The organisers of Saturday night’s King's College Jest can feel moderately pleased with themselves: the auditorium was packed, people laughed, and the night’s stalwarts – Phil Wang and Jenna Corderoy – ticked all the right boxes. There remains, however, much to improve upon: the bundle of acts on at the beginning of the night felt completely disjointed, as if no thought whatever had gone into arranging these acts into something that felt like a collective effort. There was no gel holding the acts together, and nor did any act naturally link into those immediately preceding or following. The pace of the evening was equally baffling; it felt rather as though somebody had simply been trying to “hide” slower comics in amongst the more laugh-out-loud funny, and was hoping we wouldn’t notice. And if variety was the aim of this spasmodic first half, then they fell very short indeed: there wasn’t any.

That said, most of the comics were genuinely funny, if a little unpolished. Many were obviously inexperienced, relying too heavily on silly accents, and on individual jokes, to carry them through – but all the acts had something, at least. By far the best of the bunch was Pierre Novellie, whose fast-paced act was so all over the place (Scottish people to probiotic yoghurt in thirty seconds flat), that I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what worked – but it did. He was also the only comic to open with a reference to one of the previous acts, thus compensating for some of the aforementioned inadequacies of the organisers. Of the others, those that were the most successful made us laugh on many different levels – branching away from silly voices with interesting props, creative mimes, witty one-liners, absurd conceptual premises, and other unusual comedic crutches.

The headliner, Liam Williams, did all of these things, and a few more besides. At certain moments he definitely regurgitated a few lines from the Footlights pantomime (fair enough, given that he co-wrote it), but his act was varied, fun, and buzzing with spontaneity. The act probably could have been cut down a little, as the pace ebbed away towards the end, but with a little more work and a touch more practice, this will be one really worth watching. In the meantime, it’s up to the team in charge of the King’s Jest find a better - and more varied - way to harness the talent that Cambridge students evidently have.

Support Varsity

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding and we expect to have a tough few months and years ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content and of course in print too!

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as £1, to help with our running costs. Many thanks, we hope you can help!