Jokes

Telling gags to a room full of strangers and a film crew, with all the jokes written in biro on the back of my hand

I was commissioned to work on a project for The Claims Place, who wanted to do something that wasn’t a traditional radio or TV advert.

They are personal injury experts, but didn’t want to be tarred with the same brush as those companies that pop up on TV and try to trick people into thinking they’re owed thousands of pounds by the council/government/aliens.

Instead, we decided to create three stand-up comedy routines that we’d film, then post on YouTube. The jokes had to be genuinely new, ideally at least a bit amusing, and show that The Claims Place was reputable and willing to have a laugh at its own industry.

And there was one other stipulation: the company name shouldn’t be mentioned until the final frame. It wasn’t supposed to be an advert, and there was definitely no product placement. The audience weren’t told about The Claims Place, and only found out about them after the recording.

The gig was performed at The Golden Fleece pub in Lymm, Cheshire, to a room full of people, and quite a few of them laughed. Mind you, we’d bought them all a few drinks, so they would probably have laughed at anything.