CARRY ON LAUGHING

Marc Shoffman found plenty of giggles on Virgin Voyages' 2025 UK Comedy Fest cruise, which features Jack Whitehall

- Marc Shoffman

As comedy clubs go, a cruise ship in the middle of a storm in the Bay of Biscay may be the wobbliest one I have ever been on.

Waves crashed against the side of Virgin Voyages’ flagship Scarlet Lady as if they were heckling the acts on stage, who had come to entertain thousands of guests for the cruise line’s UK Comedy Fest. Think Edinburgh Fringe but with more water and drag queens.

As I boarded the ship, grey clouds had threatened to deliver what the captain described as “British weather”, but there were heartening bright neon signs around the vessel forecasting a week where we could “laugh our aft off”.

Some passengers – or sailors, as Virgin Voyages calls them – had booked the cruise before it was announced that there would be a comedy theme on board, and even the compere – British comedian and TV and film star Jack Whitehall - expressed surprise at his role.

He joked on the opening-night show that when Richard Branson had invited him to perform for Virgin Voyages, he had assumed it meant a trip into space. And instead, he was “spending a week with thousands of swingers”.

Whitehall, along with some of the other comedians on board (Justin Moorhouse and Zoe Lyons), told us he was a first-time cruiser, and quipped that he had only expected to find himself on a cruise ship after he had been cancelled.

The biggest challenge for the acts wasn’t staying politically correct, as New Zealand comedian Matt Stellingwerf pointed out, but staying upright, as the ship navigated the notoriously rocky Mediterranean Sea towards northern Spain.