Anthony Roberts, Director of Colchester Arts Centre 
Never Knowingly Understood

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“Get ‘em when they’re young”

An oft repeated mantra. I’ve taken it to mean the introduction of a particular type of practice or subject matter with the intention of establishing it before life’s other distractions interfere.

Plant the seed.

Let the child grow up with the idea all around them. Nurture your infant within a world where difficult concepts exist as a normal part of life. Do this in preference to trying to introduce these things later on, when the callow youth is on the cusp of fledgeling adulthood and the myriad abundance of life‘s rich tapestry belies a nascent snow blindness of conceptual development in said youth.

That sort of thing.

But when Carly Smallman phoned me at the Arts Centre last year with the idea of a stand up comedy club for babies under 12 months old, well I thought this was maybe going little bit too far.

12 flipping months! I had to wait til I was 11-years-old before I was introduced to stand up comedy.

Until 1971 when ITV’s The Comedians was beamed into the flickering black-and-white telly in the corner of the Roberts living room and a succession of smoking men in dinner jackets told racist jokes about their neighbours. Apart from Ken Goodwin.

12 flipping months?

What was she thinking this Carly Smallman? Bring your own baby comedy club? Are we to treated to a succession of scarcely advanced beyond fetally formed babies, dressed in dinner jackets, smoking, gurgling racist jokes about their neighbours? Apart from Ken Goodwin.

Ah no. It’s BRING your baby. There’s the rub. This is a show for adults where mums or dads or both can BRING their baby. I understood in the end.

Plenty of buggy space, mats for the little ones, a glass of fizz from the bar and three comedians doing their stuff in the afternoon. Bring your own baby comedy club.

And so it shall be. I signed up to it.

  • Bring Your Own Baby Comedy Club at Colchester Arts Centre; May 21, June 18, and July 16 from 12 noon; tickets £12.
  • Call the box office on 01206 500900 or click here.