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Since 2014 I’ve been running a live, immersive, theatrical version of Werewolf.
“The closest thing England has to a professional Werewolf moderator” - Shut Up & Sit Down, about me!
We take it all over the world - from Sydney to Barcelona, via Bali and Colombia -bringing the audience up on stage to play this classic game of deception. It’s great!
We now ALSO do a live comedy game show version with comedians playing! We did a massive show in 2018 at the Udderbelly (big purple cow, 410 seats) in Edinburgh, and do shows all over London!
Previous guests include Rose Matafeo, Adam Hills, Mae Martin, Nish Kumar, Mark Watson, Sofie Hagen, Ed Gamble and LOADS MORE!
Press:
***** - "It came together so amazingly well" - Voice Mag
**** - “His [they mean me] sarcastic comments and piss-taking is the glue that keeps the show from descending into chaos.” - Moody Comedy
“Simply very funny to watch” - Coaching For Geeks
"A rare and special experience" - A Younger Theatre
"Highly watchable” - The List
Best Newcomer nominee, Brighton Fringe 2017
Total sellout show, VAULT Festival 2017
"The year is 1972, the world has united over space travel, and everything hangs in an uneasy alliance. There's just one problem.
The human race’s top astronaut is going to hit the earth at 17,500mph. Your job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. The problem is, so is every other space agency on earth.
Team up, betray, compete with or defect from the best of the world’s space programmes.
But do one thing.
Bring them home."
Bring Them Home is an immersive space game I created based on an unholy combination of The Martian, Space Cadets and FTL: Faster Than Light.
Press:
Innovation Award Nominee, VAULT Festival, 2019
***** - “It is so rare today that we get the chance to play, especially as adults, and this installation fully encapsulates the joy of imagination and the frivolous, mischievous freedom that comes with playing make-believe.” – Last Minute Theatre Tickets
***** - “One for the bucket list.” – LondonTheatre1
**** - "A thrilling space adventure of epic proportions" - Coaching For Geeks
“As far as ‘My coolest moments in board gaming’ go, this was certainly up there.” – Quintin Smith, Shut Up & Sit Down
“Thanks to its sheer creativity and heart, Bring Them Home is absolutely out of this world.” – The Play’s The Thing UK
“An interactive and thoughtful game” – View From The Cheap Seat
“Unfolding whirlwind of galactic drama” – A Younger Theatre
Check out our other games and sign up to our mailing list to be the first to hear when our next games are being put on!
Short, true stories where someone inevitably answers a call from the porcelain phone.
Or does a technicolour yawn.
Or just chunders EVERYWHERE.
Why? Because being sick is embarrassing, uncontrollable and devastatingly human. And often quite funny.
(or click "Vomitorium." at the bar up at the top)
I wrote a play! We took it to Edinburgh in 2018!
It’s called "Courtroom Play: A Courtroom Play".
It's a fast-paced comedy drama in the vein of Legally Blonde and My Cousin Vinny, with strong influences from the Phoenix Wright videogame series.
We were at Pleasance Dome, 12:25pm every day, 1st-27th August (13th off).
Directed by the fantastic Benita de Wit.
Press:
***** - “Delightfully silly” - One4Review
**** - “A definite winner” - Mind The Blog
**** - “Go along and be engrossed!” Mumble Comedy
**** - “We sat in judgement of the Courtroom Play and found it guilty of being a hilarious and entertaining hour of humour.” - The Edinburgh Reporter
“Truly hilarious moments” - Rochelle Balboa
“Moments of genius” - Voice Mag
Original Cast:
Alex Stone - Katherine Rodden
Richard Dick - Chazz Redhead
Daisy Scott - Lucy Farrett
The Mayor - Emily Lloyd-Saini
The Witnesses - Mandy Dassa
The Judge - Thom Tuck
tl;dr - I co-wrote some funny videos explaining politics. Click here or on "politics" on the top bar to see them.
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In October 2014 I read The Establishment and How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones. It was the catalyst for a long, slow and fairly standard privileged-white-guy-political-awakening.
There was an important general election scheduled for May 2015. I wanted to do something.
My girlfriend Viv hit upon the idea of doing a YouTube series teaching people the surprisingly convoluted basics of British politics. I quickly realised how little I knew.
I'd been performing comedy for most of my 20s, and immediately knew I had to speak to Jay Foreman, a musical comedian and good friend of mine who had made Unfinished London: a somehow fascinating and funny mini-documentary about civil planning.
