‘It’s hard to imagine the conditions, hundreds herded into airless rooms, the heat, the sweat…’ – Rob Newman.
We all laugh – not just because we’re comedy groupies who’ve travelled far to darkest Clapham for a rare glimpse of Rob whose given his time for free, nor yet because we’re no sweat activists and we think we might just have broken even on this gig.
We laugh because hundreds of us, pouring with sweat, have crowded into the Bread and Roses, the windows are shut because it’s a residential neighbourhood, it’s hot, airless, people are fainting, and we wouldn't want to be anywhere else. We’ve had to turn people away at the door. There are people with permanently twisted necks in the corridor.
When we count up at the end of the evening we’ve made £1200, including collections and donations. This will pay for an office and organisers for the Indonesian trade union for a year. As Mick Duncan explained earlier in the evening (to the most attentive audience for a political speech during a benefit gig I’ve ever encountered) Indonesian trade unionists face rape, torture and intimidation. This money is a really concrete way of helping their struggle.
That’s why Rob Newman, and our supporting comedians, Ewen Gilmour and Howard Reed (under the impression it was against Sweetshops – he’d been misled) are prepared to give up their fee, and why our audience sat happily and sweated it out.
The only question is (especially for the twisted necks in the corridor): when’s the next one going to be?
(If you’d like to organise a benefit, or an artist willing to perform, contact  admin@nosweat.org.uk)