Occupying Manchester University: Red Redmond & The Student Protesters

Red Redmond

As a stand-up comedian you may be asked to do plethora of weird gigs.

You may do charity gigs, corporate gigs, cabaret gigs, I’ve done gigs without mics, I’ve done gigs without audiences, I’ve even shared a bill with a notorious Manchester gangster who’d recently been released on parole after a lengthy sentence for torturing rival gang members.

But I had previously never once been asked to perform between a History lecture and a talk on Hiking to a forty-strong audience comprising of twenty-something revolutionaries in hemp jumpers who have taken a lecture theatre hostage.

I turned up and despite being warned that the theatre smelt awful due to the forty bodies who have lived in there for over two weeks it was ok. The lecture hall was littered with sleeping bags, duvets, tins of soup and various placards all of which did not exactly seem pro-Tory.

I walked down to meet with the other acts who’d also be performing; MC Stephen Bugeja, Jamie Kilday, Freddy Quinne, Kiri Pritchard McLean, Kate McCabe, Aziz Zora and Gordon Smith. Everyone already seemed a bit on edge. Apparently two minutes previous to me turning up a security guard had come into the theatre in an attempt to stop the comedy night going ahead.

Whilst the night was definitely still going ahead the security guard had made off with our only microphone, which wasn’t a problem at all given the powerful acoustics of a well-made lecture theatre.

I didn’t know what to think of the gig or indeed the political motivations of my audience. Whilst I am a student and did go the first anti-tuition fees protest in London I am not entirely convinced that students are doing the right things for their opinions to be heard.

I first realised this when at the London protest I looked up to my right to see a banner which read ‘David Cameron I f*cked your Mum’, hardly the inspiring words of Oscar Wilde. I am aware that there were lots of different demographics at this protest; there were people genuinely there to fight the cause, there were violent protestors and there were students who just fancied a day off lectures.

My problem with the protest is that if you walk through the centre of London, setting fire to public buildings, in public sectors the only people you inconvenience is the general public and the police force, both of which we should be striving to ally with.

That being said, the audience of protestors I performed to seemed genuinely polite people who are trying to make a stand for what they believe in. They were not the brainless students, who seem to be far too common these days, they were the peaceful minority who have been lied to and left behind by the coalition government, a particularly bitter pill to swallow seeing as most students, me included, voted Liberal Democrat.

Politics aside the gig was a triumph. I suppose if you’d been cooped up in a stuffy lecture theatre eating soup and sleeping on benches you’d be ready to laugh as well.

Stephen Bugeja is a capable MC and held the show together with the compere skills he has developed running Squirrel’s Comedy Club in Fallowfeild. The rest of the acts and I all had a decent gig and the majority of us felt we had done some good for a decent cause.

As I left the lecture theatre, a placard caught my eye, it read ‘Peace and Love to those in the Roscoe Building today’ – Sue Perkins. Apparently we weren’t the first comedians to try and aid these small-time revolutionaries. I wish them luck with all their political endeavours.