Capital Comical PUNishment in London!

Oh my gosh guys, I am SO SOOOORRRRY for my delay in updating this little blog of mine. I've been busier than an airport based in a country that's just be added to the red list. Shows, shows, shows. I've been flying high with my head in the clouds for sure!

So a week last Monday I made my way by tube and train to Hackney Central to check out what it looked like since my mate Andy left there some years ago. A short hipster-hop on from there was The Glory, a fabulous drag bar in the direction of Shoreditch where I was to perform a set for Queer Comedy and its esteemed host, Lucien Jack. The show was AMAZING with every table taken at a ticket price that buys dinner out in Glossop...or one and a third pints in London. OW WOW WOW! The other acts were brilliant and there was much waving for my hit single, Nuclear Cooking Cave. I even got sent footage after of people bigging up my future Eurovision hit. Lovely. Top marks for the dressing room too - not a mop, crate of cleaning liquids or box of crisps in sight. 

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at The Rose & Crown in Kentish Town for the first two dates of both At Home With Miss Angela Bra and Annie & Angela's Disco Divorce Party. The venue had moved heaven and earth (and a serious amount of rubble that I'd seen on a short visit the day before) to have the room ready for us. The microphone stand was held together with tape and it smelt a bit funny but it was ours. On both nights turnout was a bit on the intimate side but those who came had a good time, a couple of which even bigged us up on Twitter. I also got a review from Steve Bennet of Chortle which included phrases like "jolly but trivial nonsense" and "a cheerily endearing persona, and she will get you taking part, whatever your initial reluctance." Which I can't really complain about - it's all about being part of the show when it comes to a night with Angela!

On Thursday I travelled south for Pick N' Mix Cabaret at The 2 Brewers in Clapham. The venue was super-plush with a big stage and glittery backdrop appropriate for a rising star on social media. The massive audience waved along to Cooking Cave but it was Ex On Fire that really got them going. Much love to Belksi for organising the night. After the show I joined Lucien Jack and Kate Bouquet in the front room for a pricey drink and shouting over a drag queen belting out show tunes. I met both Lu and Kate through online gigness last year so it was nice to join the virtual dots.

On Friday, Annie and I hit the town with a friend for drinks, food and absolutely no comedy. And then I got a very expensive cab home because the tubes stopped at half midnight. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 24HR TUBE?!

My Saturday show was in Hammersmith with Groovie Grove Comedy and a smaller but very warm bunch of onlookers. I opened and showed off my newly acquired Primark stilettos and 70% off babydoll dress from the New Look down the road (the reduction applying both to the price and amount of material used.) I got good feedback, on both my material and its. After the show I chatted away to old friends and new before catching the last train home.

I rounded off the week with Annie back at The Rose & Crown on Sunday to an audience of friends, family and Tik-Tokkers. Posting the dates on my outros for the last few months actually paying off for once! Both my own show and Disco Divorce party were a lot of fun and we thanked the venue staff many times before clip-clopping off into the mean-but-gentrified streets of Kentish Town. London tour complete!

The rest of this month see's Annie and I at two Bop & Bingo events in Rochdale and Colne and performing Disco Divorce Party in Telford before both shows appear at The Greater Manchester Fringe on September 1st and 2nd (see my Show page for more info.) I'm also performing At Home With Miss Angela Bra online with Laughing Horse on August 22nd at 7pm. Email me at angela@andyquirk.co.uk for the Zoom link.

How Ludlow Can You Go?

Oh my giddy giggy gosh guys, what a week! 

After another three nights in Buxton with 'At Home With Miss Angela Bra' and 'Disco Divorce Party', Annie and I were buzzing down the country lanes to Ludlow last weekend to play the final day of the Ludlow Fringe Festival. After trial by tractor and caravan we finally made it to this real nice market town and made our way past the half naked youth getting their chests out in the car park to Chang Thai - a Chinese Restaurant with a garden with our name on it.

A garden gig is the right thing when it's so hot you could cook eggs on the tabletops so I cracked on with my solo show to an army of picnic tables and smiley people - many of whom had been stewarding events throughout the festival. I got to know teachers, retired people and willing participants in waving their hands and offering their knowledge of 5-a-day. During my costume change, the prerecorded track featuring Pinot meeowing sent a dog off the deep end but we had a good laugh, all in all it was lovely!

