Funny bones Richard III genealogist crowned winner of comedy challenge
Our very own Professor Kevin Schürer (pictured) has been crowned the winner of the 2016 Stand Up Challenge, held at Leicester Racecourse on Wednesday night.
Professor Schürer from our School of History is a historian, genealogist and statistician who played a key role in the discovery of King Richard III.
The comedic contest was organised by Big Difference Company, the people behind the Leicester Comedy Festival, and supported by Leicester Castle Business School at De Montfort University.
Professor Schürer had the audience in stitches as he poked fun at Latitude festival goers, advertising executives, dog owners and the lewd behaviour of their pooches, which he acted out on stage.
He said: "Getting up on stage in front of an audience of 500 people and trying to make them laugh is not something one would normally choose to do. But it was all for charity and that made it worthwhile. I may have been judged to be the winner but on the night there were nine other courageous individuals stepping onto stage also to do stand up for the first time, and everyone was just great."
Carl Mifflin, a partner at Howes Percival, came second in the competition, with business consultant Jeanne Rae scooping third prize.
They beat off competition from Bernard Szczech, chief executive of IBM Leicester, Rob Bracken, general manager of Leicester Racecourse, David Nicholls, of Better IT and regional chair for the local Federation of Small Businesses, Duncan Clarke, of CS Ellis Group, Mhairi Morris, a senior lecturer in biomedical science at De Montfort University and Andy Morris, employability mentoring officer at De Montfort University .
The event was held at The Kube at Leicester Racecourse and formed part of Leicester Business Festival.
Money raised from the event will go to Big Difference Company to support their work, which aims to improve the health and wellbeing of communities across the UK.