Drink Up Stand Up

Jun 16 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

THE American writer Don Marquis once declared: “Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into.”

Which is very clever and all that.

But what precisely does the expression “crying into your beer” mean?

By contrast, “to laugh into your beer” is one far easier to understand and one which is epitomised by the Liverpool Comedy Festival’s Drink Up Stand Up pub crawls.

A format oft imitated elsewhere, Drink Up was spawned by this city’s Festival organisers in 2002, through a process of natural osmosis and quantum physics, ie, Liverpool + Short Walks Between Great Pubs + Comedians = Laughing in Your Beer.

For those outside the learning curve, DUSU involves an audience being carolled around by some irreverent oik armed with a megaphone to see a variety of comedians perform at a number of boozers. It’s become a favourite over the years, which lends itself to what the Festival’s press and marketing guru, Iain Christie, describes as guerrilla tactics stand-up.

“If you’re performing, you’ve got to be prepared for absolutely anything – sometimes it’s a case of jumping on a table to stand on, taking the mike and being left to get on with it,” says Iain, who has in his time, to paraphrase an old Public Enemy track, seen some Black And White Steel in the Face of Chaos.

One involved Toxteth comic favourite Chris Cairns being faced by some scallie female horror at a pub on Hardman Street, who took exception at her mutant space being invaded by the travelling DUSU crew. She swung a punch which Chris rolled, then deftly locked her horrible squawking head under his arm and continued unabashed with his act until Ms Track E Bottom was bounced from the premises.

Expect the unexpected is the catchphrase which gives the Drink Up its extra edge, not just for the comics, but for the travelling audience, too.

Lady Penelope of Pensby and Yours Truly found this out when we travelled to Hoylake to join the first-ever DUSU parade around the Wirral last week.

Regrettably for the real ale purists, there weren’t any traditional pubs among the four stops we made: Jack Rabbit Slim’s, the King’s Gap Court Hotel, La Bodega and the Eskimo Bar.

But the 100 or so people we joined on the sell-out jaunt had a whale of a time on what must be the best-value night on the ale you’ll ever gratefully receive.

For just £6, including discount beer vouchers, there were nearly three hours of cutting edge entertainment featuring five Northern stand-ups at the top of their game: St Helens’s Dave Twentyman, Stockport’s Mike Newall, our very own Sam Avery, Manchester’s Vince Atta and the spiky Geordie MC Jason Cook, who used his trusty megaphone like an aural machine gun.

Its use drew the biggest impromptu guffaws of the evening as the party walked down Albert Road, en route to the King’s Gap.

Our Geordie Boy ordered we, his faithful Stand-Up Pub Posse, to wave and shout a campily high pitched “WOOO-OOOH!” which received an immediate foul-mouthed response bellowed by a recipient across the road.

It was an incident that would have turned one of those legendary genteel curtain twitchers of Wirral pale with horror – but somehow the location, the mood and the occasion made it even more hilarious.

If that’s the sort of incident that tickles your chuckle muscles, then there are still a limited number of places left for tomorrow evening’s DUSU trip around the city centre, and Tuesday in Crosby.

Be there or be square, as they say.