Cardiac Comedy will be charity fundraiser in Brighton

Four top comedians are set to take the stage for a specially organised charity performance under the title Cardiac Comedy.

Transcript

00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Fantastic

00:06 to speak this afternoon to David Blood from Brighton, who is organising a fabulous sounding

00:13 event, one of a series called Cardiac Comedy. This is number 10, coming up in Brighton on

00:19 October the 18th with a lovely line-up. And this is comedy with a pretty serious underlying

00:25 purpose, isn't it? You are a comedian yourself, part-time, but you're also someone who's had

00:32 heart problems. Tell me what those heart problems were initially.

00:36 Yeah, absolutely. I was born with a hole in the heart, which was corrected via surgery

00:44 in 1974, and subsequent check-ups throughout my life diagnosed another problem. And I had

00:53 a second operation in 2012, which now I've been fitted with a titanium and carbon fibre

01:00 aortic heart valve. So I am basically Iron Man now.

01:04 You are indestructible. But even so, doing stand-up comedy, that's a good test of your

01:10 heart in any case, isn't it really?

01:13 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's one of the... Some people do whitewater rafting or bungee

01:19 jumping. I decide to stand up in front of 200 people and try and make them laugh, which

01:23 is equally as nerve-shattering.

01:26 And your comedy goes back a while, doesn't it? And you took some training.

01:30 Yeah, absolutely. It goes back as far as 2000. I attended a comedy training course in London

01:37 called The Comedy School and started doing the open mic night or the open mic scene in

01:44 London, moved to Brighton and continued to do the open mic scene there and then combined

01:51 my love of comedy and feeling that I would like to give something back to the British

01:55 Heart Foundation and set up Cardiac Comedy in 2013.

02:00 And you're just about to reach a landmark in terms of the amount that you've raised,

02:03 aren't you?

02:04 We are, yeah. This is the 10th event coming up. We're on target to hit £30,000 raised,

02:13 which I was informed was actually the cost of my valve. So hopefully after the upcoming

02:17 event I will be valve neutral.

02:19 That's a variation on carbon neutral, is it?

02:24 Indeed.

02:25 You were going to be a rubber man then, had you?

02:29 Absolutely.

02:30 Congratulations on The Comedy Night coming up and for lasting 10 years with it and keeping

02:35 it going. I hope it goes brilliantly. It's where? What's the venue? It's October the

02:40 18th. Where in Brighton is it?

02:43 It's at Comedia in Brighton.

02:45 Where else? Where else?

02:48 Yeah well absolutely. They've been a huge part of the journey for the last 10 years.

02:53 So it's a great venue.

02:56 Brilliant. Well good luck with that. Lovely to speak to you. Take care.