Andre Vincent ("Utterly welcoming": Metro)

Andre Vincent is an Amused Moose Comedy's comedy course leader, having already delivered University comedy courses, and set up a comedy unit for the Princes Trust, and importantly continuing to have a successrul career as a standup comedian.

He was born May 1964 in Woolworth's Department Store Penge, and has not stopped appearing in the most unusual of places since.

He started his career as a professional show-off at an early age, becoming a star-struck stage brat, working when any theatre company needed a street urchin, a herald or a small child to upstage everyone. He became a boy chorister, to the delight of his family whose dream was for him to follow his nan into the world of opera and become a top class tenor.

Unfortunately for his family he followed the career path of another relative, his great-grandfather, who was an acrobat on the olde variety stage. So when young Andre stopped singing, due to his voice breaking, he went back to the boards and spent most of his time there arguing with theatre directors that not only could Hamlet be fat, he should be fat. Disheartened by this small-mindedness, he packed up his greasepaint and ran away to the circus.

After a quick stint of training in Paris and with a backpack full of equipment, Andre started travelling the world entertaining the masses at circus and theatre festivals everywhere. With skills in abundance and his unique style of improvisation, he has performed in strange places from a bullring in Columbia to a baseball stadium in Nova Scotia to Vietnamese refugee camps in the South China Sea.

With all this moving about, Andre had to think about where his career was going when he found himself working at Disney World Florida at the end of 1988. Mask work and regimented smiling were really not his forte. A friend tried to change his sad demeanour by taking him to a comedy club in Orlando and three hours later a new chapter opened in his life. He kept returning to the club, speaking to comics and schmoozing the management, and within a few months he was on the road compering at small stand-up clubs in the southern states of America.

His apprenticeship in Georgia and Alabama was good enough in the eyes of his peers to get gigs in other states of the U.S. and the pinnacle of this work was opening for Bob Hope in Columbus, Ohio in 1992.

With his head swelling and his tongue tripping one-liners, he returned home to conquer the comedy circuit of the U.K., and in no time at all established himself as one of the top stand-ups in the country.

"One of the most disarming punch lines you’re ever likely to see on the Fringe."
THE SCOTSMAN
 
"An improvising comedy genius" 
 THE GUARDIAN

"One of the best comedians in the business." 
THE TIMES

"Ferociously funny" 
 THE SUNDAY TIMES

"An utterly welcoming presence"
METRO

"A fresh, exciting and brilliant performance"
 NOWT2DO.COM

"Wonderfully tasteless"
THE SCOTSMAN