Blog: Doctor Doom at The Leicester Comedy Festival

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I was up in lovely LEICESTER at the weekend, there to bring Data and Doctor Doom to the Leicester Comedy Festival for, I think, my TENTH time at the festival, and the SEVENTEENTH anniversary of (the second night of) my first time there!

It's an amazing thing that the festival is still going strong 30ish years after it all began. I remember it getting going as a very local affair in the distant days when I still LIVED in Leicester and it's come a LONG way from there to its current status as a COMEDY BEHEMOTH. In some ways it feels a bit sad that it's lost some of the Fringe-y localNESS of those early days, and does feel a bit more focussed on Big Telly Comedians than an INDIE TYPE like me would necessarily prefer, but it's an incredible thing to see how much it's embedded in the city and generally accepted as PART of Leicester.

As ever when returning to that fair city I was delighted to see that the grand tradition of knocking down buildings has continued, this time with a great chunk of the street near the town square being demolished. Later research showed that this had been done YEARS ago but it was new to me and WEIRDLY there had never been a PUB on the site so I cannot even take personal responsibility its removal, unlike the many many other demolitions linked to my musical past in Leicester.

I arrived at the King Richard III Visitor Centre - another NEW THING to me - and met the lovely staff there, who were all VERY friendly and helpful, especially when I got into my room and needed some help getting the projector working. It was a GRATE room I must say, and after some mild PANIC about getting set up (largely caused by me not having done it in a while) I was just about ready to receive AUDIENCE.

And LO! Audience did appear, and was PACKED with PALS and familiar faces, as well as some NON-familiar faces also. I must admit I got A Little Bit Excited by it all, and had to use ALL my willpower to wait until it was actually time to start before getting going properly. Rather fantastically during this time Mrs E Pattison was able to grab a candid snap of THE COUNCIL, fully reunited for the first time in many years!



The show itself seemed to go OK - I was a little bit thrown by a) having some of my oldest PALS in the room GRINNING back at me and b) the projector set-up meaning I wasn't able to use Presenter View, and so couldn't see what was coming next, but I think together we all rose to the challenge and had a rather jolly time. I then got to lurk around and CHAT to a few people, including the marvellous Mr B Ennis who had PROMOTED the whole thing so ably (he was GRATE!), before we headed round the corner to yet ANOTHER place I had not been before, The Blue Boar.

COR, this was a really nice pub which, I think, had been an office when I last walked past it, and was now PACKED with so many beers that there were FOUR pages of screen listing them all! CHAT was had with the lovely friends who had rolled up, and stories were told of adventures that happened more DECADES ago than I would really like to admit. It was BRILLO!

Hugs were had, farewells were said, and myself, Mr T 'The Tiger' McClure and The Pattisons made our way along New Walk to The Marquis Of Wellington to find Mr and Mrs F Machine, who had arrived for our BAND CURRY, which took place over the road. This was ANOTHER delightful affair, during which we discussed plans for our next GIG (for about 3 minutes) and also TELLY (for significantly longer).

We popped back over the road for a final PINT and then it was time for us all to wend our weary - and, in my case, slightly WOBBLY - way home. I collapsed into my Premier Inn very happy, but also EXHAUSTED - that was a LOT of fun to pack into one day!

posted 10/2/2026 by MJ Hibbett

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