Narrator: It’s the night of April 1st 2018. The madding crowd greet the rising star of stand-up comedy, Stanislaw Yeo, who is about to perform a new set at The Slippery Eel in Camden. And what a set that was, the first leg of a sell-out tour of intimate venues. Let’s listen again to how it began – and please bear in mind the raw sound reproduction as it comes from a bootleg recording…

Cornelius Fitz is an an English teacher and long-time contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in 3:AM magazine, STORGY, Minor Literature(s), and Berfrois. He recently completed a Masters in Cultural & Critical Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He was awarded the inaugural Verso Prize for his degree and writing submitted on Speculative Aesthetics, an extract of which has been published on the Verso blog here. He can be found on Twitter as @lapsedhermit.