So I got in touch with Jay, we hashed out the general concept, got his director Paul Kendler on board, along with writer Liam Butler, and together we all wrote and created lots of episodes that I'm really proud of. We called it:
Didn't make a difference - the Conservatives won a majority and the political climate continues to lurch dangerously to the right, but even if one person learnt a bit more about British politics, that’s something.
Also this is a good, funny and informative series of videos. That's something to be proud of.
Viv would like me to remind everyone that this was her idea, which, whilst troubling to my ego, is undeniably true.
Politics Unboringed Episodes:
- Valid reasons for not voting?
- Why Don't Politicians Answer Questions?
- The Speaker's Seat - Why there is no election in Buckingham?
- Why do they make that noise in PMQs?
Jay has since gone on to make Map Men, a great miniseries on geographical oddities on maps and how they shape our lives, along with fellow comedian Mark Cooper-Jones.
Jay and I have also written lots of fun songs together.
I have co-written lots of songs with musical comedian Jay Foreman.
As a general rule, he wrote the music, and together we wrote the lyrics, meaning I have mathematically contributed exactly 25% to each and every one of these songs.
They range from the really great to the really stupid, but I'm proud of them all. Many appeared in Jay's 2012 Edinburgh show: No More Colours, which I also directed.
- Every Tube Station (715,000 views)
- Dinosaurs (with flip-chart genius Bec Hill)
- Grandma's Food (450,000 views)
- Caterpillar Sick (110,000 views)
- The Making Of Seven Bells (extract)
- Boris Johnson Nightmare (written in 2012, long before the true nightmare began, meaning this song doesn't really work. But hey.)
There's also other fun ones with no video, rendering their inclusion here pointless. Nevertheless, because they happened:
Animals Aren't People, Are You Sitting Comfortably, Poor James Bond, We are the 0.01% and Favourite Son.
His songs are great, as is his YouTube channel - check it out!
(Click on "Songs." at the bar at the top for all the songs in one place)
In December 2015 I ran a festival in Sydney, Australia called GameFest. Strong name, I know.
It brought together everything I love about games, and encompassed:
- A day where we turned the theatre into an escape room
- 2 Rooms & A Boom, with jazz band!
- Bring Them Home (megagame)
- Drop in D&D sessions
- N64 with a selection of sick multiplayer games
Every day the space was free to enter and open for people to play from a huge heap of boardgames. Every night we had a presentation about an aspect of gaming or design, then a big gaming event.
It was great! Probably a one-off, but I wanted to record it here for posterity, as it was a huge, creative whirl and I'd love to do it again sometime.
You can check out the website here (the company we ran it through was called Moonshot Games)
What's the one game that really, actually changed things? Maybe it got you over a failing relationship. Maybe it simply changed your outlook in a tiny, subtle way.
I made a blog collecting these stories. It's called:
People talking about the game that changed everything. Or just a tiny thing. And everything in between.
These are old and sometimes embarrassing, but there’s some good stuff in there.
From the summer of 2008 to December 2013, I spent most of my waking life writing and performing sketch comedy with these guys. We were:
The Beta Males.
For a while we were The Beta Males' Picnic (shudder), and before that, we were briefly Paper Bag Equals Yes (*SHUDDER*), but although the name and line-up fluctuated, we were mostly a combination of middle class white guys trying to make people laugh.
And we got good. We came to specialise in narrative comedy; sketches tied together by characters and location, that told a story.
It was great. It really was. We did pulpy, genre-infused b-movie nonsense that loved the tropes it mocked. We went to the Edinburgh Festival every August for 6 years (the other performers for 2 years more), we got nominated for awards, performed on BBC Radio 4, and most importantly put together many fantastic shows.
Here's the shows we did, when we did them, and some reviews. I'm really proud of this stuff. It's easy to look back fondly and forget the sweat, arguments and fatigue. But even taking that into account, these days were golden.
Edinburgh 2008: Sketchy Beast.
Not strong. "Shows promise", is probably the fairest way to describe this messy collection of sketches.
Best Review: Mentions the one woman we had in the group. She left soon after and became a very famous musician, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to say who (she's doesn't feature on the poster). 3 stars.
Edinburgh 2009: The Beta Males' Picnic.
We do a free show, before free shows were cool. It's much better. We give out free jam sandwiches to entice people in. Comedy is glamorous. Another collection of better sketches. We have cut our teeth on the London open mic comedy scene, and it shows. A bit.
