Drink Bar Comedy Nights In Tallinn Are Back

The Drink Bar comedy nights organised by Comedy Estonia kicked off again last night after the summer break.

And in some style, there was a really strong lineup, hosted by the unstoppable Louis including plenty of regulars- a lot of people had evidently spent the summer polishing their joke [sic], so there were plenty of laughs ringing in my ears.

I was hesitant about going when I saw that there were 154 listed on Facebook as 'going' and a similar number as 'maybe', but it wasn't quite Hillsborough, though getting that way. Hats off to the bar staff anyway.

Glad I went, it's an excellent place to meet up with regular CE fans, would-be comics from the open mic circuit, newbies (the friend I brought along was impressed) tourists and the mandatory sprinkling of hotties to gaze longingly at from the other side of the bar.

Ben Richards was a personal favourite of mine (as a comic I mean, not a hottie), I like to think he's kind of like a funny version of me, and his 'but sir..' comeback to a heckler (you needed to have been there) caused me to spit Drink Baar Tume on somebody's back.

The headliner, Jacques Barrett, to use the parlance of the young people today, kicked ass, with a truly original slant on being from Australia (there were three Aussies on the bill in total which seems like overkill but in fact was not) and his reflections on living in the UK reminded me of why I am here.

Regular CE people Stewart, Janika and Corey all had great sets - it seems that the large, paying crowd seems to raise their games, it may have been my imagination, but everyone seemed to be even stronger than the open mic nights (where punters don't have to pay of course).

Sander did a set in Estonian so I didn't catch everything but it was consistently funny so far as the Estonian speakers were concerned.

Louis and Janika of Comedy Estonia need to work on their Scottish accents a bit though, they sounded more like South Wales or Birmingham, via the Transvaal, although it set up a brilliant comeback from Janika (referring to Louis' intro) which for me was one of the killer gags of the night.

Unfortunately there were some English dickheads in the crowd, not just me (I'm half Scottish though) but also a large group - moving the night to Thursday means there are likely to be more of these as Thurs eve is often the first night of the largely unwelcome (though the DB seems to encourage it) stag parties - yes they're still coming over. Fortunately this group left in a large conga-line at the end, and were waved off by all twenty thousand people in there, much to their chagrin I think.

There was also a drunk, bullnecked Russian guy who kept yelling out 'ja neponjal' at inconvenient times during Jacques' set, although the latter didn't hear him and in any case I don't know how heckler squelchers work when neither person speaks the other's language (assuming Jacques doesn't speak Russian).

Things seem to be going from strength to, er, strength with the CE crowd - the latest item I read is that not only do they have Steve Hughes and Glenn Wool coming for a show later in the month at the large Kino Sõprus venue (I assume they've sacked off Club Prive) along with the return of Dylan Moran a few days later, but there's also gonna be a regular slot on Estonian Radio 2 with interviews and the like. I suppose next I'm gonna read they've been selected to go into space or something.

If you're in Tallinn, check 'em out!