NEW SHOWS ALL OVER THE U.K.
Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Newcastle, Manchester, Bath, Bristol, and more! Plus the Cat Laughs Belfast Comedy Festival 2025! And get my special for free! And album recommendations!
Dear CMB x As You Werewolves,
I’m just back from Machynlleth Comedy Festival in Wales, and it was a life-changing experience. I highly recommend the trip out to rural Montgomeryshire to see a smorgasbord of alternative comedy if you ever have a bit of time off work in May. Mach was so good I’m considering changing my name to Christopher Macharthur-Boyd. (Not really, as this would necessitate a frankly unmanageable amount of admin. However, the sentiment is real.) Here’s a picture of me swimming and flexing my wonderful muscles in a nearby river, with some friends:
I was doing a W.I.P. at Mach - if you’re not au fait with the industry lingo of the U.K. comedy scene, a W.I.P. is a try-out show where you do your next tour/fringe hour in a small venue at a reduced price, with hopefully commensurate expectations of slickness/quality. It’s okay to bring notes on-stage, and you kind of have permission to be as experimental as you want. I love to do them, and my work-in-progress at Machynlleth Rugby Club was one of the funnest I’ve ever done. Thanks to any bees of the CMB Hive for showing up in full force.
I’m building up to doing my Edinburgh Fringe show in August, so I’m using this edition of CMB x As You Were to announce/plug a bunch of work-in-progress shows that I have coming up! Some of them will be solo, some of them will be with friends. Every single one of the comedians that I’m doing these shows with is just as good, if not better, than me. I can vouch for all of them!
CHRISTOPHER MACARTHUR-BOYD presents THE WORKSTOPHER INCARTHUR PROGROYD TOUR 2025
EDINBURGH - MAY 10th - Monkey Barrel Comedy
GLASGOW - MAY 14th - The Rum Shack (with Josie Long)
GLASGOW - JUNE 18th - The Rum Shack (with Josie Long)
FARNHAM - JUNE 20th - The Maltings (with Paul McCaffrey)
LONDON - JUNE 24th - Downstairs at the Kings Head (with Ivo Graham)
MANCHESTER - JUNE 28th - Fairfield Social Club
LEEDS - JULY 3rd - Hyde Park Book Club (with Josh Jones)
EDINBURGH - JULY 13th - Monkey Barrel Comedy
GLASGOW - JULY 14th - The Stand Comedy Club (with Marc Jennings)
GLASGOW - JULY 15th - The Rum Shack (with Josie Long)
BORDON - JULY 16th - Phoenix Arts (with Susie McCabe)
LONDON - JULY 17th - The Bill Murray (ON SALE SOON)
BRISTOL - JULY 20th - The Gaffe (with Elliot Steel
BATH - JULY 21st - Burdall’s Yard (with Paul McCaffrey) (ON SALE SOON)
NEWCASTLE - JULY 22nd - Newcastle Fringe Festival @ The Biscuit Factory (ON SALE SOON)
GLASGOW - JULY 26th - The Stand Comedy Club
GET TICKETS TO THESE SHOWS AT MY LINKTREE HERE x
Some of these gigs are in venues that I’ve done a hundred times. The Stand Comedy Club in Glasgow is actually where I did my first ever five-minute spot in 2013, and they’ve just announced that their club is relocating from Woodlands Road over to Lansdowne Parish Church, and these W.I.P.s will be the last ever shows I do in the original space. Some of these gigs are in venues I’ve never played before! I’m so excited to do The Gaffe in Bristol, which is a brand new club, and The Bill Murray and Kings Head in London, which are supposed to be two of the best rooms in the history of U.K. stand-up.
The show is really cooking, and I’ve had loads of positive feedback from audience members before the show, so please do come and see it on this little tour. If there’s anywhere you would like to see me come, just leave a comment underneath and I’ll say to the bookers.
And obviously, if you’d rather come and see me at the Edinburgh Fringe in August, when I’ve nailed down exactly what the show is, that would be brilliant too. I’m at Monkey Barrel Comedy for the entire festival. It’s going to be a special month, I think.
—
BELFAST CAT LAUGHS FESTIVAL 2025
I’m so excited to go over to Ireland this month to do the first ever Belfast Cat Laughs Festival! The Cat Laughs people are amazing, and they’ve put together loads of brilliant bills in some of the most amazing venues in Belfast, like what they’ve done in Kilkenny for years. (I’ve wanted to do a set in Lavery’s for a long long time!) I did my tour show Scary Times in the MAC last year, so I’m excited to be back there, because it was one of my favourite shows from the entire tour.
