celebrate a decade, every Saturday of 2025 we are going to take a look back at some of the articles and interviews from over the years.

Name of Article: A Little Thing Called Comedy – The Early Years
Original Publish Date: 9th August 2016

Welcome to our brand new themed topic for A Little Thing Called. I thought it was time to get out the big guns and probably really welcome you into the world of Holly and why comedy really is such a big part of my life and why I spend my spare time writing a blog about the comedy world.

I thought the best part to start with this journey would be right at the beginning, when I was a kid. Now, I don’t remember a lot about comedians when I was young I remember that there were a few that I was introduced to when I was a kid in the nineties and maybe they sculpted my original enjoyment for comedy but I didn’t really get fully immersed in the comedy world until I did freelance editing for a London based company called ComComedy (more about that in a later blog.) So I suppose I should introduce you to the people I remember being funny in my childhood. There are not many I remember but there is definately one that sticks out strongly in my head and that was Joe Pasquale but more about that in a bit.

I was always surrounded by comedy related things even if I didn’t quite understand it from a young age. My grandparents owned a board game that Jaspar Carrot was all over and if i remember rightly was based on his type of humour. I Just googled his name and board game and came across this image. I haven’t seen the board game since i was about 7 or 8 but instantly remember the box and just from looking at it i remember that it was full of random pictures that you had to caption. Now I was a kid and obviously wasn’t good at it and the answers were obviously more then likely rude but I didn’t really understand at that age.

There was one comedian I adored as a kid and was absolutely fascinated by him, I had a few of his shows on VHS and really found him so entertaining and amazing to watch. So much so that i was taken to see him live (i can’t remember how old I was) and remember being a tad disappointed as he did some of the material that he had already on his VHS. That comedian was none other then Joe Pasquale.

I was fascinated by him, I used to watch his VHS over and over again, I think at that age anyone with a squeaky voice is always going to be entertaining. Also i remember he used to use a lot of props on stage and I think I found that really hilariously funny too. Just from Googling that name after so long I finally remember the VHS i used to love was called ‘Live and Squeaky’.

Even watching it for the first time in absolute Yearsssss I can still remember some of the punchlines word to word and even laugh a lot at the same places.

The thing that I think that upset me about when I saw him live and being disappointed that it was a repeat of some of the things I had seen was I didn’t realise that comedians did the same sets round the country. I was too young to realise that comedians tour doing the same at over and over again as a kid you are lost in a dreamworld and this show sort of opened my eyes to the world of comedy.

Another comedian that played a big part in my childhood was Lee Evans. Whilst I wasn’t really introduced to his stand up to much later in life his television shows played a huge part in my comedic enjoyment as a kid. Another comedian that fascinated me as a kid was Jim Carey. I think when I was young I was slightly mesmorised by him I was fascinated in all the films that he did in the nineties and couldn’t get enough of him! I made mum take me to see Ace Ventura 2 twice at the cinema (poor mum – sorry!) and the second time i apparently got really upset because it was the film we had already seen and there was nothing new! I just wanted to see more of Jim Carey I couldn’t get enough!

From the really early years that is all I can remember as to how stand up comedy really effected me. I always tried to create a joke as I remember again a conversation I had with mum where i didn’t get the concept of what made a joke funny and thought you could just put two really random things together and it would be funny. I remember one of these that I made up as a kid because it was so blooming silly it has always kept with me

“what goes creak creak?”

“An elderly grasshopper”

See – it makes no sense and from that one joke I made up I think its safe to say that I could never be a stand up comedian – even at the age of 27, although some life stories would make cracking punch lines – like the time i was knocked out by a mannequin…but more about that later!

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