Mike James has a blast in the Welsh boutique comedy festival

I’ve seen it, it is all going to be all right (in fact it already is). There is no need to worry.

Many of the Correspondence articles on this website are of a downbeat tone, assessing the failings of: comedy, comedians, TV, jokes, microphones, trousers, amongst other foes and I myself have contributed to this catalogue of ills. However, this article comes as nothing but a celebration of the incredible Machynlleth Comedy Festival.

Anyone who is unaware of this festival – which Chortle did not give the coverage it was certainly due – it is a three-day comedy festival set in a small market town in central Wales that attracted some of the biggest and most interesting comedians working in the UK for a weekend of camping and jokes in churches, crown green bowls clubs (during Ed Gamble’s show people were still bowling outside) and other venues, all within five minutes walk of one another, dotted around the town.

I don’t think I have to say that the likes of Pappy’s, Nick Helm and Tim Key were all fantastic (and all for £10 or less), but it was everything else that pushed the festival really over the edge. It ran fantastically well with everyone clearly enthused about the comedy on offer.

The details were sublime, with local Welsh ales and beer being sold on site, great curries and pizza, pub quizzes, comedy quizzes (the shield for which Thom Tuck brandished all Sunday) and great bands supplementing the mirth.

There were shows in sheds, in candy shops, on trains. Even the ability to use the showers as the leisure centre, the proximity to the town, and the amount of people from the town at the festival gave it an amazingly inclusive feel.

I’ve never been to the Edinburgh Fringe, but I’ve been to plenty of music festivals where there is a ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality between the payers and artists, created by ticket pricing, accommodation or whatever. Here people were drinking and hanging out and mingling together throughout the weekend.

No two acts I saw were alike and one of the main things I took from the weekend was the sheer freedom of comedy and that there is a place – and an audience - for the unusual, the difficult and the cerebral. I won’t pretend I loved everything I saw, but I got a kick out of performers seemingly doing exactly what they wanted to do.

This weekend reinvigorated my interest in live comedy and the boundaries of performance more than anything has in years. I’m moving back to the UK soon after almost four years away and my initial reluctance has been replaced by intrigue as to what the rest of the UK comedy landscape has hidden.

Three days camping in Wales in May sounds like a terrible idea, but everything about this festival made the weekend truly unique and a testament to comedians working in the UK and the people slaving to bring people quality comedy, in well-run venues, at reasonable prices, in interesting ways.

Congratulations to Henry Widdicome, the mastermind behind the whole thing. I will be back next year.. But do not read this and come yourself. It is full.

Published: 13 May 2013