Your ever-curious courier has been minding her own business when a rather unusual invitation slid into the satchel. Not a theatre, not a rehearsal room, not even a draughty church hall with a kettle that only produces vaguely warm water. No. This one is sending me under the Thames.
On Wednesday 4th March 2026, the Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe will host a one-night comedy evening titled Engineering is a Joke, part of its French Révolution season. Naturally, I assumed someone had finally snapped after too many spreadsheets. Instead, it turns out it’s shaping up to be something far stranger (and far better): a proper live performance night inside one of London’s most historic spaces.
The venue is the Museum’s famous Tunnel Shaft, a vast circular chamber that once formed part of the world’s first tunnel built beneath a navigable river. Victorian London used to hold fairs and entertainments there, which means technically I won’t be attending just a comedy night… I’ll be continuing a 19th-century tradition. I intend to feel very official about it.
Hosting the evening will be science communicator Steve Cross, founder of Science Show-off, who appears to specialise in convincing extremely clever people to explain things to the rest of us without using the phrase “as you can see from the graph.”
Leading the line-up is Shiv Kapila (Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025; Backyard Comedy Club), a Cambridge aerospace engineering PhD student who has taken the bold decision to process doctoral life through stand-up comedy. I have always suspected PhD students need some kind of emotional outlet and it turns out the answer is microphones. Expect warm, self-aware reflections on rockets, research and what happens when your social life is peer review.
Joining him is Shalaka Kurup (Get A Grip, Edinburgh Fringe 2025; Comedy Central Live), Funny Women Finalist and winner of West End New Act of the Year, who is quickly establishing herself as one of the most distinctive new voices on the UK circuit. From everything I’m hearing, she brings sharp observations with the calm confidence of someone who knows exactly what the audience is about to laugh at before they do.
Also performing will be Oliver Broadbent, a writer, designer and international speaker, bringing thoughtful insight into design and creativity with an engaging and accessible performance style. As the 2020 recipient of the Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education, he combines practical expertise with humour, which is reassuring because I need all my innovation delivered with jokes.
Completing the bill is James Connolly, Associate Professor of Modern French History at UCL, who weaves true stories, life experiences and historical facts into clever puns and quick-witted comedy. Which means you may leave having laughed and accidentally learned something. I will try not to take notes, but no promises.
The evening forms part of the Museum’s wider French Révolution season running until Monday 13th April. Alongside live performance, the season includes guided tours on the second weekend of every month, National Lottery Open Week with free entry on 14th–15th March, and Unearthing Innovation: 200 Years of Tunnelling, marking the 183rd anniversary of the Thames Tunnel’s opening on 25th March.
Museum Director Katherine McAlpine says they’re thrilled to welcome “some of the most exciting comedians” to the iconic Tunnel Shaft, and that the Brunels were famous for inventive ways of bringing their ideas to life, so the Museum is doing the same to engineering, by using humour. The Thames Tunnel was also a space for Fancy Fairs, with diverse acts and events, so this is very much keeping that tradition alive.
Personally, I find something rather wonderful about it. Theatre doesn’t always wear velvet curtains. Sometimes it wears hard hats, carries a microphone and tells jokes about structural integrity beneath a river while an entire city walks overhead unaware.
If you go, please report back to the Satchel immediately. For journalistic reasons. And because I would quite like to know if engineers are secretly the funniest people in Britain.
Engineering is a Joke
Brunel Museum, Railway Avenue, Rotherhithe, London SE16 4LF
Wednesday 4th March 2026, 6pm–9pm
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to check whether posting schedules can be improved using pulley systems. The Victorians would absolutely have tried it.
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