HISTORY
The Cambridge Footlights are one Britain’s oldest student sketch comedy troupes. Their inaugural performance took place in June 1883. For some months before the name "Footlights" was chosen, the group had performed to local audiences in the Cambridge area. They wished to reach a wider audience than the University Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC) as its theatre only seated one hundred people. They performed every May Week at the Theatre Royal, garnering huge public appeal. A local paper commended the Footlights on their appeal to “the many different classes of which life in Cambridge is made up".
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
The group grew in prominence in the 1960s as a hotbed of comedy and satire, and found a permanent home in the basement of the Cambridge Union. Having established a tradition of performing at the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the group entered the mainstream when its members Peter Cook and Johnathan Miller teamed up with Oxford Revue graduates Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore to form Beyond the Fringe, the hugely popular stage revue show which toured Britain and America in 1960. The 1963 revue then followed in the footsteps of Beyond the Fringe, appearing again at the Edinburgh Fringe and on London's West End, before travelling to New Zealand and the United States, where it made appearances on Broadway and The Ed Sullivan Show and received a full-page review in Time Magazine. Over the next decade, Footlights’ members came to dominate the British comedy scene, creating and starring in shows such as 'I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again', 'At Last the 1948 Show' and 'That Was The Week That Was'. At this time, hugely popular comedy groups came out of the Cambridge Footlights, such as Monty Python and The Goodies. These comedians fuelled the trend for satirical and surreal comedy that captured the British imagination in the 1960s and 1970s.
​Whilst women had been accepted as Revue performers since 1957, they were still unable to become fully-fledged members. That was, until, Eric Idle became president of the society. Idle was determined to secure the full admission of women into the society. Eventually, on 20th October 1964, the first four women were elected members of the club, including Germaine Greer. A year later, the bar on women being members of committee were lifted and Greer became 'Registrice', although it was another thirteen years until a woman became president: Jan Ravens in 1979.​
During the 1980s, Footlights reinforced its position as the heart of British comedy. The 1981 revue 'The Cellar Tapes', featuring acting legend Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Tony Slattery, Penny Dwyer and Paul Shearer, won the inaugural Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. In the 1990s, the Footlights was once again home to many future stars, such as Oscar-winning actress Olivia Colman, the BAFTA-winning David Mitchell and Robert Webb, and comedian-presenters Richard Ayoade, John Oliver, and British icons Sue Perkins, and Mel Giedroyc. Not long after graduating, a group of ex-Footlights including Mitchell and Webb worked together on the BBC Two sketch show 'Bruiser', then later on 'That Mitchell and Webb Look'.​
The 2000s saw TV presenter, comedian and the brains behind Taskmaster, Alex Horne begin his comedy career with the Footlights. In 2001, despite not being a member of the University, Tim Key joined the Footlights and befriended Mark Watson. The Footlights International Tour Show of that year 'Far Too Happy', threw Key into the limelight and earned him a nomination for the Perrier award for Best Newcomer. At the same time, Tom Basden joined the society and this lead to another writing partnership with Key. The following years welcomed members Simon Bird and Joe Thomas, the stars of The Inbetweeners; actor, writer, director Will Sharpe; Liam Williams, Alastair Roberts and Daran Johnson from award-winning sketch group 'Sheeps' and stand-up comedians Ken Cheng, Phil Wang and Emma Sidi.
More recent stars include Taskmaster contestant Ania Magliano; stand-up John Tothill, who was nominated for Best Show at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe; musical comedy act Jazz Emu (Archie Henderson); stand-up Hasan Al-Habib; viral TikTok sensation Libby Thornton and Leo Reich, star of Lena Dunham's Netflix show 'Too Much' (alongside Will Sharpe).
