And we’re back! What a start to 2026 this show was, such a good show that we waited until we were nearly 8 weeks into the year before we even had it.
I’ve been very excited about this show for a while. In 2025, we were just dipping our toes back into our live shows and for the most part focussed on regulars and friends of the club. Since then, we’ve had a swathe of brilliant applications and we’ve finally been able to start showcasing them, as well as longer spots for some old favourites as well.
Opening the show we had Dan McKee. Dan is always a force of nature on stage, you never have any idea what weird and wonderful nonsense he’s going to bring to the stage at any gig, but good god will he sell whatever that is with superb confidence and it’s a joy. Not many comedians can spend 15 minutes with a bag over their head and somehow not make that bit feel old by the end, but Dan nails it.
Dan performs with a multi-disciplinary comedic excellence that would make him the envy of any budding performer, and if you see him on a line-up near you, you owe it to yourself to go and watch, as he’s bound to provide a completely unique and batshit performance that will live rent free in your head for years.
Next we had a guest slot for Quantum Leopard’s mastermind and personal hero of mine James Ross – doing more of his vibes based “Guess Who”, which is always a delightfully fun time. This may be slightly undermined by our small and weirdly cultish audience who all seem to vaguely know each other making the answers absurdly accurate on occasion. But regardless, this was a really great, low pressure but fun interactive set, amplified by the bundle of charm that is James Ross, who could provide literally hours of entertainment with this format (but worked just as well in this lovely 10-minute burst).
After the interval, we had a bunch of first timers to the club who left an amazing first impression. First we had Sam Wilkinson with his character “Ian Visible” – a delightfully whimsical monologue about the life of being an invisible man, full of stupendously silly puns delivered completely straight-faced elevating them even more.
Sam Wilkinson has nailed the art of committing to the bit in this set. When you break it down, it is technically just a one joke premise, but he genuinely manages to mine enough out of it to not only carry it for the full 10 minutes but also somehow leave you wanting more. It’s no secret tha I adore these weird niche character acts that in many comedy clubs divide a room between those who absolutely love it and those who find ’em insufferable.Nothing makes me prouder than seeing a Blizzard audience completely get on board with the premise and have the unequivocal time of their lives. I love that we’re such a great audience for these acts, and there are so many fantastic ones around and new ones being devised all the time that I don’t think we’re gonna run out anytime soon.
Next we had Eleanor Green, whose vibe is supremely difficult to boil down in a paragraph. Eleanor’s comedy has what I can only describe as a mildly unsettling whimsey to it. Eleanor Green, similar to Ian Visible but without the explicit character, also focusses her set on one core premise and dissects that in ways you couldn’t have possibly imagined from the start of it. Her set comes complete with a delightfully shrill emotive authenticity that transfixes you and pulls you entirely along for the ride, whether or not you had any of these thoughts before or not.
That’s not to suggest her set is samey in any way, I’ve never seen so many delightfully weird angles taken on the topic of the sea before. I also get the impression that’s not even scratched the surfaces of all the thoughts she’s had about it. Not many comedians have such a creatively batshit mind to mine all of this content out of the idea. I can only describe it as a work of impressionist fine art, using a comedic routine to paint a detailed canvas of the setting of her description that leaves you with a complete visualised picture you don’t even realise is being painted until she finishes.
I’m making it sound much more wanky than it is, so if you’re not as pretentiously invested in performance art as me, don’t worry, Eleanor is just fundamentally fucking funny. You’re gonna have an unforgettable experience of watching her sets.
Finally, we ended the middle section with Zee, who is just full to the brim of neurodivergent charm that is PERFECT for our audience. Zee has a wonderful chirpy approach to storytelling, which contrasts beautifully with the weirdness of the stories they’re telling, and delivers punchlines with this sheer uncompromising joy and just a lil bit of cheek that doesn’t just make you laugh it genuinely raises your spirits for every one too. They’re just an absolute pleasure to watch perform, might genuinely be one of the most likable acts I have ever seen on stage.
It feels cliché to talk about Zee’s unique voice and life experiences that make them such an engaging comedian to listen to, providing a distinct perspective and observations that many others would not be able to do. But it would also be remiss not to mention how refreshing a voice it is to hear and how wonderfully they utilise it to tell some of the best one liners and stories I’ve heard in my entire life.
But make no mistake, that isn’t what makes them a fantastic comedian. Zee demonstrates a masterful comedic stage presence and writing skill rivalling many of the greats on the circuits. They’re one I highly recommend keeping an eye on, as they certainly have the skill and the creativity to push their career somewhere big if they wanted to.
And finally, to close off the show we managed to finally get the incredible Ian Lane to headline. After two previews, many stream appearances, and many years of trying – finally seeing Ian take to the stage with his superb comedy DJ act Toxic Shame Squadron was well worth the wait.
Comedy DJing is a really interesting take on musical comedy I’ve never seen anything like before. His set is full of very rapid fire musical jokes based around creating set-ups and using musical snippets and samples in the punchlines. It creates such a genius and very internet formula for comedy that I could not have envisioned how it would work in a live setting until experiencing it for myself and howling with laughter for half an hour of these.
It feels a very 2020s style of comedy. If I were to overanalyse and unpack it, I’d say it speaks to internet meme culture and a lot of the shortform musical content TikTok and later Reels popularised. This crafts a new format of joke delivery with the added but not essential layer of additional enjoyment of familiarity for those who recognise the snippets, whilst standing alone as technically good jokes in a more traditional sense, with a quirky delivery that gives you the context of knowing a song has been used and manipulated for a punchline regardless of prior knowledge of the song.
But it’s half past midnight while I’m writing this, so I won’t go into that.
By itself, it’s a very interesting and effective comedy formula, but what elevates the set is Ian’s straightforward and slightly deadpan vocal delivery contrasted with fully committing to the physical and lip-syncing comedy to really sell the bits. For a set that it so driven by an audio medium, Ian doesn’t skimp on the visuals, and it is a delight.
Ian is a seasoned and adept comic performer, with incredible wit and a creative spark that sets him apart from all of his contemporaries in the space.
This act demonstrates a broad knowledge and love of comedy and music, both contemporary and more legacy, and blends them together in a set that is as subversive as it is silly, and makes for such an engaging style of comedy that feels both modern and in a way timeless (if you ignore the release dates of many of the songs he samples and interpolates). I highly recommend checking him out live, as due to the use of copyrighted works, it may prove to be the least streamable set of all time, which is a shame, as Ian truly has created something special here.
But let’s put that to the test – I was meant to write this days ago, so by the time this goes up we would already have attempted to stream it – so if we get DMCA struck, then you won’t be able to watch this, but otherwise you will be able to find a video of the livestream on twitch.tv/blizzardcomedy from the 2nd March 2026 to the 16th March 2026.
And if you wanna keep up to date with future shows we’ve got both live and on twitch, join our mailing list or follow us on socials here.
Thanks everyone who came or watches on stream, love u all, see you around soon I hope ❤
