Ventnor Blog

Thanks for Mark for alerting us to this excellent piece of journalism fresh out of the News Biscuit site today. (more…)

The Ventnor Lights of Love carol service will be held at The Ventnor Winter Gardens tonight.

Remember absent friends and family whilst taking part in the carol service and help raise much needed money for the IW Hospice.

Doors open at 6.30pm and the service starts at 7pm.

To find out more about the great works of the hospice, visit their website.

Thursday is the last day of term for most schools on the Island, so why not let the kiddies stay up late and take them down to the Ventnor Winter Gardens.

If you book your tickets in advance, your kids could find themselves taking home a wonderful goody bag from one of Father Christmas’ favourite helpers, Lesley from The Ventnorian.
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Tickets for the best festival of the year are now available to buy.

We’ll be bringing you details of the lineup as soon as we get it. In the meantime, make sure you get your tickets pronto. The early birds sold out in double quick time.

Bestival 2008 Ticket prices:
Adult Weekend Tickets - £130
Adult Tickets are for anyone aged 16 or over on 05/09/2008. Ticket holders aged 16 and 17 must be accompanied by a Ticket holding parent or guardian over the age of 21*

Age 13 to 15 Child Weekend Tickets - £65
Age 13 to 15 Child Tickets are for anyone aged 13 to 15 on 05/09/2008. Child ticket holders must be accompanied by a Ticket holding parent or guardian over the age of 21*

Age 12 & Under Child Weekend Tickets – FREE
Age 12 & Under Child Tickets are for anyone aged 12 and under on 05/09/2008. Child Ticket holders must be accompanied by a Ticket holding parent or guardian over the age of 21*.
Please Note: All Children aged 12 and under will need to obtain a (free) ticket this year. No exceptions.

*NB: One ticket holding parent or guardian can only accompany up to 4 people under the age of 18.

Campervan Tickets - £50 (per vehicle)
Campervan tickets are only available from Ticketline. Your Campervan must be specially adapted for people to stay in (which does not include transit vans with a mattress in the back or 4×4s with the seats folded down). If your vehicle is longer than 7 metres you will need to purchase two Campervan Tickets. Cars will not be allowed into the Campervan area at any time so consequentially Caravans, Trailer Tents etc are not permitted. Head over to the Practical Info section of this site for more info on Campervans.

All Tickets:
- include camping.
- will incur a booking fee.
- are non-transferable and cannot be re-sold.

Ticket available now from:
Ticketline - Online / 08700 667753 (inc campervan tickets)
Lastminute - Online

To watch the video in full screen, click in the video and it’ll open in a new window.

If you were unfortunate enough to miss the wonderful Peter Pan panto last week at the Ventnor Winter Gardens, but need your dose of panto before the end of the year, fear not.

Quay Arts plays host to The Smith Family Panto - Or Sleeping Mother Whittington in Boots!

From the title we’re sure you can work out that this is going to be a mash up of various panto stories, but what’s really special is that Quay Arts have a great offer on the tickets.

Buy two tickets and get the third one free, that way you can take your little darling and their best friend too.

Give the box office a call on 01983 822490

If you’re a fan of variety shows, then don’t forget to put this one in your diary.

We all know that the Winter Gardens will be a hive of activity this coming Thursday, as the Ventnor West residents, with polling cards in hand will be making their way in droves down to the gardens.

Well, hopefully The Christmas Variety show on the following Thursday will have people turning out in the same numbers too.
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Gold stars to Sonia Wood from Ventnor for alerting us to this unbelievable piece of magic-ness.

It has something for everyone, magic, illusion, pretty girls in pink wigs and suspense. Aaron Isted eat your heart out.

This year, a bumper variety show is being organised for Ventnor and there is something very special for the kiddies too.

There are some great ‘variety show’ acts lined up for the performance such as the Jubilee Tappers, Christa’s Belles, the Wight Satin Ladies Barbershop singers, as well as a sing-along led by Ernie Jackson, Rosemary Hill and Marlene Cass.

During the interval there’ll be a disco of Christmas rock ‘n’ roll favourites, but topping the bill this year will be none other than Mr David Randini bringing you his very special brand of Christmas magic.

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Unfortunately, Barry Castagnola has had to pull out of this months Quay Comedy Club, but fear not, for now, you’ll get three for the price of two. Patrick Monahan is still taking part and will not be joined by Hils Barker and Tiernan Douieb.

Hils Barker is an exciting and thought-provoking stand-up with a satirical and very silly edge. She was a finalist in two major stand-up newcomer competitions; Channel 4’s So You Think You’re Funny? (2001) and Avalon’s Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award (2002), as well as appearing in the BBC New Talent Showcases (BBC Choice, 2002).
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Update: See later entry for change to the lineup.

This month’s funny men performing at the Quay Arts Comedy Club include Barry Castagnola and Patrick Monahan plus one surprise act!

Barry Castagnola has firmly established himself as an accomplished comic performer.

