John Pearson
Comedy promoter Clara Heimerdinger.
- Credit: Jonathan Sebire
As the Zoom window opens on my laptop, up pops that familiar grid of heads in boxes. But for tonight’s meeting, their faces are all unfamiliar.
There’s some bloke in full Santa costume, replete with cotton wool beard. A couple sit behind their empty couch and peek around it at their webcam (practising extreme socially distancing, it transpires). Then there’s the small, grinning, bespectacled head of a woman bobbing around, just beneath a massive logo bearing the words "Nice N’ Spiky".
“Welcome! Come in. Turn your webcam on and your phone off. Get yourself a drink. The show’s gonna start in about five minutes,” enthuses the head as, appropriately enough, The Pointer Sisters sing I’m So Excited in the background.