We often sing from the same hymn sheet at Venue, try as we do to hit the high notes, work in pitch-perfect harmony and other tuneless puns, so with a song in your heart, merrily skip your way down to the newsagents for this week's Venue, stuffed with:
SINGING - We investigate the continued, never-more-popular vocal pastime currently enjoying a bit of a boom. Plus, we get acquainted first-hand with the West's best choirs, singing tutors and 'pop star experiences'; and list loads of other opportunities for you to belt out your favourite show tunes, jazz standards and smoky blues classics.
CEMETERY JUNCTION - Lanky, boggle-eyed funny fella Stephen Merchant teams up with portly side-kick Ricky Gervais for their debut feature - a coming-of-age, 70s-set story about a bunch of bungling blue collar buddies trying to make something of themselves in Berkshire.
ARE YOU FUNNY? - Like cracking gags? Ever think you could cut it as a stand-up? We dispatched the office wiseguy to a tutored comedy workshop to see just how easy it is to become a paid-up comedian.
PLUS - The hottest spring fashions... Ellen 'Juno' Page... Rap king Mos Def... Tea bars... Win a cocktail masterclass at Bordeaux Quay... And loads more, including your complete ten-day local entertainment guide.
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Stand up and be counted
"There are those who say analyzing comedy is like dissecting a frog. You don't learn a whole lot about frogs, and you kill the frog in the process." Beginning a stand-up comedy workshop with a line like that is a bold move. But, as Chris Molineux's cunningly crafted day school progresses, the frog-autopsy analogy is proved almost entirely wrong - showing that, to an extent at least, stand-up comedy can indeed be taught, and that there's actually very little mystery to it...
- Venue tries stand-up.
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Tour de Forces
One of the Royal Marines I became mates with summed it up pretty well. "It's like you've been beamed down somewhere and Scotty's really f**ked the co-ordinates this time." It's like nothing on earth, a complete other-world. The buildings are a bit like Birmingham International Airport on the outside and like defunct corners of Ikea on the inside; it's a very weird looking place. And you're sleep-deprived because of the helicopters going in and out, you know, you can hear all the actual war stuff going on - it never stops. So you do get a bit hysterical after a day or two. But you get used to it."
- Iestyn Edwards - aka tutu-sporting drag queen Madame Galina - entertains our boys in Iraq.
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Choir brigade
"I've been asking myself the same thing. The profile and quantity - it's definitely over 2,000, and in my opinion probably over 3,000 Bristolians singing every single week. We're looking at the same numbers as people who have a kickabout on a Saturday morning, and thank God! Having a kickabout is absolutely fantastic and singing in a choir is absolutely fantastic."
- Gurt Lush Choir founder Sam Burns on the group singing phenomenon sweeping through Bristol
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Jokes
A Jewish lawyer was troubled by the way his son turned out, and went to see his Rabbi about it. "I brought him up in the faith, gave him a very expensive bar mitzvah, cost me a fortune to educate him. Then he tells me last week he has decided to be a Christian. Rabbi... where did I go wrong?"
"Funny you should come to me," said the Rabbi. "Like you, I, too, brought my boy up in the faith, put him through University, cost me a fortune, then one day he comes and tells me he has decided to become a Christian."
"What did you do?" asked the lawyer. "I turned to God for the answer," replied the rabbi.
"And what did he say?"
He said, "Funny you should come to me..." (Thanks Joe)
A Captain in the foreign legion was transferred to a desert outpost. On his orientation tour he noticed a very old, seedy looking camel tied out back of the enlisted men's barracks. He asked the Sergeant leading the tour, "What's the camel for?".
The Sergeant replied "Well sir it's a long way from anywhere, and the men have natural sexual urges, so when they do, uh, we have the camel."
The captain said "Well if it's good for morale, then I guess it's all right with me."
After he had been at the fort for about six months the captain could not stand it any more so he told his Sergeant, "BRING IN THE CAMEL!"
