Vaultfest is quickly becoming one of my must-hit events in London. I love the fact that one minute you can be walking down a deserted South Bank on a cold mid-week night and the next you find yourself taking the side door off an epically graffiti-ed tunnel and entering what feels like back stage at a rock gig.

Tonight, however, we were here for comedy and my clown pal for the evening was desperate to grab a drink and head to the souk at the back of the Vaults for a solid hit of nostalgia. Much to our distress (well, hers) the souk was gone and had been replaced with a rather uninspiring Meantime bar! No character, no soul, just the continuing commercialisation of great comedy venues – but that’s a rant for another time.

Luckily not all of the bars in the venue are so anonymously mainstream and we managed to find a good spot in the loft and settled in for a couple of drinks and a good catch-up.

Whilst happily draining our third or fourth drinks we were startled by a text message from my ninja pal (who was joining us that evening) firstly reminding us that we had tickets for a show and secondly saying that she couldn’t find the venue. At first, we mocked her inability to find the far end of Waterloo Station… Then we realised that she was right, and the venue wasn’t actually in the Vaults!

We headed out to the street and found said ninja aimlessly wandering in a tunnel. We then turned to technology and quickly located our venue which was literally three doors down (She has mastered the ancient art of Ninjitsu but Google Maps is clearly a step too far!).

‘Travelling Through’ is a small book shop on Lower Marsh and our clown for the evening was holding court in the basement of this very charming establishment.

We wandered down the steps to find a small seating area surrounded by books (including the new Joe Hill, which I must get around to reading) and a quaint bar that  served us all good strong double gins at an incredibly reasonable price.

Our clown then appeared and was faced with a surprising crowd. Surprising because he had sold 23 tickets but only a handful of us – including one of the book shop team who was perched on the steps – had actually turned up.

Thankfully this didn’t dissuade him in any way – ‘I’ve got their money, fuck it’ – and he proceeded to unleash one of the most ‘work in progress’ sets that I have ever seen. Punchlines were missing, anecdotes were incomplete and the most impressive thing about his set was the glittery, ‘Debbie McGee’-style notebook that he kept open and close at all times.

That being said… we had fun! We laughed, we were silent at points but even that was funny. Jim Campbell is just an incredibly amiable clown. You could see where he was trying to go with his material and were mostly laughing at the concept.

Jim talked about his family, his heritage, his issues with depression and his dealings with a massive load of shit (there was a rather disturbing impromptu video finale for that) and even though some things didn’t quite hit the mark, as they don’t at a work in progress show, we laughed… a lot.

This is a clown who has all the ingredients but just hasn’t quite found the right recipe yet for this particular show… Nonetheless, this evening could have gone very differently – we were trapped in an awkward book-filled basement with a clown on the edge and yet all three of us came out laughing and having had a thoroughly enjoyable night.

I can safely say that we would all happily see the finished routine later this year at the Fringe. Jim is one to watch and if you can grab those £5 tickets to see him at Vaultfest you definitely should.

Clown Stars: (- unrated -)

 @Travelling Through – The Vaults, London