Then after a fifteen minute break to raise my glamour game (and hemline) I was back on stage with Annie Sup for Disco Divorce Party. We had a right nice singalong and theatre experience with a crowd of, now slightly redder, audience members. Many chats and selfies later we went round and round Ludlow's one way system to admire the view until we eventually broke free and headed off to our very posh Premier Inn down the road.

This week we're Bop and Bingoing in Bolton on Friday and then we're off to London for Camden Fringe and, in my case, lots of little gigs around the capital. Hopefully I'll see you southerners there! Full details and ticket links are on the Shows page.

Also, some bloke called Andy Quirk did a podcast interview about me this week. You can listen to it here.

Ta-ra!

Buxton Fringe SOLD OUT!

Oh my giddy GOSH everyone, sorry for the delay in writing but I've been SOOOO busy preparing my shows recently.

Last Friday, At Home With Miss Angela Bra made its live debut at Buxton Fringe Festival to a SOLD OUT crowd at The Green Man Gallery. The crowd were lovely, the songs went down a treat and I nearly remember all of my lines. Most of them in the right order. I pulled off my costume change at the end to reveal this very slinky little number. As tiger print goes it was roar than enough!

A review popped up on the Buxton website the next day which also made me smile. A minor miracle given that Annie Sup managed to bash the reviewers toe with a chair as she helped accommodate the army of Bra-thers and sisters. I've posted it below for you to have a little peer through. 

The gig calendar has got even more packed thanks to another date added in London. Here's the full list for the next couple of months. Ticket links and all that malarky are on the Shows page, just click along the top. Tonight Disco Divorce Party goes toe to toe with some footy game or other but Annie and I ain't bothered. We'll be recording our Netflix* special if nothing else.

July 15th - At Home with Miss Angela Bra @ Buxton Fringe
July 17th - Disco Divorce Party @ Buxton Fringe
July 18th - At Home With Miss Angela Bra / Disco Divorce Party @ Ludlow Fringe
July 30th - Angela Bra (MC) @ Bop & Bingo, Barristers, Bolton
August 2nd - Angela Bra @ The Glory, Hoxton
August 3rd -  At Home With Miss Angela Bra / Disco Divorce Party @ Camden Fringe
August 4th -  At Home With Miss Angela Bra / Disco Divorce Party @ Camden Fringe
August 5th - Angela Bra @ Pick N Mix Cabaret, The 2 Brewers, Clapham
August 7th - Angela Bra @ Groovie Grove, The Grove, Hammersmith
August 8th -  At Home With Miss Angela Bra / Disco Divorce Party @ Camden Fringe
August 20th - Angela Bra (MC) @ Bop & Bingo, Earnies, Colne
August 21st - Angela Bra (MC) @ Bop & Bingo, The Flying Horse, Rochdale
August 22nd - At Home With Miss Angela Bra @ Laughing Horse Online
August 24th - Disco Divorce Party @ TBC, Telford
September 1st -  At Home With Miss Angela Bra / Disco Divorce Party @ Manchester Fringe
September 2nd -  At Home With Miss Angela Bra / Disco Divorce Party @ Manchester Fringe

(*which I'm sure is coming soon) 

 

Time to Tour!

 

O-M-GOSH! I am SO SORRY everyone for taking SO LONG to update you on everything Angela Bra. I'm sure you have been going out of your MINDS with worry about when you'd get your next fix of the Missy Angela B. Well, it's here. Even if it is going to be kind of short.

The reason I can't stay for long? Well, life's just got so BUSY! After a right old knees up in Chorlton a couple of weeks back with Bop & Bingo my energies have all been directed at my festival shows, At Home with Miss Angela Bra and Annie & Angela's Disco Divorce Party. 

I've also knocked up a new batch of puns for the playground, water cooler or in your jim-jams if you're still working from home (I don't do PJ's as I'm proper classy - see pic) - which'll be all over the TikTok for the next few weeks. Like a school assembly, the shorter it is the more people like it so I'm making sure at least one in every three is less than six seconds long. YES, I am part of the problem for the population's diminishing attention span but you've got to know your audience and I know mine won't know me if I go on too long.

Speaking of which, the tour dates this summer are on the SHOWS page and there are more to come. Because I'm real nice though I'll post them here too. Get your tickets early, if social distancing continues the rooms we thought would hold seventy will probably hold less than a third of that. And a third of seventy is...look, I'm a part-time MUSIC teacher. Anything over 4 and I'm lost.

