Jen Brister says it was her favourite gig

For most comedians, their favourite gig would probably involve them storming the venue and receiving the adulation of the crowd. But Jen Brister says hers was a ‘car crash’ of a Christmas show at Up The Creek, several years ago, that she found unplayable.

But she ranks it as her favourite for the way headliner Ricky Grover turned it around… even if he had to turn on his boxing background to do so.

Speaking to the Always Be Comedy podcast, Brister recalls that for their £40 ticket, punters could drink as much as they liked. ‘Everyone arrives at 2pm and the stand-up started at 9pm, so people are drinking for seven hours,’ she told hold James Gill.

‘I turn up at this gig and a bloke falls off his chair and can't he can't get up…. another woman is so of her tits she’s  crawling to the bar… I’m like "This doesn't look like it's gonna go well."

Indeed she confessed she ‘died on my hole’:  ‘People are throwing stuff. Everyone's talking. There's women just shouting because they are so coked out their heads.  The whole night is a complete, absolute nightmare.  I am not enjoying any part of this evening.

‘But our headliner is Ricky Grover. I love Ricky Grover.  I just think he's hilarious. He comes on to Rocky music.  He's got all of his boxing gear… immediately the audience for the first time in the whole night starting to listen to him.

‘So he starts getting some laughs and no one's had a single laugh all night. And he starts to get some momentum.

‘Then this bloke stands up and start shouting. I don't know what he's saying. But he stormed the stage…  And Ricky's like, "What the fuck are you doing?" And he's like, "Oh, I'm just gonna  join you".’

Grover told him to leave but the punter stood his ground, so the comic said: ‘Either you get off or I'll remove you’ – to no effect.

‘So Ricky picks him up by his collar, or his throat really, and his belt,’ Brister recalled, ‘and I'm not joking, [he] like bench presses this guy over his head and hurls him on to the stage floor.’

The bloke then got up and scarped, after which Grover ‘absolutely storms it. He storms it in the most unplayable room you have ever seen…’

‘Now, that's what I want from a gig,’ Brister said. ‘It’s unforgettable  That's what I want: an audience member held over a comedian’s head. I want rivers of vomit. Those are the things I'm going to remember. If a gig goes well, I will forget it the next day.’

And while the feat of strength was exceptional, she said she was already impressed by Grover winning over at least some of the ‘impossible’ room before things went so strange.

However, her least favourite gig also involved lots of alcohol, plus three generations of the same family on the front row at Baby Blue in Liverpool.

‘The daughter was pretty sober,’ Brister recalled. ‘But her mum and her gran were off their tits, completely hammered.

‘At one point, I was on stage. I didn't know what had happened. But the audience were making these weird noises. Then I heard someone say,  "Look at your shoes". And I look down and this pensioner had thrown up onto my foot. Actual vomit  and you can't really get the smell of vomit off.’

That was a tie for her least favourite gig with another night she compered, when an audience member didn’t like the fact that Brister had spoken to his girlfriend from the stage.

‘A guy poured a pint of coke over my head after because he thought I was flirting with his girlfriend,’ she recalled. ‘Which I absolutely wasn't. I didn't I don't even remember seeing his girlfriend.

‘Behaviour of a very secure man,’ Gill surmised.

• The Always Be ​Comedy Podcast, in which guests put together their dream comedy bill, is available on all platforms including Apple.

Published: 13 Apr 2023