Shows, workshops and courses in Leicester event

Britain's first comedy festival aimed at children has been launched today.

The UK Kids’ Comedy Festival will be a strand within the Leicester Comedy Festival featuring shows, workshops and other events aimed at the under-12s.

One project, entitled Loving Laughing, will teach joke telling to primary school children, while Laugh Term Comedy School will help teenagers develop their skills performing live comedy. 

Festival director Geoff Rowe said: ‘There has been a huge growth in comedy shows for kids over recent years and we hope this new festival will be a celebration and help inspire young people to get into live comedy, either as audience members or performers.’

The strand will include shows from James Campbell, Funz & Games (pictured), Bec Hill and Jarred Christmas  as well as Comedy 4 Kids Comedy Club, and Bring Your Own Baby Comedy.

In a another first, the Leicester Comedy Festival will also be producing three live comedy shows to be broadcast by BBC Radio Leicester and subsequently available on the new BBC Sounds catch-up service. 

Headline acts across the festival include Jo Brand, Johnny Vegas, Jason Manford, Nish Kumar, Dave Gorman, Russell Howard and Paul Sinha,

Returning special events include:

• The Beyond A Joke strand of events about comedy, including Q&A’s with Jo Brand and Tom Allen, as well as seminars and discussions.
• A Q&A with comedy photographer Andy Hollingworth who will be presenting some of the photographs he has collected as part of his Little Museum of Comedy project capturing iconic comedy memorabilia.
•  The UK Pun Championships on Monday February 11, which also features jokes shared via the #UKPunDay hashtag on Twitter, which attracted over 30 million impressions this year.
•  Silver Stand-Up Competition for the best new comics over 55, and the Leicester Mercury Comedian Of The Year competition, celebrating its 25th anniversary.
•  Comedy in the Dark
• Hotel D’Comedie, in which comics perform sets in rooms at Hotel Maiyango.

Full details are available on the website.

Published: 1 Nov 2018