He has been performing stand-up in the UK and internationally for over six years since blagging his way onto the stage at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles. His easy-going (yet very physical) style, mixes personal anecdotes with some sharp topical and political comment, and enthuses audiences at most of the major comedy clubs in the UK.
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Our favourite satirical website, which holds the wonderful tagline, News Before It Happens, NewsBiscuit, has once again produced a corker of a story about our fair Isle.

According to their correspondent, we will soon be able to start ‘reading about all the various things there are to do on the Isle of Wight without even leaving our screens’.
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As you carve the innards out of your juicy pumpkins tonight, spare a thought for that gentle vegetable.

The Wight Zombie walk on Saturday night was brilliant fun - not just in the staggering around in a moaning way, but in the fun of picking what to wear and making-up to look … undead.

After parking the car (and wishing on the way there that the Island had traffic jams every now and then, so we could have shocked those sitting in their cars along side us), we quickly got into character, dragging our feet along and stumbling occasionally, up the road toward to meeting place near Somerfield.

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There are loads of things happening this Friday night around the Island, more details on the others to follow shortly, but this gig at Liquid Lounge sounds like a great lineup for all your indie kids and comedy lovers.

Helen Keller say this will be their first proper gig on the Island, but you might’ve already seen them play at the Hand to Hand Charity Gig or The Progression Session.

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Thanks to one of our regular readers for the heads up on this brilliant prank. Put your feet up for five minutes or so and take a comedy break.

As Halloween fast approaches, the invites to celebrations continue to pour in.

But there is one that really caught our eye yesterday, probably because it looks completely bonkers - and we like that kind of thing!

Apparently at around 9pm on Saturday 27th October, if you happen to be in Ryde Town Square you might just find yourself surrounded by zombies.

It appears that some of those crazy zombies have arranged a little get together for something called A Zombie March (also known as a zombie mob, zombie walk or zombie lurch).
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The monthly Quay Arts Comedy Club has been so successful that Island funny man, Richard Quigley has decided to help set up a new open mic comedy night.

Established comedian Richard, is inviting new acts to join him on stage where they showcase their talent to a live audience (rather than a dead one?).

The first gig is launched on Friday 19 October with Hannah George, the Island’s ‘princess of comedy’ and Paramount TV student comedian of the year, who will be joining Richard for a slot.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a true ‘open mic’ unless you were able to get up there yourself, so if you reckon you can tell a good good joke or easily make people laugh, get in touch with Richard to book your slot on quiggers(at)onwight(dot)net.
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The Wight Words Festival kicked off this week with its grand launch on Monday night at Quay Arts in Newport.

It was followed on Tuesday by performance poetry by Aisle 16 which we weren’t able to attend for obvious reasons.

Anyone who did go along and would like to share their experience with us, send us an email.

The Wight Words Festival comprises a number of events around the Island over the next 2-3 weeks, including book launches, performance poetry, theatre, musicals, storytelling, song writing and short films with a literary theme.
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This year the famous fancy dress parade will take place from the Main Stage at 3pm, instead of the usual 6pm.

Given that, why not just wear your fancy dress outfits all day, or better still all weekend. We’ve been scouring the charity shops all week and have managed to pull together some suitably silly outfits.

Remember the theme this year is based upon Rob’s poem about Kings, Queens, Wenches, Pirates and Wizards.

The fancy dress shops in Newport and Shanklin have loads of relevant outfits or ‘accessories’ and although we haven’t tried Masqueryde (located in Ryde) yet, we’re sure they’re geared up for Bestival goers too.

It’s well worth making the effort, as it much more fun when you’re dressed up, as illustrated by the happy smiley lady in the photo. So, don’t forget, 3pm Saturday at the Main Stage.

[picture courtesy of Olivia New Jones]

That’s right, this year the Bestival crew have achieved their dream of ensuring we all have a good laugh (as if we didn’t already!).

This year, a very special place has been created for some of the greatest comics prepared to make the journey across the Solent for the best festival of the year. Forget Edinburgh, we have it all here on the Isle of Wight.

Jestival will feature many comics fresh from the Edinburgh Festival. How about Andrew Maxwell’s Fullmooners and We Are Klang’s modestly named Dick Party retrospective.

Born and bred caulkhead, Phil ‘my music and comedy weighs a ton’ Jupitus will be gracing the stage and Howard ‘it’s a fair cop’ Marks will also be making an appearance.

But in proper Bestival tradition, you” be able to catch some of the newer acts, such as Stephen Carling and Scroobius ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ Pip.

It’s Friday and if you could do with a laugh, sit back and watch this great piece of video about our favourite supermarket, Tesco.

Warning: Royalists and nippers cover your ears when ‘Prince Harry’ comes on screen.

Well done Simon for coming across this.

Here’s your Friday fun.

No, this video isn’t of Sandown on a busy Summer day, it’s a pool at an indoor holiday resort in Tokyo called Summerland (think centre parcs).

These bonkers bods are standing shoulder to shoulder being whooshed up and down by an artificial wave machine.

Crazy.

Photo source

Video after the click (more…)

If you spend any time watching the fools lantern, you might’ve seen an ad for the Citroen car. If you have, this might make you laugh.