With a colourful marketing campaign stretching as far as Charing Cross station (gasp), the Greenwich Comedy Festival obviously means business. The impressive setting, the Old Royal Naval College, is matched by an equally impressive line up – Russell Howard, Jo Brand, Sean Hughes to name but a few – and the events run every day from Monday to Sunday.
The stand up comedy routines will no doubt do what they say on the can, and do it very well, but there are also some other interesting things happening as part of the festival. Most intriguing is the outdoor Silent Disco on Saturday night; the music gets transmitted from the DJ box to wireless headphones, so there are no speakers and to the outside world it appears as though all the revellers are dancing and singing along to nothing. Also notable is the Bad Film Club on Saturday at the Observatory, the idea being that the cheesiest, most cringe-worthy films become comedy gold if you’re watching them in a group. I confess that logic is a bit too cool for me: in my eyes this is just a condonable opportunity to watch films that I secretly love but would never normally admit to liking, and it’s free!
Back in the real world, there’s a ‘talky’ theme to the other Greenwich events this week. The Oscar-winning costume designer Julie Harris is talking about her incredible career this Thursday at the Fan Museum and Frances Ward is celebrating the career of George Formby with a talk at Charlton House on Friday evening (7pm). There’s also a Marie Curie information evening atDeptford Methodist Church on Tuesday, providing a chance to hear more about what the charity does in this area and how you might get involved. Along similarly charitable lines, if you go down to the woods (aka Greenwich & Bexley Cottage Hospice) on Sunday, you’d better go in disguise, as there’s a Teddy Bear’s Picnic to raise money for the hospice.