09/10/21: At Home with Miss Angela Bra - Glossop Comedy Fesitval @ The Oakwood (3:30pm)
08/10/21: Disco Divorce Party - Glossop Comedy Fesitval @ The Oakwood (9pm)
01/10/21: Rhyl Theatre (Main Room) (MC), Rhyl (8pm)
18/09/21: Disco Divorce Party - New Mills Festival @ Pride of the Peaks (8pm)
11/09/21: At Home With Miss Angela Bra - New Mills Festival @ Pride of the Peaks (8pm)
08/08/21: Disco Divorce Party - Camden Fringe @ The Rose & Crown (9pm)
08/08/21: At Home With Miss Angela Bra - Camden Fringe @ The Rose & Crown (7pm)
07/08/21: The Grove, Hammersmith (London)
05/08/21: Pick N' Mix Cabaret @ The Two Brewers, Clapham (London) (Tickets)
04/08/21: Disco Divorce Party - Camden Fringe @ The Rose & Crown (9pm)
04/08/21: At Home With Miss Angela Bra - Camden Fringe @ The Rose & Crown (7pm)
03/08/21: Disco Divorce Party - Camden Fringe @ The Rose & Crown (9pm)
03/08/21: At Home With Miss Angela Bra - Camden Fringe @ The Rose & Crown (7pm)
18/07/21: Disco Divorce Party - Ludlow Fringe Festival @ The Blue Boar (8.30pm)
18/07/21: At Home With Miss Angela Bra - Ludlow Fringe Festival @ The Blue Boar (7pm)
17/07/21: Disco Divorce Party - Buxton Fringe Festival at The Green Man Gallery (8.30pm)
15/07/21: At Home with Miss Angela Bra - Buxton Fringe Festival at The Green Man Gallery (8.30pm)
14/07/21: Headline Set at Early Risers @ The Cork and Fork, Liverpool (Info)
11/07/21: Disco Divorce Party - Buxton Fringe Festival at The Green Man Gallery (8.30pm)
09/07/21: At Home with Miss Angela Bra - Buxton Fringe Festival at The Green Man Gallery (6.30pm)

And yes, there are some dates in there where I'm on stage with other people as well as Annie. They'll be really good too. London tour here I come this August!

Oh, and yes, there are LOADS of Bop & Bingo dates too. Visit their Facebook for details of those.

Shout Outs and Quizness

It's been a HECK of a couple of weeks everyone, I hope you're doing well. I've been on screen more often than bird poop and have discovered the rabbit hole that is the TikTok Q&A section. Alongside that, rehearsals have been numerous for both my own solo jolly, At Home With Miss Angela Bra, and double act performance with my mate Annie Sup, Annie & Angela's Disco Divorce Party. So let's get started, phew!

A couple of weeks ago TikTok asked me if I'd like to have a "Q&A" section on my profile where my followers could ask me pertinent and engaging questions about the inner workings of my mind. Every since I said yes I've been flooded with requests for shoutouts, birthday greetings and to call people "baka chungas," "poggers," and "sussy." Abandoning any illusions of cerebral potential I dived in and started to use all the weird filters, music options and subtitling available - with the dexterity of a toddler wealding a loaded paintbrush in one hand and a pritt stick in the other. Sometime a hundred people like it, sometimes it's over two thousand. I keep it real with the Comical PUNishment though. A joke you can dispense at work or on the playground every Monday, Wednesday and Friday guaranteed. Follow me here.

The TikTok puns were given a new outing yesterday when I appeared on the Zoom comedy show, Word of Warcraft. There were six of us performing plus the two MCs and a smattering of audience, which included a lady listening on headphones whilst coming home from work on the bus. Fare enough. My little set had, for the first time EVER, no songs in it and was a solid four minutes of bigger-trees, night-mares and dire-Rama's. I'll pop the set up here when the hosts send me a copy. For now you'll have to search the tok for the set up to those solid gold classics. It was good fun but I missed popping a tune in so I'm in no danger of becoming a stand-up (or, online, a sit-down) anytime soon.

This Saturday is the final online outing for Angela Bra's Bonkers Quiz Night, broadcast live at 9pm on Bonkers Bingo - The Tour. Ashley Frieze joins Andy Onions as the special guest contestants and you can join in too with a pen and pad of paper. Here's the all time leaderboard so far. We're chatting to a couple of places to take this thing live in a few months. Updates when I have them.

