When it came time to pick a university for my master’s degree, my final decision boiled down to two factors: first, my supervisor; a close second, the comedy scene. Yes, really. Sure, I’d be spending the majority of my time hunched over my laptop writing essays and analysing data for my MPhil in medical sociology, but I’ve regularly performed comedy since 2016. Every British comic I met while doing stand-up in Amsterdam for the two years I lived there said the same thing: if you want to be a student and a comedian, go to Cambridge. So here I am!

With nearly seven years of experience under my belt, from hourlong sketch comedy shows for students and businesspeople in the United States to stand-up gigs at festivals and world-famous comedy clubs in the Netherlands, I figured the transition to performing in Cambridge would be smooth. How naïve I was. The Cambridge comedy scene is unique, expansive, and a bit byzantine; I learn something new every time I get on stage. Here are a few of the learning curves I faced in my first two terms performing in Cambridge.

“The Cambridge comedy scene is unique, expansive, and a bit byzantine”

Cambridge comedy has its own unique, bizarre lingo. What’s a smoker? A scratch night? What are the Footlights, exactly? And what do you mean when you ask me to comp? In my first conversations with fellow comedians, I spoke a completely different language than them. When should I expect the light?, I’d ask. (They don’t flash lights here to indicate when your set is over, like most comedy clubs outside Cambridge do.) Who’s the MC?, I’d enquire. (The MC is called a comp here.) After two terms, I’ve gotten most of the jargon down… or so I think. Just please don’t ask me to explain the organisational structure of the Footlights. I still don’t know, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.

There are a dozen comedy nights in the city, and each one is wildly different from the next. The ADC, the Corpus Playroom, Pembroke, Magpie & Stump, Garden Variety, Laugh Tracks, the Howler… I could write an entire article regaling you with stories from each. Instead, let me summarise it here: unsurprisingly, you’re going to get different audiences at each college, which are different from the audiences at the ADC or Playroom, which are way different from the audiences at townie venues.

“Cambridge has turned even my joke-writing into a scholarly process”

One stand-up set of mine that did fantastic at Christ’s received a tepid response at the ADC. Ah well. The group at Christ’s loved to hear my woes from dealing with the healthcare system in the Netherlands, but the ADC crowd seemed uninterested in the time my Dutch doctor called me a whore. Because of these vast differences in audience and overall vibes, Cambridge has turned even my joke-writing into a scholarly process: evaluate my audience, then figure out what got a laugh (or didn’t) and from whom.

Cambridge audiences are very intellectual… except when they’re not. I think Cambridge is the only city with enough mathematicians where a ten-minute stand-up set of very specific maths puns can leave an audience rolling in laughter (which I witnessed in the basement of The Anchor pub back in Michaelmas).

Coming from a city like Amsterdam, where the bawdy is the banal in stand-up comedy, I was surprised – yes, even in Cambridge – to see so many intellectual performances. That said, I’ve also seen comics say and mime absolutely not-fit-for-print, obscene things onstage and get raucous responses. I’ll put it this way: I may have lived in Amsterdam for two years, but the closest I’ve ever gotten to seeing a live sex show was at an open mic at the Tram Depot. Ah, the duality of humankind.

All in all, I’ve had my ups and downs while performing in Cambridge, but at this point I can’t imagine being anywhere else as a student comedian. Where else can I joke about apologising to a car that nearly ran me over and then describe accidentally joining the Cambridge Half Marathon? And hey – if you ever find yourself at a smoker, whether on stage or in the crowd, I hope to see you there. Heaven knows I’ll probably be there anyways.