Tenx9

Amazing true stories for our Christmas celebration on December 19 in the Black Box in Belfast. Here are Helen McClements who goaded the weather gods ahead of her winter wedding & Jane Searle who had the Brits for dinner on Xmas Day 1970. (This has been republished due to technical issues) There is the odd F-bomb.

Father and son Paul and Jake Bond told a story each at our Belfast-themed evening in November. Jake was a first-timer with a story of infatuation while Paul told the story of Aunt Minnie from Belfast and an actual Mercedes.

December 9th 2018 was dull, wet & cold but in Belfast’s Accidental Theatre there was warmth & cheer with true stories on JUSTICE as part of the NI Human Rights Festival: Conor Houston with a family tragedy; Malachí O’Doherty & the bureaucracy of Swiss justice; Margaret McClory & the injustice of school punishment; Paul Hutchinson - an egg, the school hard man & Lord of the Flies. One or two well used F-words. Paul is your host.

Five stories from our first tenx9 in Derry at Sandinos bar & what an eclectic gathering: Delaware’s Casey Aspin who knows the place where she feels at home; Cork’s Richard O’Leary who was a tourist in Derry in 1969; Belfast’s Caroline Orr who knew that Nanny Orr’s home was no picnic; nomad Dearbhaille Bradley who carried her home on her back & Eliza MacCafferty who knows there’s no place like home.

Here are two stories from our evening at the Black Box when the theme was Belfast: Paul Hutchinson plays a dark game of hide & seek while Norman Meharry’s family are the envy of the street as they (attempt to) head off to the Isle of Man.

Carlo Gébler told this story at our fundraising collaboration with Fighting Words Belfast on 22 November 2018. The theme was Sink or Swim.

Three stories from our evening in the plush Titanic Hotel helping raise funds for Fighting Words Belfast on the theme Sink or Swim: Jennie Brown who made a bold teenage choice, Heather Hanna who now has a skinny-dipping story & Glenn Patterson who sank himself on television. Pádraig & Paul are your hosts.

Four stories, two events & a marvellous selection of accents. From an event with a group in Glasgow when the theme was Gifts: John Purves on the gift of laughter & Tracy LaMar on the gift of a Great-grandmother. Plus two more stories from our London Fear night: Heather Johnston who was lost in Crete & Ashleigh Arnott and the tale of a lost snake.

In a micro-brewery in Southwark on Hallowe’en night, nine people told true stories of Fear. Here are six of them: Afua who was too afraid to go home; Emma who has overcome (kinda) her terror of blood; Ida who was afraid the Home Office had come knocking; Fuzz who had more fears than he knew what to do with; Helena who feared she would never see her 30th birthday; Becca who fought her fears but knows her limits; Johanna is your London host.

A bonus story from regular contributor Malachi O’Doherty recorded at the Black Box on the theme Care. He got more laughs than he expected.