“Footlights seem[s] to be behind about half of the stuff worth paying attention to,” wrote former Footlight David Mitchell in his 2013 memoir. If you think of the Footlights, names such as Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Robert Webb, and Olivia Colman may come to mind. These people all have one thing in common: they have made it big in mainstream media. It seems, however, that there is a dissonance between the illustrious reputation and students’ perception of the current comedy troupe.
For many, the Footlights’ legacy no longer aligns with the quality of its contemporary output. Some variation of the sentiment ‘I’m not hearing massively positive things about the Footlights’ was a common response from students regardless of whether they had seen many of the society’s shows. One student, previously involved in the Footlights herself, put it bluntly: “If you say the Footlights are funny you’re in the minority at the moment,” adding that this is unexpected from a troupe that has produced so much talent in the past. “They’re supposed to represent the pinnacle of comedy, they’ve launched careers – so why has it suddenly gone like this?”
“You can tell that they think they’re funny”
This sentiment rings especially true for students who grew up watching shows like Taskmaster and Peep Show. One student recounts how her family, who are “very into comedy,” were thrilled when she received her Cambridge offer, partially because she would now have the opportunity to join the Footlights. However, reality did not meet her expectations when she arrived in Cambridge. Her perception of the Footlights as a “powerhouse of comedy” that produced “all of the great [British] comics” was quickly dispelled after she saw them perform. “I didn’t laugh once, and it was only made more painful by what was essentially a laugh track supplied by the front row – who were clearly the performers’ friends.” Despite this, another student who has stewarded both Smokers (shows that do not exclusively involve Footlights members) and the Spring Review (which do) expressed the opposite view: “I’ve always found [the Footlights shows] very funny,” though he points out that “you can tell that they think they’re funny”.
The Footlights’ prestige is a double-edged sword; it’s helped launch comedians’ careers, but it also means the talent of current Footlights is only ever measured against that of those who’ve ‘made it’. Recent members have found success within comedy, but few can claim the same level of recognition as the previous members that cemented the Footlights’ formidable reputation.
When I speak with the previous president, James, about his time overseeing the society, our discussion centres around his instigation of a movement to reform the Footlights. The internal structure of the Footlights isn’t simple: in order to be eligible for membership, i.e. be a ‘Footlight’, you must be either a finalist, master’s student, or PhD student. This automatically limits the talent pool available, and during his time as president James proposed scrapping membership altogether. “I think that the issue is you have a society called the Footlights and that implies when you join, you’ll be a Footlight, right?” During his time as president, he compiled a document of everything he’d learnt: “[It was] basically suggesting that we get rid of membership, because it’s ruining it […] just get rid of the idea of being an ‘official Footlight’.”
“Does the push for a wider range of voices reflect a desire to diversify, or a need to address concerns about the quality of its output?”
Freya, the new president of the Footlights, says that this appears to be the direction the society is heading in. “I think at its heart it just makes it more inclusive and allows […] for a wider range of voices within [the Footlights]”. This proposal, however, raises pressing questions: have the Footlights reached a point where such radical change is necessary? And does the push for a wider range of voices reflect a desire to diversify, or a need to address concerns about the quality of its output?
The counterargument presented by James when I suggest it may be the latter – that the Footlights’ are just no longer producing mainstream stars at the rate they once did – is that this is a misconception. “There actually has been a lot more people coming from Footlights in recent years than people realise,” James tells me. Freya echoes James, assuring me that “there are so many Footlights who have graduated recently who are really big,” though caveats that statement with the qualification that they’re often “famous in the comedy scene, but not necessarily in the mainstream.” Both Freya and James cite Ania Magliano, a Girton alumna who graduated in 2019 after reading English. Magliano has emerged as one of the leading stars in contemporary British comedy, after appearing as one of five on series 20 of Taskmaster, which aired in autumn 2025, and even more recently as a permanent cast member on SNL UK. Despite Magliano’s relatively quick rise to fame since graduating, when recalling her own time at the Footlights to The Guardian, Magliano rather damningly critiqued the troupe as “at risk of producing a very samey, repetitive type of comedy” and stated that she hoped “things were changed for the better”.
