David Mitchell is one of the many nationally-treasured comics who first became a household name in Varsity’s theatre section thanks to a successful Footlights career. To this day, Mitchell continues to use Cambridge as an environment for comedy; having recently watched ‘Ludwig’, and seeing him once again roaming these streets, I thought it would be appropriate to uncover his past as a student comedian in the 90s when he served as the President of Footlights from 1995 to 1996.

In the 1995 Freshers’ Edition, Varsity provided new students with an introduction to Footlights, noting that “a lot of very funny people seem to have studied at Cambridge”, and praising the group for “cough[ing] up quite an impressive glob of witty individuals”. Footlights president, David Mitchell, and vice-president, Matthew Holness, offered a “quick and easy guide to blagging your way onto the Footlights scene”. This “guide” featured a list of ways to join the group, including to pay the “£5 for a year or £10 for life”, “go to the squash” to “benefit from our free booze and sign up to audition for the pantomime”, “audition for the Virgin Smoker” (to be advertised soon in Varsity), “Shag the President”, “Shag the Vice-President”, and “Shag the Junior Treasurer just to make sure”. They urged readers to get involved on the basis that Footlights is “cheap, reasonably diverting and dedicated to trivialising life’s horrors in a vain attempt at coping with them”.

“One of the many nationally-treasured comics who first became a household name in Varsity’s theatre section”

This star-studded era under Mitchell’s presidency received a plethora of positive reviews in Varsity. 1995’s Footlights Committee Smoker was showered with praise in Varsity, opened by “Footlights head-honchos and tour veterans Matt Holness and David Mitchell”, and featuring a “good number of strong, funny women getting up on stage and redressing the balance” (including Natalie Haynes – every classicist’s favourite comedian). In a March 1996 late show at the ADC, Varsity commended Mitchell for adopting a small role as an extra who “fortunately wasn’t required to sing”! This review also applauded Richard Ayoade for “steal[ing] the show in the introduction” despite being an extra.

The following academic year, in April 1997, a Varsity writer reflected on Varsity’s harshness as a critic of future stars during their days in the Footlights, with the claim that “if Cambridge University is a nursery for acting talent, then Varsity has spent the past 50 years as the playground bully”. Indeed, Varsity disparaged Stephen Fry’s first play for its “awkward and unrelated” dialogue. Nevertheless, this severity does not seem to reach Mitchell in the nineties when Varsity was consistently complimentary of his comedic pursuits.

Mitchell’s directorial debut in October 1995 was met with unsurprising acclaim in a four-star Varsity review as a “screamingly funny” and “well controlled show” with a “particularly foot-tapping choreographed ending”.

Another October 1995 Varsity article quoted the Sunday Times’ review of the Footlights 1995 Tour ‘Fall from Grace’, deeming it “gleefully, insanely funny”. The critic spoke especially highly of the “on-stage personae”, in particular the “memorable” relationship between “David Mitchell’s unworldly sexual innocent” who was “frequently at the mercy of Robert Webb’s predatory bisexual queen bitch” (perhaps somewhat proleptic of their later dynamic in ‘Peep Show’).

In March 1996, Mitchell wrote in Varsity about a conversation with Robert Webb on the writing process behind the 1996 Footlights Summer Tour, ‘Rainbow Stranglers’. Most of the material for the tour was being produced over a two-week writers retreat in March, by the end of which around 160 sketches will have been produced, with the best 50 making it into the final show which tours around the UK. Webb told Varsity that this process is “always very tricky, this having-to-get-up-by-eleven-to-be-funny business, but this year has been much easier because, as director, I’ve put it back to twelve”.

In June of 1996, Varsity reviewed ‘Rainbow Stranglers’ as a “damnably good production” where “stereotypes, institutions and popular myths were ridiculed in a style reminiscent of Blackadder”. Varsity’s theatre critic noted the issues with the political satire of the show which “seemed to lose the laughs as the audience were forced to focus on the complexities of the plot”, however praised “the natural stage dominance of David Mitchell and Lucy Montgomery [which] did not overshadow the achievements of their co-Thesps”.

As he returns to Cambridge to set puzzles as Ludwig, we must wonder how Mitchell would reflect on his performances rated so highly by Varsity theatre critics of the past.