This is going to be the last Science Showoff at the Wilmington Arms. It’s a sad time, but it’s also a very very exciting time. We’re going to a new venue (details to be announced soon), we’ve got a summer of touring gigs lined up and two dates in the diary for the Bloomsbury Theatre in the next year.

So don’t be unhappy, revel in this specially-curated* lineup featuring many of the people who have made Showoff the era-defining, world-changing, career-making event it is. We’ve gone right back to our first gig for some of these acts who have rocked our world and yours at the Wilmington over the last two years.

Steve Cross (Science Showoff periodic Table element 1) will compere with some of his greatest hits written for the Wilmington Arms stage. There will be one mention of Michael Faraday. Joining him will be:

Chiara Ambrosio (element 2), historian and philosopher of art and science.

Suze Kundu (element 15), chemist, boozer and sparkler of many delights.

Oli Broadbent (element 18), engineer, breaker of things, flirter with disaster.

Tom Whyntie (element 24), physicist, Feynman-lover and funnyman thinker.

Simon Watt (element 43), animal-lover (not like that), environmentalist and joke-maker.

Helen Clarkson (element 47), forensic anthropologist and beloved sound engineer.

Helen Arney (element 48), singer, songwriter, sun-satirist.

Sophie Scott (element 53), neuroscientist, dazzling shoe-owner, laughter analyst.

Dan Schreiber (element 74), bespectacled funnyperson, broadcaster, raconteur.

Elise Bramich (element 80), counter of things that are hard to count, maths brain, international supermodel.

This gig will be at the Wilmington Arms, 69, Rosebery Ave, London, EC1R 4RL. Doors are at 7pm. The gig will be free to get in, but we will be collecting on the door for the first charity we ever collected for at the Wilmington Arms, the Holborn Community Association. We suggest a donation of £5 each.

* = ‘curated’ misused to wind up Museums Showoff 

On May 22nd join our regular compere and loads of his amazing friends for a one-off, never to be repeated, comedy and music cabaret.

He’s lined up some amazing acts, many of whom haven’t ever done any form of Showoff, for a event where, for once, we’re all going to try not to learn anything at all. We’re going for the flipping best night out you have ever ever ever had instead.

Joining Steve, who can finally do some jokes about something other than Michael Faraday are:

Iszi lawrence, comedian and the voice of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Cat Rogers, irrepressible opera starlet and cabaret songstress.

Kent Valentine, comedian, digital engagement guy, gamer, scoundrel.

Bec Hill and Tom Goodliffe, comedians, birthday party entertainers, geniuses.

Martin Austwick, song man and beard-haver.

Helen Zaltzman, broadcaster, raconteur, half of the world famous Answer Me This! podcast and caregiver to a malingering singer-songwriter.

Matt Winning, caledonian comedian.

Ben Champion, song-idea-haver, song-writer, song-singer, human.

Tickets are £3 in advance from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/223086, or £5 on the door (BUY IN ADVANCE BARGAIN HUNTERS!). Doors will open at 7pm. The Black Heart is at 3, Greenland Place, Camden NW1 0AP (nearest tube Camden Town) and has one of the best beer selections in London.

But*** most of all hooray for us. Because**** we’re organising a special gig to celebrate the conference, with some amazing communicators of science who don’t usually get down to the filthy, crime-ridden metropolis*****, and some classic home bankers.

The gig is on Wednesday May 15th at the Star of Kings on York Way in London, two doors up from the Science Communication Conference venue (Kings Place). Doors will be at 7pm, with the gig running until 10pm (with an intermission).

You can find out more about how Science Showoff works here

Note for regular Showoff fans - this is the only London Science Showoff in May. Do come along and see some fantastic talent from outside the capital perform. We promise it’ll be good and the Star of Kings does some fantastic ales.

We’ll announce performers one-by-one as they email in details of their sets. So to start you off:

Compere Steve Cross - will tell jokes, keep acts to time, lead the cheering and get science wrong for comic purposes. If you want to know what to expect, why not come and see him as part of an amazing Bright Club lineup on May 9th at the Bloomsbury Theatre.

Ian Simmons be talking about his relationships with dead animals.

