John Fothergill

 


This lively Geordie is a highly sought-after headline comic.


John hails from Crawcrook, a small village in the North East of England. After spending the majority of his childhood trying to convince the rest of the community that he was a very special child, they finally agreed and after the traditional tar and feathering banished him to the nearest city – the vast cosmopolitan metropolis that is Newcastle upon Tyne.


Employment varied from cleaning the deck and galley of a gas rig in the middle of the North Sea, to sound man at a quakers meeting (which consists mainly of silent contemplation), to the obvious move to professional bongo player.


However, it was while working as a casual (very casual) scenery mover at a local theatre that he found his true vocation as a pirate in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Unfortunately John was far less adept at the singing and acting part as he was at the general behaving like a drunken sea farer, so this was to be short lived.


The good news, however, was that the seed of performance had well and truly been planted in the window box of the young Geordie’s mind and it seemed the only logical step to go from swash-buckler to stand up comedian.


John became a regular at Newcastle’s Comedy Café and in 1993, his first year as a comedian, he had been lucky enough to appear with the likes of Jack Dee, Lee Evans and Jo Brand, but in 1994 it had become obvious that if he wanted to go any further in showbiz he would have to do a Dick Whittington, pack up his spotted hanky and head off to the land of Eastenders and poor quality football.


John has slotted into the comedy circuit like a three pinned plug combining a unique style of embarrassing sexual revelations with a rural innocence. He has also toured the nations universities, done two tours of Ireland and performed in Hong Kong and regularly at the Edinburgh Festival.


In 1997 John performed a month long run at the Adelaide International Comedy Festival, and in 1999 he appeared on BBC1’s The Stand Up Show, and became a regular member of the Comedy Store’s highly regarded Cutting Edge team.