower of the Wicca religion to perform a ‘cleansing’ before the next comedy night on May 28.
The process involves burning sage, which is carried to every corner of the room to ‘remove the negative energy in the air’.
O’Neill says he believes the venue is cursed because of catalogue of mishaps that have hit the regulars.
He lost three years' worth of comedy material, opera singer David Cartwright had his costumes and laptop stolen, ‘glamorous assistant’ Emma Garner narrowly avoided death when her stable collapsed, and Alan Brown – aka Alan The Madhatter – crashed his car.
O’Neill told the Wigan Evening Post: ‘It's unbelievable what has been happening – there's no explanation. We think we may have been cursed somehow, which is why we called someone in to help.’
The comic certainly has a flair for self-publicity: once getting a story into the same paper based on the success of one of his YouTube clips because it had had ‘more than 400 hits’.rn
Published: 14 May 2009
