This annual fundraising charity event just gets better and better! Now in its fifth year Griff Rhys Jones presents two and half hours of comedy, dance, singing and special guests for a whole load of fun to raise money for East Anglian Children’s’ Hospice (you can donate here) at Ipswich Regent Theatre.
With a super fabulous house band on the stage for all the music we were treated to our very own Royal variety performance show, which makes it an absolute must every year. In fact, it actually gets better each year and the special guests Griff manages to persuade to join in makes it such a wonderfully entertaining show.
Griff Rhys Jones was a fabulous host, introducing the whole event and why we were all gathered, he came on between each performer giving us jokes and endless anecdotes from his career and graciously introduced the next act.
Let’s take a look at who appeared in the 2024 event:
We had singing from the Ruthie Henshall Cast and St Mary-le-Tower Choir with their lovely voices and The Fosse Four came on stage with their dance routine.
Triple Cream, from Opportunity Knocks – an 80s version of BGT, and they are still making audiences laugh with their musical comedy uniqueness.
The night was gloriously packed with very funny stand-up comedians:
Joe Pasquale and Rory McGrath were introduced at the start of the show as Joe in Norwich and Rory in Cambridgeshire, and we see them on the screen by the magic of technology, which of course wasn’t too successful. The challenge was for Joe to get to Ipswich for a set by the end of the night. Yes he did make it and he was sidesplittingly bonkers with his box of tricks. Not sure what happened to Rory.
Nathan Caton, one of the hottest stars on the comedy circuit, came on and gave a comical set based on real world experience. Paul Sinha was just cleverly humorous and pretty hilarious. David Baddiel delighted the audience with his jesting and anecdotes, and was so natural on stage.
We were delighted to see Jon Culshaw with his brilliant Shakespeare prose with about 15 different impressions which included a marvellous Trump, a wonderful Tom Baker and a cool Brian Cox. He’s still got it.
Omid Djalili was able to attend, which was a sigh of relief as he was on the bill for last year but couldn’t make it last minute. He was funny as usual with his blend of comedy/ranting.
If that wasn’t enough of amazing guests, we had super special guest Ruth Jones, as herself, joining Giff on stage to persuade us to buy more raffle tickets. As expected, Ruth received a cheers as she came on stage looking stunning, and a bigger cheer as her opening words were ‘Alright’ as Nessa. Griff and Ruth also did the raffle draw, unfortunately I didn’t win anything, again.
Yet again, another hugely successful night with a fabulous line-up which raised a whopping £149,000 for EACH!!
A reminder, you can donate here.