Barry Ferns, a Serious Jokester: “People’s Time is More Precious than their Money”
- slingshotmagazine
- Feb 4, 2019
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 11, 2019
by Torbjørn Jørstad
After more than 25 years in the industry, comedian Barry Ferns realised his true mission; to create a community for independent comedians to thrive, while staying true to the philosophy of people’s time being more precious than their money. So he opened a free comedy club.
Laugher fills the room. It’s a Tuesday night, yet the tiny upstairs area of the Victorian-era The Camden Head in Angel is crammed to the brim with people, their eyes fixed forwards. On stage, one man tightly grips the microphone stand while barely containing his own laughter. His rough and unpolished looks, complete with thick, curly shoulder-length hair and an unshaven face may distract, but behind the façade, Barry Ferns has full control of the crowd. After all, he is right where he belongs.
Shortly after the gig, as the crowd of 50 or so scrambles down to the bar, the man himself appears much calmer. The comedy-entrepreneur behind the award-winning Angel Comedy Club, a collective hub for independent stand-up comedians to share their work, is clearly not just a silly jokester.
On June 6th 2010, in the very same upstairs area of The Camden Head, Ferns, together with three fellow comedians, founded Angel Comedy Club, with the intention of “making comedy more accessible for audiences and comedians”. The club provides a platform for up-and-coming acts to perform, and for established acts to test out new material.
“The philosophy behind it is that people’s time is more precious than their money. At the end they can give what they think it’s worth, and if you’re a millionaire you may think it’s worth £10,000 because that’s as much to you as someone with no money giving £10,” he says. “That has never happened though,” he adds. Eight years later, the club is regularly rated as a top-ten attraction for a night out in London by TripAdvisor and has been branded a “comedy institution” by Time Out.
Since stepping into the UK comedy industry some 26 years ago, the scene has changed massively Ferns says. He credits perseverance as the reason he is able to keep going, but admits the comedy life is not all just laughs and fun.
“When stand-up comedy started 25-30 years ago, there weren’t as many agencies and there was definitely not this whole money-making machine surrounding comedy. As this changed, agencies sought a supply of theatres and clubs for their acts to perform in, and of course you wouldn’t be able to perform if you weren’t on that agency’s roster. What essentially happened is the industry became more about making money than being funny, and if you were not with an agency you had nowhere to perform. And that’s where the idea for Angel Comedy Club came from,” he says.
In 2016 the club expanded after a crowdfunding campaign raised £46,000 and the crew were able to take out a lease on a pub they named The Bill Murray (after the Scottish nobleman, not the comedian) on Queen’s Head Street, only a stone’s throw away from The Camden Head. Today, Angel Comedy Club weekly hosts around 57 shows shared between the two venues. Several high-profile comedians have visited the club, like Dara Ó Briain, Russell Howard, Eddie Izzard and Louis CK (“before that was a bad thing,” Ferns laughs).
In addition, the club regularly hosts workshops, comedy courses and community projects. A sitcom about Bill Murray is also in the works, he reveals.
“I don’t believe that life has any actual narrative. Things happen, and you make sense of it after the fact. The idea of a career is me choosing edited highlights of my narrative, in order to present myself in a certain way. In a sense, a career is really ‘what do I find significant about the things I’ve done?’”
“I convinced myself when I was around 21 that I didn’t want to do stand-up; I didn’t think the lifestyle suited me. But after an eight-year break I eventually relented and figured ‘I guess this is who I am,’” he says. It hasn’t always been easy though – Ferns recalls his experience of going bankrupt as a result of his repeated attempts at making it big at the Edinburgh Fringe, the UKs biggest comedy festival.
“When I first started out it felt like I had no choice – If I wanted to be a comedian, I had to take a show to Edinburgh. But the cost of renting a performance space, a flat, producing flyers, the travel and taking time off work eventually left me with a debt of £35,000 in 2007. At that point I’d already worked whatever extra jobs I could get and squatted for eight months. I ended up having to declare bankruptcy,” he says. Despite this, the comedy life was still in his mind, and it had been for a long time. As a young boy with a working-class background from Dorset, Ferns knew early on what he wanted to do.
“I was reading jokes into a microphone under a duvet when I was seven years old. My very first gig was essentially an underage, 15-year-old me in a crowded bar in Dorset swearing and saying inappropriate stuff on stage. It was great,” he laughs. Only a year later, he performed in the comedy tent at Glastonbury festival.
Since then, he has won multiple comedy awards, filed for bankruptcy on more than one occasion and performed on stages around the country roughly 5,000 times. Apart from stand-up comedy, Ferns has written and directed sketch comedy for BBC, ITV and Radio 4 to mention a few.
“I also spent six months as a monk in South East Asia when I was 28,” he adds, with a big, fat grin on his face.
“Most comedy is just noticing things around you,” he says in conclusion. “I tend to explore my own sense of self, or my experience of the world. Before going on stage, I get into a mindset where everyone in the room is my friend, which removes the pressure to be funny. It’s like you’re just hanging out with your friends.”
Despite the financial troubles once caused by it, an annual highlight for Ferns is still the Edinburgh Fringe. He now performs on top of Arthur’s Seat every year, but a stunt he pulled 11 years ago tops even performing atop the extinct volcano.
“I legally changed my name to Lionel Richie by deed poll, as decided by the audience. I kept it for seven years, and it was that name I filed bankruptcy under. I had to go to the Royal Court of Justice and put my hand on the Bible and say ‘I, Lionel Richie do solemnly swear’… and the guy holding the Bible openly laughed in my face,” he grins.
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