Live Science Comedy from Hull Colliderfest

We went to see some live comedy tonight. It was awesome. We were at the Comedy Lounge in Hull which we’d not been to before. It’s a great venue. You get your own table, and your own little lamp. When you fancy a drink you light the lamp, a smiling person appears to take your order, and then the drinks appear. Wonderful. And then some folks stand up at the front and make you laugh a lot. Good times.

There were four comics on the bill. The whole thing was held together by Sam Gregson, AKA “The Bad Boy of Science”. He did a splendid job of keeping things going and put in a very good set of his own. He says he’s a particle physicist, but I thought he looked a lot bigger than that.

Katie Steckles started the evening with a bit of mathematical trickery involving barcodes which was an impressive bit of “sleight of numbers” and led into a set describing how sums underpin pretty much everything we do, including making sure that when you scan a tin of peas at the till, you get the bill for a can of peas.

Chella Quint was billed as talking about “Woman’s Health” which worried me a bit at the start, what with me being famously squeamish and also a man. But it was really good, a meditation on how a good way to get rich is to create a problem and then sell the solution to it. And how this can end up de-normalising what should be perfectly natural aspects of life. You might think that mass misinformation started with the internet, but Chella showed a bunch of adverts from over years that showed that peddling anxiety and unhappiness about natural bodily functions (and - of course the products that claim to fix it) has been going on for years. It was great to see what she is doing about it. You can find out more here.

Finally we had Farrah Sharp, who was examining the vicissitudes (it’s a word - look it up) of modern life through the lens of someone used to analysing and presenting data. This was a hoot, I’ve never seen bar-graphs and Ven diagrams get as many laughs as the ones she put up on the screen.

It was a great night. Thanks to Hull Colliderfest for setting it up, the performers for being awesome and the folks at the comedy lounge for making us so welcome.