Suze Kundu - Shaken or Stirred; the science behind the great Martini debate. Will require volunteers – kindly line stomachs before embarking on this rollercoaster ride through some of the science behind beverages containing everyone’s favourite molecule, CH3CH2OH.

Ian Wilson – What happens when Evolution has a bad day? I’ll be taking a look at some of Nature’s more unfortunate-looking creations and asking what Evolution was thinking… if anything. Expect birds, mammals and a deep-sea fish that looks like John Prescott.

Liz Granger - Isn’t beer just the bees knees? Hangovers though, not so much. Liz Granger is going to explore the biology behind hangovers and investigate whether there’s a way we can avoid them using *science*.

Rick Hall - You can not be serious, man! YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS!!! With the pace of innovation going wild, how can we distinguish science fact from science fiction? Rick Hall will help, with red and green cards you can wave in the air.

Holly Rogers - I will be talking about the science behind that well known evolutionary textbook, the film “Megashark vs Giant Octopus”. This is all you need to know.

Kate Cross researches psychological differences between men and women. This has, of course, never before been the subject of stand-up comedy. So don’t miss her set on sex, skydiving, meta-analysis, and what happens when it all goes off for peer review.

Hayley Frend - Showing how science can help you kick ass! A whistle-stop tour of the science of martial arts- accompanied by lots of kicking, punching and breaking.

Lewis Dean - Can you tell a googly from a doosra? As an Ashes summer dawns, I shall examine the science behind cricket and I’ll even show you a silly mid-off.

1 more act to follow…

ENTRY TO THE GIG IS FREE BUT WE WILL BE COLLECTING ON THE DOOR FOR THE SHELTER FROM THE STORM CHARITY (http://www.sfts.org.uk/). We suggest a donation of £5.

* – because nothing says “rigorous and evidence-based learning” like “God put a special family in charge”.
** – yes, I started a sentence with ‘And’. All complaints to the usual address.
*** – and ‘but’. I’m really just trying to discourage pedantic readers.
**** – I have never done sentence structure-based trolling before. It’s great.
***** – Why is the city in Superman called Metropolis? That’s stupid. It might as well be called City.

We’re coming back, and ten of your most amazingly talented communicators of science will be taking to the stage to share the latest weird and wonderful stuff that has started to float their boats (because of the rivers and the port and DO YOU GET IT, BRISTOL?).

Join us on the Grain Barge (that’s here http://www.grainbarge.co.uk/) at 7pm (doors time) for the following incredible acts:

Steve Cross our regular compere will be keeping things to time, making puns about elements and trolling those weird science-y folk who have never heard of jokes.

Mark Lewney straps on his physics-pimped Ibanez guitar to present his six-minute version of science TV flagship Horizons. Things can only get meta.

Becky Holmes - A brand new set combining my two passions in life – Science and FIREMEN! Sure to be smoking hot, I’ll explore the science of fireman’s helmets, do they actually need that uniform and maybe set fire to something in the hope one turns up.

Neil Jerome – The problem with (scientific) faith – are you are true scientist, or a true believer? a few one-liners about statistical uncertainty quickly descends into a rant about the use of cycle helmets, and the infamous ‘jesus toastie’.

Emily Coyte and Audrey Nailor - We’ll be talking about the science of memetics and how it’s so much more than a penguin who can’t talk to girls or a grumpy cat.

Ceri Wyn-Thomas - Ecdysis: One woman’s intimate relationship with stripping off’. I’m going to be explaining my fascination with how arthropods grow using a heady mixture of comedy and science. Huzzah!

Karl Byrne - I will be talking about the world’s longest running scientific experiments. It’s going to be a nail biting thrillfest from start to finish.

Matthew Tosh - Burning money, nose bot fly paranoia, helicopters and injuries. Real science or just a load of tosh?

Ross Exton - MegaAnimal: Humans are rubbish animals. Awful in fact. So, if you replaced our worst bits with the best bits of other creatures, what would it look like?

Joe Wright - The Cell, the basic unit of life has been described as the first great idea in Biology. I shall be demonstrating the key observations that developed cell theory using a microscope from Argos.

Bonnie Buckley - Can you make an alligator smile? I’ll be talking about the state reptile of Louisiana including some fun facts and personal experiences.

Entry to the gig is free, but we will be collecting on the door for our charity of the month, which is Bristol Rape Crisis (http://www.bristolrapecrisis.org.uk/). We suggest a donation of £5, but you can always give more.

