Festival Sponsors


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Festival Partners

The Francis Hotel Bath BID The Bird SouthGate Bath Live Stream Team Radio Bath Total Guide To Bath Corsham Print

Principal Venue Partners

Bath Forum Green Park Brasserie Bath Pizza Co Ring O Bells Nowhere The Ram pub in Widcombe, Bath

Bath Comedy Festival


Festival Patrons:
Bath Comedy Festival Patrons
Arthur Smith, Barry Cryer OBE, Helen Lederer, Loraine Morgan-Brinkhurst MBE, Sir Peter Hendy CBE, Ralph Oswick, Robert Brinkworth, Terry Jones

Bath Comedy Festival Team

Bath Comedy Festival team members include:

Nick Steel, Director - Bath Comedy Festival, Bath Comedy Clubs

Nick SteelNick took over the fledgling Festival as Director in 2010 having been involved in the organisation booking the comedy acts since it began.

Nick also runs other comedy events throughout the year, including regular Bath Comedy Club shows in different venues, various tour shows and one-off productions, and tour manages US comedian Doug Stanhope's UK dates.

Outside Bath Comedy, Nick wears a few different hats - he runs his own Web and Systems company, Xerophon, and has had several other entertainment roles not least as co-organiser of the now legendary big Widcombe Rising street parties, and the associated fund-raising Bonbon Cabarets.

Nick has also played Hammond Organ, Mellotron and other vintage keyboards in a Prog Rock band, and DJs with wind-up gramophones as The Wind-Up Merchant. He is proud of his local area - he was instrumental in designing the new Widcombe Social Club venue, ran many shows there and was licensee for a number of years when it was open regularly. He is usually involved in local happenings, including organising Widcombe's Christmas Trees for 20 years.

Nick also books top class bands for his local pub The Ram in Widcombe, and can often be found serving behind the bar too!

Contact Nick - nick@bathcomedy.com

Nick was voted 4th /100 most influential person in Bath in the 2020 "Bath Power List".

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Adrian Feeney, Associate Director, Live Streaming & Videography

Adrian Feeney Adrian has a very colourful, (and some may say chequered!) history.

He's had many years of experience putting on shows, having started lighting school productions at the age of 11. He's an ex-street performer, has stage managed shows at Edinburgh Festival, booked bands for West Holts back stage bar at Glastonbury Festival and currently manages a local Facebook Group with over 2,600 members.

From 2000 to 2004, Adrian ran the legendary Fez Comedy Club in Bath, and exported the club into Europe with monthly shows in Prague, Warsaw and Budapest. It was here that he discovered Russell Howard, giving him his first paid work, employing him as The Fez's regular compere and sending him on tour with the likes of Phil Kay.

Adrian also has 40 years experience behind the camera, developing at home his black and white medium format films shot through his rather heavy Mamiya RB67 camera. Adrian recently started LiveStreamTeam.net, which live-streamed Bath Comedy Club shows during the Covid years, and produces top quality videos of comedy performances.

Festival Director Nick Steel says "it's great to have Adie as my 'right hand man' - it's rare that one finds such a sensible, competant and knowledgeable A-team member!"

Colin Callan, "The Gnome", Chief Sound Engineer

Colin Callan Colin has been chief sound engineer on all Bath Comedy projects since 2010

After running theatre sound and light for school productions in his home town of Liverpool, Colin moved into the rock n roll UK touring circuit 1978 and never looked back, working with bands such as Elvis Costello, Stiff Little Fingers, U2, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Siouxie & the Banshees, Dead Or Alive, John Cooper Clark & the Invisible Girls, Joy Division, The Teardrop Explodes and Echo & The Bunnymen, plus comedians such as Mickey Finn, Bob Monkhouse, Freddy Starr, Tommy Cooper, Ken Dodd, Tom O'Connor and Russ Abbot.

In 1985 he moved to Bristol to run a sound & lighting company, quickly became the house engineer on The Thekla, then worked with Duran Duran, Erasure, Nuclear Assault, The Seers, The Vibrators, The Damned and The Inmates to name a few.

Colin moved to Bath in 1991 after spending time living in Bristol and passing this beautiful city many times on the way home and thinking "Bath looks lovely, I love the colour of the city as the late night sun shines on the stone of all the buildings".

After spending the 90's touring all over the world with music, theatre and comedy as a sound engineer/tour manager/pre tour production tech/set designer/producer with Galliano till 2006, Colin finally settled here to get more involved with Bath's indiginous talent.

Louisa Gummer, Social Networking - Bath Comedy Festival

Louisa Gummer Our social networking during the Festival is co-ordinated by Louisa Gummer, who also helps administer the New Act Competition.

Louisa is a local girl (although she currently lives in London). An experienced actor & voiceover artist, Louisa also performed comedy parody songs at the first Bath Comedy Festival. She has Tweeted & Facebooked to all our comedic followers since the beginning of the Festival. Louisa works as a social media consultant for a number of clients both in the media & sporting worlds and is a passionate Bath Rugby supporter.

Favourite comedians: Adam Hills, Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre and Bill Bailey.

Contact Louisa - louisa@bathcomedy.com

Jem Roberts, Co-organiser, Bath Plug Award

Louisa Gummer Jem is co-creator of the Bath Plug Award, and is an author and historian with an encyclopedic knowledge of comedy.

Born in Ludlow in 1978, Jem first earned money as a writer at the age of 13, reviewing NES games out of five Christmas puddings for N-Force magazine. After graduating from Aberystwyth University in 2000 with a BA in English Lit, Film & TV, Jem began performing comedy professionally from Edinburgh to Brighton and back, while editing games, kids and film magazines in the daytime. All these pursuits came together when Barry Cryer suggested he expand articles written for comedy fanzine Kettering into the full first ever I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue Bible, which was published by Preface in 2009. Given carte blanche to decide his next title, The True History of The Black Adder followed in 2012, and in 2014 Jem became of the official biographer of Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide, when the Adams estate invited him to write his third book, The Frood.

Jem lives in Bath, hopes to write a fourth work of comedy non-fiction as well as as a huge collection of British folktales, still performs comedy when he can't not perform comedy (both solo and with his troupe The Unrelated Family), and occasionally has the honour of interviewing comedy royalty on stage.

Visit Jem's web site and blog: http://jemroberts.com/

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