These Comedians are Spreading Happiness Far and Wide!

Amplify all voices. As long as those voices are speaking puns, jokes, and riddles!

This is the goal of the Felt Nowt comedy group. This small business is bringing comedy clubs to comedically underserved areas in North East England to spread not just the laughs, but also the gigs and grow communities.

Spreading the laughter
Positive News explains that the pandemic forced gig comedians to work together to drum up business and to organize online gigs.

A group of comedians formed comedy collective Felt Nowt while in-person venues were closed. But the cooperation didn’t end there. 

As in-person venues reopened, the comedians who made up Felt Nowt continued to work together with the aim of bringing laughs to areas without comedy venues of their own.

Last year, for instance, Felt Nowt helped organize a comedy club in Whitley Bay, in the United Kingdom. And now, they are spreading the fun to the Dun Cow pub in Sunderland as well.

According to Felt Nowt member Si Beckwith, “This is about giving every comedian a voice. We’re showing that there’s power in numbers and power in a union of comedians working together.” 

Becoming Felt Nowt
So who are these erstwhile comedians working together to give every comic a voice and every audience a laugh?
Business Live gives us the scoop. These entertainers first merged into Felt Nowt for profits as the pandemic saw their venues closed.

But they soon morphed into something more impactful. After partnering with experts at North East Business and Innovation Centre (BIC), Felt Nowt decided to make it their goal to spread comedy to areas without comedy clubs.

Kevin Marquis, a manager at the BIC helped them develop their business plan and maximize their community impact. He described the group as an organization with a “social heart.”

As Beckwith explained, “Comedy has the potential to do incredible things in all kinds of contexts to improve confidence, mental health and relationships. Our driving force is to bring those benefits to our community.” 

And their group’s name? That’s something of a laugh as well. Felt Nowt explains on their website that they “borrowed” the catchphrase of comedian Wavis O’Shave. 

O’Shave’s classic character “The Hard” had a name for stunts like hitting himself with a hammer and reassuring the audience that “I felt nowt.”

Nowtflix
One of their latest comedy-from-home pandemic innovations is the Nowtflix video on demand subscription service.

Launched back in May 2021, Nowtflix gives subscribers a library of laughs. And the subscription fees go right back to the community, in the form of expanding their comedy presence in underserved areas.

Felt Nowt is confident that their impact will benefit not just the public, not just the gig comedians, but the whole artistic community at large.

Beckwith sums it up when speaking about Sunderland, a city in northeast England, “The city is buzzing with regeneration and is ripe for a new comedy scene that acts not just as a platform for comics, but also for other creatives, writers, producers and communicators.”