Comedy and Spoken Word highlights at 53 Degrees

53 Degrees may be best known for its music, but the next few months sees the Preston venue welcome a whole host of high-profile comedians and spoken word artists to its stage.

Jayne Robinson

Date published: 29th Oct 2012

Here's what's coming up for lovers of laughs and literature.

Russell Kane
Friday 16th November, £17.50
With his distinctive looks, regular TV panel appearances  and high profile presenting jobs on the likes of Big Brother's Big Mouth and I'm A Celebrity, the quick witted and fiercely intelligent Russell Kane is one of the most in demand comics on the circuit today. Don't miss this chance to catch him at 53 Degrees.
Russell Kane at 53 Degrees tickets

Scroobius Pip Spoken Word Tour
Wednesday 5th December, £10
A unique chance to catch one of the UK's leading beatsmiths as he takes audiences back to his roots for 60 minutes of pure, unadulterated spoken word. The inspiration for this one-off tour came about after the huge success of his headline slot in Latitude's spoken word tent, and will see him joined at different points on the tour by guests including Kate Tempest, polarbear and Brian Gittins.
Scroobius Pip at 53 Degrees tickets

The Lancashire HotPots
Saturday 8th December, £17.50
Although they pedal a distinctly northern brand of humour, the Hotpots now sell out shows from the southeast to Scotland, are firm favourites of BBC 6Music’s Steve Lamacq, and even have real ales named after them. But with new album ‘A Hard Day’s Pint’ continuing to explore such themes as chips, working men’s club pub crawls and the obscurities of modern life, the band will always go down best in their Northern homeland. The Preston 53 Degrees Christmas gig has become something of an annual pilgrimage – a hilarious homecoming gig for the band, and a right royal knees up for the audience.
The Lancashire Hotpots at 53 Degrees tickets

John Cooper Clarke
Saturday 23rd February, £17.50
The original punk poet John Cooper Clarke brings his distinctive, biting satire, hilarious verse and rapid-fire performance to 53 Degrees in February. One of Britain’s best loved and most important poets and performers, John is as vital now as he was at the height of the punk movement. Don't miss this unique chance to catch him live.
John Cooper Clarke at 53 Degrees tickets

Henning Wehn
Friday 19th April, £12
Henning Wehn is the hilarious self-styled ‘German Comedy Ambassador’, whose rip-roaring act aims to dispel the myth that Germans have no sense of humour. His risqué humour treads a political tight-rope, and a large part of his act is spent analysing and explaining his own jokes in excruciatingly funny detail. Originally emerging as a popular support act on the London stand-up circuit, to a headline seller in his own right, and now a regular guest on BBC panel shows such as ‘QI’, Wehn will be arriving in Preston – if he can navigate an unreliable British public transport system – this April.
Henning Wehn at 53 Degrees tickets

Chris Ramsey 'Feeling Lucky'
Wednesday 15th May, £15
The man that the Evening Standard described as ‘a brilliantly engaging natural storyteller’ has sold out three entire runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, played to sell-out crowds up and down the country as part of a huge national tour, and become something of a regular feature on panel shows such as ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’, ‘8 Out Of 10 Cats’, ‘Russell Howard’s Good News’ and now
BBC2 sitcom ‘Hepburn’. The north-east comedian’s new show ‘Feeling Lucky’ takes its cue from Bill Bryson’s ‘Short History of Nearly Everything’ (although Ramsey admits he listened to the lengthy book rather than read it) to poke fun at the ‘miracle’ of human life.
Chris Ramsey at 53 Degrees tickets

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