The Sergeant shrugged his shoulders and led the camel into the captain's quarters. The captain got a foot stool and proceeded to have vigorous sex with the camel. As he stepped down from the stool, satisfied, and was buttoning his pants he asked the Sergeant, "Is that how the enlisted men do it?"
The Sergeant replied, "Well sir, they usually just use it to ride into town." (Thanks Hannah)
Just before a funeral service, the undertaker approaches the very elderly widow and asks,
"How old was your husband?"
"98," she replies, "Two years older than me."
"That makes you 96," the undertaker smiles. "Hardly worth going home, is it?" (Thanks Ben)
Where does a test tube baby live?
In a womb with a view. (Thanks again, Ben)
Please send us jokes. Best one each week wins some stuff. OR you can send us a joke on behalf of your firm, club or religious cult, and we'll tell everyone your web address. So don't delay - email editor@venue.co.uk and make our inbox chortle.
Described by the Sunday Times as "the most bold, the most lucid and the most gripping of the thirty or so productions I have seen", the Welsh National Opera's classic production of Bizet's much-loved 1874 opera 'Carmen' comes to the Bristol Hippodrome from 21-24 Apr. Telling the tragic tale of a young Spanish girl and her soldier lover, it is packed with memorable arias such as the 'Habanera' and 'Toreador Song'. We have two pairs of tickets to the 7.15 pm performance on Thur 22 Apr simply by answering one easy question. It is:
... nope, sorry, you'll just have to get this week's Venue to be in with a chance of winning.
Also up for grabs this issue we have a chance to win a cocktail masterclass for you and three friends - and your very own cocktail created and named by Bordeuax Quay's award-winning wine bar manager (the prize also includes a glass of something on arrival and the cocktails created). Simply...
... buy Venue and send us the answer to the question.
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Say what?
What a lovely day to be out travelling the streets of Bristol in a beat-up old pick-up truck, looking for elderly people to swindle!
Yes! It's glorious spring days like this that make you feel... What? What the hell?
What's the matter?
It says here in the paper that police claim there are more bogus callers and rogue traders operating in Bristol than in all of Wales. And according to the copper who heads the Bristol Doorstep Crime Team, "the vast majority of offenders are from the traveller community". The detective says, "They tend to go door to door, offering to fix roofs, lay new drives or do gardening but sometimes they will use flyers. We find that they will look for signs that an elderly person lives at the address and therefore be easier to con."
Sounds like they're on to us. Look over there - big house, small wheelie bin, poorly maintained front garden... Let's pay a visit and see if we can - heh-heh! - help out.
No, today, we're going to Keynsham.
You've found a whole street of widows and war veterans who don't trust their cash to banks?
No, something much better. A huge big place. We march up to the front door and turn on all the charm. We offer to actually buy it. We sweeten the deal by telling them that they won't even have to move out of the place.
So how does that work for us?
We don't pay anything to buy the place. Once we've signed the deal, we load them with the debt and they pay for us to buy it. Then we go back on our promise and turf them out anyway.
That sounds incredibly dodgy! It must be against the law! What if we get caught out?
It's not against the law. And if we get caught out, nobody can do anything about it.
This sounds like the ultimate criminal scam. Has it been done before?
All the time. I was, of course, referring to the Kraft takeover of Cadburys, smoothed over with assurances that the Somerdale factory would remain open. When a Parliamentary select committee summoned Kraft to explain themselves, they sent a mere underling while the Kraft boss, Irene Rosenfeld, had a 41% pay rise, taking her packages to $26.3 million, which is £17.4m English.
And they call us criminals!
· SERIOUSLY, TO REPORT DOORSTEP CRIME, CALL 0845 456 7000.
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Please remember...
Please remember to buy this week's Venue. If you do the management have promised us an evening of free stand-up comedy starring Peter Mandelson and David Cemeron.
