Episode 9 of ‘A History of Comedy in Several Objects’ is now available on iTunes and acast.

In this episode, we look at a programme (from the Linda Smith Collection) for the 1986 Red Wedge Comedy Tour, a run of pro-Labour performances featuring comedians such as Mark Miwurdz and Porky the Poet. The Red Wedge Comedy Tour emerged from the political initiative ‘Red Wedge’, a collective of performers, fronted by Billy Bragg and Paul Weller among others, who formed in 1985 and organised a number of major music tours in 1985, along with comedy tours in 1986 and 1987.

This episode also features an extract from an ‘in conversation’ event with Phill Jupitus from 2015, plus Olly and Elspeth’s dramatic reading of Porky’s strip cartoon from the Red Wedge Comedy Tour programme (see below!)

‘A Tale of Two Punters’ cartoon by Porky the Poet (c) Phill Jupitus

Apologies, we have a slight error to correct. In this episode I mention that the year is 1987, when in fact it was 1986. Many apologies!

Don’t forget to get involved! You can contact us via standup@kent.ac.uk or tweet us at @histcompod. You can search the online catalogue for more information about the holdings of  the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive at http://archive.kent.ac.uk.

Images of some objects featured on the podcast can be found on our flickr site in the ‘History of Comedy in Several Objects‘ album.