Best Review: "...The brilliant Beta Males' Picnic, whose silly but smart sketch show manages to be just as clever and quipful as Idiots of Ants or Pappy's Fun Club [this was a big deal for us]. Looking the part in waistcoats too, and with a matching air of grinning eccentricity, few free acts are so charming and so prepared." The List. Four stars.
Edinburgh 2010: The Bunker.
Our breakthrough. Against the odds, we create a coherent, funny and occasionally moving narrative sketch comedy show telling the story of the last 273 people alive, 30 years after a cataclysm decimates the world above. Heavily featuring The Vengaboys' monstrous hit We Like To Party! (The Vengabus).
Best Review: “These virtual unknowns have created a superb show that outclasses many of the Fringes more established sketch troupes." Broadway Baby. Five stars.
Honourable mention: "The Picnic’s preoccupation with death and sexual deviance has finally reached a logical conclusion: the extinction of the human race." The List. Three stars.
(We also do a free show of non-narrative sketches. It goes really well.)
Edinburgh 2011: The Train Job
We delve into very heavy-handed satire about disgraced former Secretary Of State For Transport Stephen Byers, who had been outed by the media for an expenses scandal.
We do this by turning him into a disgraced bad-ass action hero (played by yours truly, because I look a little bit like him) who has to clear his name by stopping a runaway train that wants to destroy Edinburgh. By fucking it. (not a joke)
My favourite show we did. Got awarded 10 Top Amused Moose Edinburgh Shows. We get nominated for a Chortle Award for this bad boy.
Best Review: "Get your pistons pumping and have your tickets ready for inspection as you climb aboard this steel tube of satisfaction. The entire experience is an unalloyed joy. Absolutely first class." Fringe Guru. Five stars.
Notable mention: "The Beta Males have a strong show which veers towards the safe side, which could have been truly alpha comedy one with a few bolder choices." My girlfriend, reviewing my show a year before we met. Three stars.
Edinburgh 2012: The Space Race & The Beta Males' Midnight Movie Theatre
Two shows this year. Our narrative show is a bit balls. Great premise: the secret history of Britain's entry into the Space Race in the late 60s, and why no one knows about it. But the sketches weren't good enough, we temporarily lost one of our writers to drama school and it showed. Some excellent bits, but not our finest hour.
Best Review: "As a comedy quartet they are perfectly matched – and, it has to be said, remarkably bendy. Gloriously silly and endlessly entertaining, The Space Race is a showcase of sketch comedy at its best. Don’t leave town without seeing it." The Skinny. Five stars.
Most Accurate Review: "The Space Race certainly breaches the atmosphere and gets into orbit, but is not quite good enough to make that moon landing. It’s no giant leap but it gets the job done." Broadway Baby. Four stars.
Our other show, The Beta Males' Midnight Movie Theatre was a delight - a chance to put our B-movie influences front and centre and screen a joyously terrible creature feature and add William Castle-inspired live elements to mess with the audience.
The movie we picked was Gary Jones' 2000 masterpiece Spiders. We had so much fun with this. One of our number ended the show transformed into a giant spider. You do the math(s).
Best Review: "The premise is simple but executed with great panache and is truly a unique experience. The finale, especially, is phenomenal. I sincerely hope that this show is resurrected in the future and that The Beta Males continue to find fresh slants on established formulae. Other acts should take note." Broadway Baby. Four stars.
Edinburgh 2013: Superopolis
It's amazing it took a bunch of nerds like us this long. 2013's show - my final one - was set in the city of Superopolis, a city full of superheroes.
When The Golden Guard are destroyed and a mysterious substance called RetCon is playing havoc with reality, can jaded, experienced Inspector Supermann and overpowered rookie dunce Police Man discover what on super earth is going on? Well, yeah, but the journey is fun.
We've always had great, fold-out, world building flyers, but for this show we got our own mini comic books made, and they were immense.
Best Review: "The Beta Males show both a mastery of and love for their craft that is a delight to behold." Four stars. Fest.
And that was it, for me. The guys carried on with a show in 2014 called Happenstance, which was really rather good, and are all doing solo material now. They're good and funny eggs.
Don't really know why I'm mentioning all of this, tucked away in a little corner of my website. I guess it was just a very formative and enjoyable part of my life, and I wanted to put a record of it down, somewhere.
So there you go.
My final show. There were TEARS.