“There is a culture of recycling the same people over and over again”
Before 2018, the committee (members of the Footlights society) and the Footlights (those performing in shows) were one and the same. These two entities are now separate, although there is often overlap. The decision to do this was not immediate, and, as suggested by Magliano, outstanding: “By the time I was on the Footlights committee, there were lots of conversations that were well overdue happening about representation and diversity.” This concern is still held by many current students, despite it now being seven years since Magliano graduated. One student who used to be involved in script writing and sketch shows for the Footlights tells me that “there is a culture of recycling the same people over and over again”. This discourages people from a wide range of backgrounds and levels of experience from getting involved, as they may feel as if they are “crashing an already existing culture”.
The decision to separate membership and committee in 2018 was presumably made as an attempt to remedy the nepotistic management tendencies. Speaking candidly about his occasionally difficult time as president, however, James explains that this decision was not the panacea people thought it might be. Lockdown soon followed, leaving unanswered questions about whether this system change was working. James tells me that after his time as president, he has “[come] to the conclusion that it very much isn’t working”. The creation of a Footlights ‘membership’ has created more issues than it has solved, according to James. “People aren’t really doing the shows for the sake of doing the shows, they’re doing shows to try and get that membership.” James adds that this “bizarre, nebulous membership” has posed a barrier to new students getting involved, simply because it is difficult to wrap your head around.
“Varsity Theatre reviewers described Mitchell and Webb’s first show as ‘the most obviously under-rehearsed production ever to appear on a Cambridge stage.’”
The alleged stellar reputation of the Footlights has posed difficulties for its recent members. James recalls how two years ago, when directing the Footlights’ tour show for the Edinburgh Fringe, he experienced a massive “culture shock”. Performing to a sold-out show of “older people who were expecting Hugh Laurie, Mitchell and Webb, [and] Emma Thompson,” the audience were sorely disappointed with their performance and so they “had to rewrite the entire show to their sensibilities”. What this anecdote proves, in James’s view, is that the Footlights are always going to be held to an impossibly high and arguably outdated standard. He adds, however, a silver lining: it gives thick skin to the students involved, something necessary for survival in the entertainment industry. “In other societies, you don’t get that criticism. And having that criticism makes you improve massively, and you’re [therefore] prepared for anything the industry throws at you.”
Digging through Varsity archives, it is clear that the success of previous members is not at all predictable from student opinion. Mitchell and Webb’s first two-man show in 1995 was not particularly well received. Varsity Theatre reviewers at the time described how “near disasters occurred in every scene,” describing the show as “the most obviously under-rehearsed production ever to appear on a Cambridge stage.” The polished, sharp comedy produced by former Footlights we see on TV comes after years of practice after graduation, and the hilarious lines in shows and movies they star in are often written by expert script writers – indeed, Peep Show was written by neither Mitchell nor Webb.
A comment on a whole-scale societal shift is unavoidable. The Footlights’ supposed golden era was marked by a relatively clear route from Oxbridge into mainstream media, a pathway that has largely disappeared. James highlights this overall positive change as the fundamental explanation for the society’s reduced visibility in mainstream entertainment. “We can’t deny that there was a bias towards Oxbridge students. […] They were getting TV shows immediately after graduating, which is obviously a crazy idea to think about now.” Freya is also keen to highlight that mainstream media was “far more elitist in the past,” and that comedy is now saturated – shows that catapulted former Footlights to fame are no longer novel. “[Recent Footlights] are doing hilarious things. They’re so entertaining, but people aren’t seeing them or accessing them in the same way because of the amount of media we have.”
So, perhaps the Footlights aren’t on a tragic Shakespearean trajectory. Maybe they were never that funny, and were simply propelled by the entrenched Oxbridge elitism of the late 20th century; or maybe they are that funny, but are held to impossible standards that, realistically, a group of 20-year-olds juggling demanding degrees and developing frontal lobes are never going to meet. There’s no doubt it’s time to face the music and acknowledge the need for reform. But, after all, walking out of a student comedy gig and complaining that your deaf cat could have done better stand-up is an essential part of the university experience. We only remember the funniest and now famous former Footlights, but as one student astutely put it: “I’m sure there were plenty of shit ones in 1995 too.”
