Festival Patrons:
Arthur Smith, Helen Lederer, Loraine Morgan-Brinkhurst MBE, The Lord Hendy Of Richmond Hill CBE, Ralph Oswick, Robert Brinkworth, and remembering Barry Cryer OBE and Terry Jones
Bath Comedy Festival team members include:
Nick Steel, Director - Bath Comedy Festival, Bath Comedy Clubs
Originally from Ilkley in Yorkshire, Nick started promoting events shortly after moving to Bath in 1997. A regular at Edinburgh Fringe since the turn of the century, Nick brought many comedic talents to Bath before taking over the fledgling Bath Comedy Festival as Director in 2010, having been involved in the organisation booking the comedy acts since it began. He has grown Bath Comedy Festival from a weekend event into a fully fledged three-week festival utilising multiple venues and featuring hundreds of acts.
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.
He is proud of his local area - as Deputy Manager of his local pub The Ram in Widcombe, and has been helping build the pub up to its current form, with top class live bands on Friday nights and a regular Irish session on Sundays.
Nick was also instrumental in designing the new Widcombe Social Club as an arts venue, ran many shows there and was licensee for a number of years before the pandemic, when it was open regularly. He has usually been involved in local happenings, including organising Widcombe's Christmas Trees for 20 years, and is currently planning more revitalisation for the area.
Nick played Hammond Organ, Mellotron and other vintage keyboards in a Prog Rock band, and DJs with wind-up gramophones as The Wind-Up Merchant. As Radio DJ Andy Kershaw commented "You're even more old school than I am!"
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, The Fez Comedy Club
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 the late 1990s 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!"
About The Fez Comedy Club
Many of you will remember, way back in the 1990’s, venturing down the sticky stairs into Cadillacs nightclub on a Tuesday evening to attend Bath’s original stand-up night at The Fez Comedy Club, run by Adrian Feeney, I know we at Bath Comedy HQ certainly do, in fact it was The Fez which helped kick-start our love of promoting comedy!
Stars who graced their stage back then include household names like Russell Howard, Lee Mack and Johnny Vegas, (with the occasional special guest like Mrs A from Beaufort Stores!) Well, after hibernating for 20 years, The Fez Comedy Club is BACK in business and has partnered with Bath Comedy to help expand and enhance the stand-up comedy offering in the region.
While emerging from lockdown, Adrian came on board and helped us get back on our feet, and became an integral part of the Bath Comedy "A-Team", rewarded with the title of Associate Director in 2023.
Adrian has re-awakened The Fez Comedy Club brand and now promotes his own shows which sit alongside our own.
Colin Callan, "The Gnome", Chief Sound Engineer
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.
Kerrianne Gauld: Social Networking, New Act Competition
Jennifer Ballantyne: Front Of House
Jem Roberts, Co-organiser, Bath Plug Award
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/
