The Cambridge Footlights

[A] well-researched book. * Mail on Sunday *Sellers has interviewed more than seventy Footlights alumni, and his portrayal of these later years is generously sprinkled with their memories. * Literary Review *Sellers has produced a definitive history, drawing on an impressive range of original interviews with the likes of Baddiel, Garden, David Mitchell, John Lloyd, Bill Oddie, Jan Ravens, Clive Anderson, Simon Munnery, Nick Hancock, Steve Punt, Matthew Holness, John Finnemore, Stefan Golaszewski and Amy Hoggart, as well as acts currently breaking through, such as Archie Henderson, aka Jazz Emu, John Tothill and Hasan Al-Habib. * Chortle *Drawing on a wealth of interviews with so many Footlights members who went on to become stars, this book presents a detailed and highly engaging history of this venerable Cambridge institution that has done so much to shape British comedy. * Oliver Double, author of Alternative Comedy and Getting the Joke, and Reader in Comic and Popular Performance, University of Kent, UK *How a tiny, scruffy club, begun as a cricket match against a psychiatric hospital and with never more than a few dozen members, changed comedy forever. Immensely readable, consistently surprising, and often very funny. * John Lloyd, Producer of Not The Nine O’ Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder, and QI *

A deeply researched journey through the generations of the Footlights club, from a camp coterie to an accidental passport to a career, to a training ground for comics, and for some turning out to be an embarrassment as tastes turned from old school sketch comedy to edgier material.I suspect most ex-members of the Cambridge Footlights are like me, with a hazy knowledge of its early days and past members and with little idea of how the club has developed in the years since our departure. This book traces the history of the Cambridge Footlights, from a gentleman’s club with a penchant for female impersonation to a haven for young men who enjoyed the fun of amateur comedy to a training ground for career comedians, male and female.

Robert Sellers is the author of over 25 books on subjects such as cinema, theatre, television, music and popular culture. These include Raising Laughter: How the Sitcom Kept Britain Smiling in the ‘70s (2021), as well as authorized biographies of Oliver Reed, Kenny Everett and Ernie Wise, along with histories of Ealing Studios, Radio 1 and James Bond.