The Best Medicine

A Rhiwbina man is on a mission to bring happiness and laughter to the village. Please be upstanding for Mr Carl Morgan

Charlie Chaplin once said that a day without laughter is a day wasted.

That’s certainly the case for Carl Morgan, who for the last few years, has been not-so-quietly building a flourishing comedy movement in Rhiwbina.

“I moved to Rhiwbina from Llanishen about six years ago, mainly because we thought the village feel here would suit our kids better,” says Carl, sipping on his coffee. The coffee foam sticks to his grizzly beard as he looks to the ceiling and recalls happy days of comedy in his childhood. A smile spreads across his face.

“I’d sit and watch sitcoms with my parents as a kid. Those days really were the golden age of sitcoms – Only Fools and Horses, Porridge – those kind of reruns were on the telly all the time. But the 1990s were also the days when alternative comedy came along. Shows like Shooting Stars and The Mary Whitehouse Experience were making waves and I was obsessed with the evolving styles that were coming out. Even ‘traditional’ comedians like Dave Allen were hitting the headlines.

“Vic and Bob were always the talking points in school the next day. I used humour to get me through those days. As a kid growing up, you’d always need something in your toolbox to get you out of tricky situations, and my go-to coping strategy was humour. If I got picked on, I’d often come back with a retort of my own, which would often shut people up.”

Carl left school, got a job, and settled down. But comedy was always on his mind. It was only a few years ago that Carl decided to do something he’d always wanted to have a go at.

“I remember seeing an advert on Facebook that said ‘Learn to be a standup comic’ and without thinking about it too much, I applied. I had a response straight away and before I knew it, I was sitting in a lesson with a group of other people.

“There was a great bunch there and at the end of the course, we had a gala performance for all of the cohorts to present their material in an incubated environment. It was all for Cancer Research so we felt that it was a safe environment to be let loose in.

“A few months later, I did my first real gig. We all had 5-minute spots and I died on my backside. I didn’t get one laugh. My throat dried up and I couldn’t get off the stage quick enough. I decided there and then that I was never going to do standup again.

“That was until a friend of mine asked me if I wanted one final hurrah before I packed it all in. The strange thing was that I used the exact same material as I did for the disastrous gig a few months earlier – but it went down a storm!”

Carl’s newfound confidence helped inspire him to create his own comedy club.

“I decided to keep going but I wasn’t getting that many gigs. Myself and some comedy friends of mine were hiring out a back room of the Wolfscastle pub in Llanishen – with mixed results. Our first gig started with about 30 people in the audience and we ended up with about six members of my family,” laughs Carl.

Despite the lack of big crowds, Carl used the shows to develop his craft.

“I worked on my compering. I realised the project wasn’t going anywhere and then Covid came and finished it all off. Like everyone else, the pandemic hit us hard but I still had comedy in my heart. I thought I’d set up a few online gigs to keep people’s spirits up and they went down well. I called it Beefy’s after my dad.”

The online shows only fuelled Carl’s desire to develop comedy more widely in the community.

“When Covid moved on, I thought about reestablishing a comedy club but this time with tickets and more of a professional setup. I looked around South Wales to find local comedians and tried out some venues, including Llanishen Rugby Club and even the Deri, where we could seat over 100 people. As the crowds grew, I realised I needed to look further afield for talent. We also found the perfect spot at the Butchers Arms and that’s where we’ve been ever since.”

Beefy’s Comedy Club now run regular shows, which include some of the more well-known names on the comedy circuit.

“The bigger names, who often play to large arenas, love the intimacy of our gigs. Whereas they’d usually not be able to see any of the crowd because they are so far away, at the Butcher’s, the front row is usually about a foot away. They can use it to test out new material a lot more effectively. I guess the intimate nature of the venue is our USP.

“I’ve always wanted to use comedy to bring people and business to Rhiwbina. We plough all the proceeds from the shows into booking the next acts. Some are obviously more expensive than others. We have people coming from all over into the village to watch the shows – we’ve had people from as far afield as Devon and Ireland.

“It works. It’s fun. It’s different and people love it.”

As for Carl, comedy is something that will never leave him.

“It’s a bug you catch. Having an audience in your hands is something that makes you feel awesome. You’re constantly chasing that feeling. If I have a bad gig, the first thing I want to do is have a good gig so that I feel that I’m back on top.

“All of this isn’t to prove anything to anyone or even to myself. I think the fact that I’ve created something special for the village is something I set out to do and if it makes people happy, so much the better. I don’t need to build it into a large business or anything like that. It’s always been about bringing the community together and to make life a little bit more bearable.”

Carl hopes to keep the laughs coming for the foreseeable future:

“We’ll keep on getting the big names and the not-so-big names in. Maybe one day, I’ll pass the operation on to my son, who seems to be following in my footsteps.”

If you’re out and about in Rhiwbina over the next few months and you hear laughter spilling out into the winter night, it’s most likely that there’s a Beefy show going on.

“If everyone’s laughing, I’ve done my job,” says Carl.

You can find Beefy’s Comedy Club on Facebook or at Jokepit.com