Rehearsals for our festival shows are going well and I'm sorting out details with venues linked to the Manchester, Camden and New Mills festivals and fringes at the moment. Admin admin admin...But it'll be worth it to see your smiley faces :)

www.tiktok.com/@missangelabra
www.facebook.com/missangelabra
www.instagram.com/missangelabra

Digital Dilly-Dallies

Oh wow everyone, it's lovely to be writing again. It's been a couple of weeks since my last update and I've been dancing my digits over the digital divide for hours on end to bring smiles to anyone open to the idea. I've applied for another bunch of festivals and had one confirmed in my newly-found hometown of Glossop for October. More news on those real life larks when they happen, but for now here's what's going on-line...including my TikToking (see pic for wise words on one of them - though you'll have to wait a week for the punchline as that's when I'm publishing it!)

I hosted Clash of the Tight Tens last Friday to a lovely little audience and gave them a bunch of jokes and a little sing-song between the ever so talented acts. A repeat of the show is broadcast on the Bonkers Bingo Facebook tonight at 9pm should you fancy a laugh. I was also in my heels on this platform on Friday too, fronting their St Georges Day virtual parade (pictured). If you'd like to see that then it's still there. Have a game of footie, a roast dinner and a pint on me and Georgie boy.

Next Saturday Annie and I host our penultimate (and you'll need your ultimate pen) online quiz night with special comedy guests and another four rounds of questions that, if not already baffling enough, are doubled in challenge by the way we cavort around them over approximately 90 minutes. You'll find that on the Bonkers page at 9pm next week.

Elsewhere on the web, my latest TikTok has reversed the spiralling view-decline of my channel since the dancing vice-president of doom, Al Gore Rhythm, stopped punting my mirth onto the For You page over the past few weeks. The new videos are in super HD thanks to my new camera and budget ring light so you can see every last detail...it's just as well I've been perfecting the trowel method of makeup mastery. I've heard you need to be thick-skinned to be a comedian.

I also have some shows coming up in May which I'm not hosting. On May 7th I'm part of the amazing Reyt Proper House drag showcase (ticket link here) and then on the 27th I've got 15 minutes on the ever-so wayward Clogg Comedy. I won't be performing in clogs incidentally - I've found they make my performance rather wooden.

Until next time...love to you all!

TikTok / Instagram / Facebook

April Wowers

April's here and all is well for yours truly and her ever-expanding punchline. Since I last wrote I've gone proper viral, been booked for two comedy festivals and have been blessed with my own fan site on TikTok. Mad!

So let's start at the beginning. You know that throwaway joke I made about being "bye sexual"? 200,000 views and counting baby! Which is about 197,000 more than most of my others but it's the gift that keeps on giving and the followers are stacking up as a result. Proof that if you want a hit just make a joke viewers can tease each other with.

Since this clip I've expanded my online offerings to four different types. Comical PUNishment remains at the core but this comedy apple now has Angela's Contrary Dictionary (complete with Nicolas Parsons tribute on the back cover), music videos and Angela Answers Anything. 

The last of these features my answers to all enquiries recently directed at me. These include challenging Paxman-level interrogations like, "Where did you get your name from?" and, "Do you like Yorkshire Puddings?" As I said, tough stuff. Making response videos helps me connect with my fans (who are known as cupcakes, bralets or Angelanuts depending on who you listen to), create diversity in my content and, most importantly, gives me a break from the hard work of actually having to think of jokes. Everyone wins!

Speaking of who you listen to, now I have followers in similar numbers to the Pied Piper of Hamlin (and, it appears, of similar age - BIG UP THE YOOF!) it was inevitable one of my wonderful cupcakes would set up their own fan account of me. Yes, this has really happened. So far there have been a string of videos featuring cut outs of me from across my online world backed by proper TikTok meme soundtracks. How AMAZING is that? Could go a bit a bit Fatal Attraction / Stan of course. So long as my followers remain doing it online rather than dark alleys all will be well.

And speaking of dark alleys...Well, not quite. But I am out LIVE this summer. IT'S OFFICIAL! 'At Home With Miss Angela Bra' is now booked for the Ram Comedy Festival on May 31st and The Buxton Fringe for two dates in July + another two dates with my mate, Annie Sup, for our show, 'Disco Divorce Party.' More info on the Shows page. I'll let you all know when tickets are on sale.

Right, that seems like quite enough typing, my nails are wearing out. See you all soon!

TikTok / Instagram / Facebook