Profile: Chubby White’s Variety Night

“Chubby White’s Variety Night is a Bristol-born comedy night rolling forth the adventures of a mythical 1970s comedian named Chubby White,” says co-creator Georg Erlanger.

“Variety is what we stand for. Each one-off show has new acts, new characters and a new story.”

Here’s George to tell us more:

The way each show works is that we act out a comedy ‘play’ and, during the moments of highest dramatic tension, we bring out three of our favourite comedians. I guess you can call it compering.

We were desperate to break the eggcup on what a comedy night can be, and to do something that was unique to who we are. The summer before we started the shows we saw Arcade Fire’s Reflektor show at Earl’s Court, as well as the cult comedy supergroup The Bearpit Podcast (Podcast), and this type of unashamed bombastic fun really informed what we wanted the show to be.

We pay tribute to that influence by getting Bearpit members (Mat Ewins, Adam Hess, John Kearns, Matt Winning, Pat Cahill, Lou Sanders) to headline the shows. Alongside them the comedy is influenced by all the classic American cartoons (Simpsons, Futurama, South Park), anything by Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty, The Sarah Silverman Show), and Britain’s heritage of surrealist comedy: The Mighty Boosh, Limmy and Monty Python. All roads lead to Python.

Right now it’s a team of five of us writing, producing, song-writing, performing and cleaning. We’ve been performing together for three years (and living together for six) now so we know exactly what our strong suits are. Nicky’s incredible at all forms of production and song writing, Jamie’s insanely gifted at writing, singing and playing villains, Matt will pour his soul into playing a door, Eitan’s mind is a jungle-like ecosystem of weird ideas, and George is uniquely George (or Chubby). We’re also lucky to be surrounded by supremely gifted friends and family who help us with poster art, set, costume design and bongos.

To start with the Chubby White idea was more of a subplot to what the show was about, which was just silly party fun. We had a robot dance-off and everyone had to wear hats. An everlasting memory from that show was Mat Ewins picking up a Hulk Hogan wig (don’t ask), putting it on his head and saying “potatoes”. It’s all been downhill from there.

We’ve graduated to writing hulking scripts about communist Star Wars, deep sea kingdoms run by a lost tribe of Israel, and a dystopian society where comedy is illegal.

The next show is called Chubby White and the Lost Temple of Night” and we can’t tell you much more than that. Apart from that we’ve got Lou Sanders headlining, Evelyn Mok and Liam Pickford, which we’re frickin psyched about.

Chubby White and the Lost Temple of Night comes to the Bristol Improv Theatre on Saturday, January 27. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/events/350188198778615