Student comedy awards 2005

London Central heat

Ben Travis has won the third regional heat of Chortle’s Student Comedy Award – with a routine about rabbis in theme parks.

The University of Kent drama student triumphed at the heat in Coventry’s Warwick University last night.

But before the gig, he confessed: “I'm generally quite inexperienced, and have done about ten gigs this year in a bar on campus.”

He will join Paul Byrne, winner of the first London heat, and Symon Garner, from Manchester,  for the final in London in April.

The acts performing last night were:

Simon Bird (Cambridge): A highly original, knowing act – using giant handwritten signs to deliver his opening gag, putting down hecklers with inappropriately overaggressive insults and generally meddling with the very form of stand-up… but he proved a bit too clever, or weird, for the audience.

Ben Travis (Kent): Starting with a neat gag about the venue before moving on to a mix of topical gags and witty and odd observational anecdotes, Travis’s assured delivery made him a clear audience favourite.

Matt Whiteley (Cambridge): Another confident perfomer, his straightforward ‘what if…’ routines didn’t quite take off, either by over-exploiting a single idea or by choosing something just too random and inconsequential (‘what if the moon was just 14 miles away?’). But the smattering of one-liners were very fine indeed, if far too sparse.

Bullett & Gunn (Bath): A fairly straightforward change-the-lyrics musical act, but pulled off with style and verve  – sensibly keeping their parodies short and with a professionalism to match much more experienced acts in this genre.

Paul Hayfield (Tamworth College): For an act making their stage debut, Hayfield is not as bad as he thinks he is, with some very promising lines and ideas. Although he needs to edit more, and be wary of being too obvious with ‘chav’ material, the bitter, cathartic approach could well develop into something interesting.

Ben Poole as Barry Pigeon (Aberystwyth): An angry, shouty comic (as compere Gary Delaney said, ‘if you lived in Aberystwyth, you’d have a lot to be angry about too’), whose aggressive stance hides a paucity of material, including a tired recycling of an old Not The Nine O’Clock News sketch about Jeremy Beadle’s stunts that probably older than he is.

Lovdev Barpaga (Bourneville College): A cheeky banter merchant, Barpaga, too, has bags of front and confidence if little to back it up with. Seems to be trying too hard to be cool and the centre of attention, rather than having anything to say.

Will Claringbold (Nottingham): He’s a little formulaic in his set-ups, but he makes up for it with a stylish, assured delivery and a very professional air. And his observations about communal living and barbecues, though straightfoward, elicited gales of laughter of recognition.

Steve Bennett
February 9, 2005