Last Wednesday myself and The Acts On My Bill went OUT, heading to The Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green for an evening at Nerd Nite London. It was meant to be REVISION as I'm doing a spot there myself next month, but it turned out to be BRILLIANT FUN as well.
We arrived at The Backyard Comedy Club to find that it was Surprisingly Nice, with a big bar, wide range of beer, friendly staff and - perhaps most importantly - REALLY NICE CHIPS. They were lovely! At showtime we went through to the back room which was ALSO really nice, much more spacious and fresh than a usual comedy club set-up, with a mixture of Cabaret Format tables and chairs at the front and several rows of chairs at the back, which all soon filled.
It was a VERY good sign that when the host (who I don't think told us her name) came on everyone stop talking right away. It was also good when she carried on and explained EXACTLY how the evening would go and, crucially, pointed out that though this was taking place in a Comedy Club it was NOT a comedy NIGHT. The idea was that people would talk about their research areas in an entertaining way but weren't aiming to do stand-up comedy, which was a GRATE thing to know going in, and also a GRATE way to run a night because it meant that you got a bunch of enthusiastic people telling you about their VERY VERY INTERESTING research areas without feeling the need to shoehorn GAGS in, which meant that the enthusiasm and excitement and Being Very Interesting could generate their OWN larfs.
And COR but it was all SO interesting. The first speaker was Professor Sarah Hart who explained things like the SQUARE CUBE LAW as it applies to fictional GIANTS and tiny people, done in a way that was a) really funny b) completely clear. I have had this explained to me MULTIPLE times over the years and never really got it but this time I totally did, along with a whole other bunch of stuff like terminal velocity and calories in tiny apples and various other previously unthought of (by me anyway) aspects of fictional characters growing and shrinking. Even better, once she'd finished, there were QUESTIONS. This happened with every speaker and it was BRILLIANT as everyone asked Actual Questions (i.e. not "more of a comment than a question") and the speakers dealt with them Intelligently and also Wittily.
Next was Rachel Coxcoon who gave an amazing explanation of her PhD research around the language used to discuss climate change, the different political groupings that exist in the UK, and how they do or don't communicate with each other. I'm not really doing it justice as it was pretty MIND BLOWING in places, not least when she very nicely and kindly pointed out that although us in the audience might think we were pretty diverse in terms of age, race, gender etc etc, in actual fact we were pretty much all of the same political/philosophical viewpoint, and that this lack of diversity REALLY MATTERS when trying to get across public policy. It was BRILL!
Finally Professor Kevin Murphy talked about the history of obesity drugs and the science of some of the current jabs, which had multiple UNEXPECTED outcomes and results and was similarly REALLY REALLY INTERESTING and followed by Questions. It was basically like going to the best conference EVER with the best AUDIENCE too, as you came out feeling as if your BRANE had had a really good workout, with lovely people sharing their enthusiasms with you.
As you can probably tell, we really enjoyed ourselves and I was EXTREMELY glad that I'd decided to do my revision. All I need to do now is work out how I'm going to match up to these high standards when it's my turn!