See you there!

We’re coming over to run another gig, featuring the cream of the region’s science communication talent. The trouble is that we don’t know who they are, which is why we need you YES YOU to sign up to perform a 9-minute set about science for us. We’re looking for scientists, science communicators, science broadcasters, science teachers, historians and philosophers of science, students, science popularisers and anyone else with something to show off about science.

The gig will be on the Grain Barge (which is here: http://www.grainbarge.co.uk) on the evening of May 23rd.

Doors for the gig are at 7.00pm, and it starts with an introduction from compere Steve Cross. The night then runs in two halves, each an hour long. Signed-up performers will take to the stage to show off their science in any way they want. They might:

Show a film they just made
Try out a new demo
Practice a new science comedy set
Tell us about their new discovery
Perform an 9-minute play about science
Play their new song about protons
Tell us what they’ve been up to
Predict the future
Give us a taster of their science-themed Edinburgh show
Read us their latest science poem
Try out a bit of a new science lesson on us
Play us a short radio documentary
Experiment on the crowd
Read us a blogpost
Perform an interpretive dance about science

Or anything else…

Every set lasts 9 minutes or less. There’s a 20 minute intermission and we finish by 10pm, to give us an hour of picking each other’s brains over beer and to form new plans and partnerships before closing time.

You can sign up to perform here:

http://www.doodle.com/id653tveuz33ueie

See you in May!

To add to the excitement we’ve got together with the British Science Association to put on a gig the night before their massive international Science Communication Conference in London. We’re currently looking for seven performers who are attending the conference to perform 9-minute sets, communicating any kind of science in any way at all. You could:

Show a film you just made
Try out a new demo
Practice a new science comedy set
Tell us about your new discovery
Perform an 9-minute play about science
Play your new song about protons
Tell us what you’ve been up to
Predict the future
Give us a taster of your science-themed Edinburgh show
Read us your latest science poem
Try out a bit of a new science lesson on us
Play us a short radio documentary
Experiment on the crowd
Read us a blogpost
Perform an interpretive dance about science

Or anything else…

The gig is at the Star of Kings on York Way in London, two doors up from the conference venue (Kings Place). Doors will be at 7pm, with the gig running until 10pm (with an intermission).

You can find out more about how Science Showoff works here

And sign up to perform here

Note for regular Showoff fans - this is the only London Science Showoff in May. Do come along and see some fantastic talent from outside the capital perform.

Science Showoff at the Science Communication Conference – May 15th

Hot Cross Buns and chocolate eggs and creme eggs and mini eggs and chocolate bunnies and tiny chocolate teddies and sugar mice and I think I might feel a little sick now and I think I might need Easter to stop so that we can get on with science.

Science Showoff is BACK at the Wilmington Arms on Tuesday 2nd April to SHAKE you all out of your holiday slumbers. And what a cracking lineup we have for you.

There’s Steve Cross, compere, lactose-intolerant Easter-refusenik and satirist (he would like to think) of science.

Joining him are:

Elaine Chew – “If you are the sort of person who regularly despairs at other people’s stupidity, this one’s for you. I will be exploring whether there are limits to the brain function of the young and the old (probably badly because I know nothing about brains).”

Alisa Anokhina – “Morbid poetry inspired by the dark, twisting pathways of the human mind; absolutely no discussion of statistical analyses. Well, maybe a little bit.”

Amy Birch will be talking about Pint of Science, an exciting new science festival in May coming to a pub near you. If you like science and pubs (who doesn’t?) then you won’t want to miss it.

Kathryn Harkup – “Some early experiments with electricity are stranger than fiction. I’ll be looking at how resurrectionists and frog torturers may have influenced Mary Shelley when she wrote the first science fiction book – Frankenstein.”

Katie Alcock – “When you’re a new parent, you’re bombarded with information and advice, but is any of it based on actual scientific evidence? I’m going to sift the wheat from the chaff, with the help of Maggie Simpson.”

Chris Douce – “Do you have those days all your electronic devices seem to conspire together to make your life difficult? Chris Douce is going to be talking about interaction design, the process of trying to make stuff easy to use. The thing is, making stuff that is easy is actually pretty difficult.”

