Chris Page, Harry Wright and James Wilkinson are joining forces to present Comments Disabled, a one-night-only comedy event built around the theme of disability.

Well-established names in the Cambridge comedy scene, all three have been targeted by vitriolic commenters on The Tab website and the show is in some ways an opportunity to respond to them.

Professional comedian Dan Mckee, who, like his fellow performers, includes his experience of disability in his stand-up material, will also join them in the line-up.

“We wanted to do a show together,” says Page, “but I was thinking, how can we make this into something more?” The comics chose disability as a theme for their show, and not only because they live with disabilities of their own. They feel it is an issue that is important to the stand-up scene, the student population and the city as a whole.

The show’s first purpose is to entertain, but the organisers of Comments Disabled also feel the need to reassess disability’s place in comedy. Page thinks that stand-up is rife with jokes at the expense of the disabled: “The point of stand-up is taking the piss out of your betters, but somehow that’s become distorted and comedians are targeting the disadvantaged.”

Wilkinson in particular has been known to turn this side of stand-up on its head, taking a dig at the audience’s use of disabled facilities: “Now, I know none of you will ever have been inside a disabled toilet,” begins one of his bits.

The three friends would like to see discrimination banished from the comedy scene, but they are far from advocating the use of kid gloves in handling the topic, and even further from wishing to silence comedians by being unduly sanctimonious: “You can joke about it but it isn’t a joke.”

Page, Wright and Wilkinson would like to see the stand-up scene as a whole become more inclusive. They have organised events where novice comedians can test their mettle outside of the more well-established but perhaps more intimidating forums. “We’ve all done Footlights Smokers and enjoyed them,” says Wright, “but it’s nice to have other options and go your own way.”

They are quick to praise the Cambridge comedy scene – “It says a lot about its strength that we can host a night like this” – but worry some students may not feel welcome in it.

“Comedy can be quite cliquey,” acknowledges Wilkinson, “but we want to be saying to disabled students, or basically any student who isn’t a white, middle-class, able-bodied male, that they can get into comedy.”

Disability is also a significant welfare issue for the students of Cambridge. Page cites Facebook community Cambridge Speaks its Mind as evidence of this: “Of all the welfare problems occurring within college, one of the ones that came up most often was with tutors and supervisors not understanding mental health issues.”

Bringing the issue to a wider audience by raising it in a humorous light is one way of attempting to make staff more aware of disability. The hope is that staff and students will become more comfortable discussing it.

Page, Wright and Wilkinson are also taking the opportunity to raise cash for MIND, a mental health charity active in Cambridge and throughout the country. With the ‘bedroom tax’, cuts in social care and Work Capability Assessments and the demise of the Independent Living Fund, recent changes to benefits have been hard on the disabled. Organisations such as MIND are shouldering a heavier burden than ever.

As it becomes increasingly important to highlight the problems faced by disabled individuals, the time is ripe to open a conversation that will engage a wider audience in the subject. Though the tagline might seem odd at first glance, what better way to do this than with “a night of disability-themed comedy”?

“All profits will be going to MIND,” concludes Wright, “so please can we sell out and actually make a profit?”

Comments Disabled will be on at the Corpus Playroom on 25 November
at 9:30 pm