A COMEDY club celebrates its birthday next week with another helping of the very material which has built its name.

Mostly Comedy was set up by Hitchin-based comic duo Doggett and Ephgrave three years ago, so The Comet caught up with the latter to talk about its origins and future plans.

“Myself and Glynn (Doggett) went to the same theatre school in Hitchin and we started writing comedy about seven years ago,” said David Ephgrave.

“We took a show to Edinburgh Festival and after having reasonable luck with that we thought we’d like to run a night down here.

“When it first started we didn’t really know a lot of stand-ups so a lot of acts we’d be taking a risk.

“Over time we’ve built up friends and contacts through doing Edinburgh and we know a few more people now. When it comes to Edinburgh we’ve found people want to preview their show and are happy to do it for less.”

About the future, David added: “We do a show in Edinburgh every year so maybe in the town we could do something like that. But we’re just looking to keep it going just with bigger acts.”

Next Thursday’s line-up at The Croft in Bancroft sees stand-up from Hatty Ashdown and David Trent, sketches from Rule of Three, plus music from YouTube sensation Paul Sweeney.

The club will also present character comedy from The Real Brian Blessed, the larger-than-life creation from star of BBC3’s Coming of Age and Gervais and Merchant’s new BBC2 sitcom Life’s Too Short, Matthew Earley.

Earley’s Blessed was recently described by Time Out as “A pitch-perfect approximation of the Flash Gordon star; a genius piece of celeb assassination”.

Doors open at 8.15pm for the gig, with the first act taking the stage at 9pm.

Tickets are �6, and are available both on the door or in advance via www.mostlycomedy.co.uk