Howlers Comedy Night
Cheltenham Playhouse Theatre
29th January 2026
There is always a great sense of belonging at the Playhouse Theatre for the Howlers Comedy Nights, as the box office staff, stewards and bar staff infuse the evening with a familial quality…and then, of course, there are the comedians!
The unenviable role of the evening’s MC fell to Greg Winfield and the task must feel like walking into a room of judgemental in-laws for the first time. Regardless, Winfield set about introducing himself to the audience and eliciting the first laughs of the evening. Our Greg was even willing to mine his personal loneliness to spur on the sniggering in the room. The joke about wanting a dog for company, who was retired from the bomb squad, due to colour blindness and only having paws, set the tone for a night of wide ranging comedy. The MC even managed to crowbar in some more intervals…
The frantic urgency of the lonely cat-woman Eleanor Tiernan took the comedy to another level. Self-deprecating to the point of flagellation, Tiernan is the cousin you sit next to at dreaded family events because she can make you laugh – and laugh we did. Our Irish raconteur’s stories meandered from the structures she helped build as a Civil Engineer to drying up down there, below the waist. Brilliant. Writing about her pet cat on Mumsnet, as if it was a child, tells you all you need to know about the hive-mind of this comedian. Likewise, Tiernan’s comedictake of the parenting skills imposed on Gen X was as funny as it was educational.
Big Hearted Matt Price insisted on teaching us how to speak in his mother-tongue: Cornish. Bastard. Price’s whole routine was punctuated with the colourful characters which populate his Cornish life. From the 25st co-worker “Salad”, to ex-jockey “Dave, the horse-murdering bastard” to the related “Raging,” this family inspired a night of factory-floor banter. The humour was as relatable and working-class as a side-hustle under the HMRC radar. The emotional intelligence which fired the final punchline about his Mother’s facial hair was tenderly applied. Sublime.
During one of the intervals Champagne Supernova by those reconstructed siblings provoked a spontaneous singalong…it really was one of those nights!
Mercurial Dave Fulton is far from an oasis of calm on stage. Like a number of American comedians – Reginald D. Hunter and Rich Hall – Fulton arrived in the UK, as his humour was appreciated across the pond. Moreover, If you were to order Rich Hall off the Dark Web you would receive, in a hastily dropped off package, the seeming splenetic Dave Fulton. His acerbic, yet articulate and erudite observations about life, politics, culture, hookers, lack of a pension plan and love of motorbikes caused a tsunami of laughter. To ridicule a nation’s people to their face takes nerve and the hotspur of the unpredictable Uncle who arrives inebriated on Christmas day. I will never see Blackpool the same ever again! For all his bellicose diatribes the comedian’s sensitivity was apparent. Accordingly, the night ending exploration of his step-son’s introduction into his life was tender and warm. Ultimately, the comedian’s sense of belonging with his family was palpable and the roar of approval from the crowd mirrored a Norton Commando’s decibels.
Photo: Dave Fulton by Paul Creed
By: Swilgate Scuttler
Ps For Jo, who spoke with her birth Mother this week for the first time.