Tiphaine Bardon – “Learn more about what is “heritage science” through an (almost) realistic case study: something terrible happened to the Mona Lisa and the experts from the CSH (Centre for Sustainable Heritage) will investigate the case…”

Ronald Stewart – “I am offering a slightly biased answer to the question: “What is statistics?”, or how best to count German tanks.”

AND Suze Kundu

AND Lewis Dean

The gig is at the Wilmington Arms (that’s EC1R 4RL for fans of Google Maps), with the doors opening at 7pm. The gig is free to get in, but we will be collecting on the door for our charity of the month, which is the Islington Arts Factory (amazing new website alert!) who make dance and other artforms accessible to a really wide range of people. As ever we suggest you donate £5 (or more if you like the show).

Geek* Showoff 2 will help you do exactly that. We’ve taken the Showoff format, and tweaked it to let loads of minds share something other than science, and to fill your heads up with incredibly entertaining trivia. On Tuesday 26th March we’ll take over the venue upstairs at the Black Heart in Camden (home of comedy nerdout Specialist Subject and here) for a night of hilarious thinking in aid of the VERY IMPORTANT CHARITY Arts Emergency (we suggest that you donate £5 or more on the door to this very good cause).

The acts keeping you on the edge of your seat will be:

Compere Steve Cross, who will be revealing that even stunningly attractive, erudite, refined, intelligent, cosmopolitan, self-effacing guys enjoy a terrible George Lucas spinoff once in a while.

Cat Rogers will explain why her favourite Opera is the best opera and anyone who doesn’t agree is WRONG.

Lauren Geisler - Why I Love William Morris So Much And Why He Was So Brilliant And Why I Am Exactly But Not Quite Like Him

Marc Burrows - It’s a family drama, an action epic, a comedy, a treatise on the nature of the Divine in a Godless universe, and It’s got a fan-dance strip-tease scene. IN SPACE. The most insane, far reaching, sexually charged, and moving film of 1989,’ Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’ is fully dissected, celebrated and debunked as 107 minutes of prime rib Sci-Fi is packed into just 9 minutes of geeky showing off.

Vanessa Pelz-Sharpe - Ever looked at a pair of shoes and felt a wave of lust wash over you? Welcome to the strange world of paraphilias, where people fall in love with anything from a bannister to the Eiffel Tower.

Dawn Foster - Dawn misread the name of the show as “Greek Showoff”, so will be talking about Greece, politics, the fallibility of humans and why we should instead be ruled by robots

Stephen Thomas - As a 25 year old male who owns every single Animated Classic, I’d be looking to dissect what makes a ‘classic’ Disney film. I’d also throw in the age old questions of whether every major character in Beauty and the Beast is gay, and if the Lion King films are the greatest Shakespearean trilogy known to man.

Eva Amsen will show you how (and why) she turned a Dr Who sonic screwdriver into an iPad stylus.

James W Smith likes to walk. Occasionally those walks can be boring. How does he jazz some of them up? Why, with saliva, of course!

Sally Evans - Let me introduce you to The Church of Henson. Featuring the gospel according to Beaker, why Kermit is the Messiah and the battle against Evil* they face. *Ricky Gervais

Helen Zaltzman - Helen Zaltzman is one half of the Sony Award-winning podcast Answer Me This!. She is an ‘internet expert’ on BBC 5 Live and created the world’s first giant inflatable Boggle set.

The doors will open at 7pm. Do come along for acts that will change your life, and donate to a charity that will help change other people’s lives too.

* = “geek” as we all know is not synonymous with “scientist”, “science fan” or “member of the UK science industry” and should not be used as such.

BANG! A lineup that made the mouth water and the brain fizz.

POW! An incredibly generous audience who donated £529 to the Coram’s Fields charity and helped a team member recover from CRIME.

ZAP! An atmosphere of fun and excitement that took the breath away.

And on April 2nd it’s time to do it all over again. You want to be a part of it, don’t you? 9 minutes to perform in any style about any kind of science on our stage. If you’d like some ideas, or to find out how the gig works, look here:

What is Science Showoff?!?

But if you want to crack on and sign up to be part of the action, sign up here:

http://doodle.com/zsm65rqt8rsc7k58

There are 4 sets and 2 reserve slots currently up for grabs. Go for it!