FRIDAY 23rd MAY - The MAC with Vittorio Angelone, Emma Doran, Peter Rethinasamy and Rich Hall
FRIDAY 23rd MAY - The Naughton Studios with Colin Geddis, Louise Young and Kevin McGahern
SATURDAY 24th MAY - Lavery’s with David O’Doherty, William Thompson, Kyla Cobbler, Paddy Raff
SATURDAY 24th MAY - The MAC with William Thompson, Colin Geddis, Mike Rice, Diona Doherty and Seann Walsh
SUNDAY 25th MAY - Waterfront Hall with Shane Todd, Chris Kent, Kyla Cobbler, Ray Bradshaw, Scott Bennett, Rich Hall, Paddy Mcdonnell
The Belfast comedy scene is very quietly one of the best and healthiest stand-up scenes in the world, in my opinion, and so full of funny and sweet people and I can’t wait to gig alongside them and the other guests. Every single line-up there, I’m on with somebody who I’ve had a lunch or a pint with at some point. I can’t wait.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading this. Hopefully see you at one of these shows. Work is still being done on the SCARY TIMES special. I’m excited for you’s to see it. Cheers!
—
800 POUND GORILLA MEDIA BOGOF
Last year I released my debut hour-long special Oh No (recorded live at Monkey Barrel Comedy in Edinburgh) with 800 Pound Gorilla Media, who are probably the coolest stand-up comedy distribution company in the entirety of Nashville. You can stream it for free in full on YouTube, but if you feel like buying it and owning it (forever!), they’re doing a buy-one-get-one-free offer where you can get it for free if you buy one of their other specials.
There’s hundreds of comedians to choose from, but I thought it would be nice to personally recommend a few of my favourite specials that they’ve put out recently: “Hungry. Horny. Scared.” by Paddy Young (a very funny comedian from the north of England), “Number One” by Sean Patton (a real one from New Orleans), “Full Of Beans” by Dan Tiernan (another Northern legend), “Translations” by Vittorio Angelone (a terrible terrible man), “What A Surprise” by Geraldine Hickey (very funny Aussie), and really, there’s so many brilliant shows there and I feel bad for not mentioning them, so I’m just going to stop. But if you get one of them, you can get mine for free, so feel free.
—
SOME NEW MUSIC I’VE BEEN ENJOYING RECENTLY
PUP - Who Will Look After The Dogs?
Too skuzzy to be pop-punk, too joyous to be indie, too sweet to be hardcore, too fun to be emo, too sad to be happy. I seen PUP live in Glasgow on their last tour at SWG3 and it was incredible. They ended a love song about a guitar with the solo from Hotel California, for some reason!
VIAGRA BOYS - viagr aboys
Their last record CAVE WORLD was a conceptual slab of dirty conspiracy theory-puncturing ape-rock, and this follow-up is slightly lither freaky danceable shrimp-fried sleaze-punk with a deep chasm of longing at its core. “Go ahead: break my neck! Take the fluid from my spine, put it in a mason jar, and give it to a child.”
TAPEWORMS - Grand Voyage
Squiggly itch-scratching homesick electro-glitchpop from three French indie kids living in megacity Tokyo. Feels like what the Powerpuff Girls would be listening to if they grew up, drifted apart, and spent a significant chunk of their waking lives daydreaming about what the other two were up to.
DEAFHEAVEN - Lonely People In Power
Their last album INFINITE GRANITE did away with the screamier abrasive aspects of their sound, and this one brings them roaring right back, and actually embraces some of the hoarier traditional tropes of heavy metal (satisfying chug riffage, ghastly wailing, Transylvanian blast-beats) while still expanding out into avant-noise. Sometimes feels like hiking over a mountain of dead bodies, in a good way!
LOS PIRANAS - Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida
Extremely utilitarian African improv-dance groove played by a trio of ex-punk Colombian free-jazz experimentalists. Very nice to listen to while you lie in the sun, or while you walk in the sun. The title translates to, “One more chance to succeed in life.” You’re telling me, brother!
I hope to see you somewhere on the Workstopher Incarthur-Progoyd world tour of Scotland and England,
CMB x As You Were