Join us for the newest installment of our WS Symposium Series as we invite a stellar panel to Kent House as they ask "What's funny about being Jewish?"

Moderator: Dan Patterson
Panellist: Dame Maureen Lipman
Panellist: Lord Michael Grade
Panellist: Josh Howie

We'll be starting at 7:00pm with a break in the middle to enjoy some food and gather any questions you’d like to add to the discussion. If you wish to join us, please do register below.

Please note that prices increase after Monday 5th May!  

Please note that we would never turn members away for financial reasons, should you have any worries about ticket prices, please get in touch. 

You can read the full biographies of our speakers below, and can book in at the bottom of the page.

Moderator Dan Patterson is a British television producer and writer, best known as co-creator, alongside Mark Leveson, and producer of both the British and American incarnations of the comedy improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the British satirical comedy panel show Mock the Week. In October 2013, the play The Duck House, a farcical political satire which he wrote alongside Have I Got News for You writer Colin Swash, embarked on a five-week tour before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End through Spring 2014.

Panellist Maureen Lipman's father was a Jewish tailor and she was pressed into acting by her mother Zelma, who used to take Maureen to the pantomime and push her onto the stage. She studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Since then, she has appeared in a number of West End productions, including "See How They Run"; "Candide"; "Lost in Yonkers" and her one-woman show "Re Joyce" - her homage to her heroine Joyce Grenfell. In 28 years in the profession, Maureen has only been out of work for four months. To many people, Maureen Lipman is "Beattie" from the British Telecom advertisements which won her an award for "You got an Ology?" but, in reality, she has done so much more. She was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the British Empire) in the 1999 Queen's New Years Honors List for her services to drama. and was awarded the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to charity, Entertainment and the Arts.

Panellist Michael Grade is Chair of Ofcom, the regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications, postal industries and online safety. He has had a long career in broadcasting, encompassing London Weekend Television, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.   He has chaired the BBC, ITV and Pinewood/Shepperton Film Studios. He is co-founder of the GradeLinnit Company, which produces for the theatre. He is Chair of Imagineear, which produces digital displays for museums, galleries and live attractions.   He is also chair of Arora Group’s Heathrow Expansion Advisory Board, having also been Chair of Ocado, First Leisure Corporation, Camelot, the Charity Fundraising Regulator and Bradford’s Media Museum.   He was a member of the former Press Complaints Commission and was a Trustee of the Science Museum.  In 2011 he became a member of the House of Lords, where he sits as a non-affiliated Peer.  He is known as Lord Grade of Yarmouth.

Panellist and WS Member Josh Howie is a producer, and host of GB News hit late-night show, Headliners, featuring comedians dissecting the following day’s newspapers, as well as host on Free Speech Nation for the same channel. He’s also the writer and star of two series of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 sitcom Josh Howie’s Losing It, nominated for a BBC Radio Award, and plays one of the leads in the sitcom Hapless, which has just started its second season on Amazon Prime. When not in the studio, Josh is a much in-demand stand-up comic performing regularly at all the major comedy clubs across the UK. Over the last decade he’s also taken his hyper-aware humour to India, Ireland, UAE, France, Holland, China, Austria, Hungary, Thailand, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, and America. In addition Josh has written and performed four solo shows for the Edinburgh Festival, with consequent sell-out runs at London’s Soho Theatre, and the UK solo tour Josh Howie’s Messed Up. For five years he was the writer/presenter of The Movie Geek on Sky Movies and is often praised for his writing talent having contributed features to The Times, Guardian, and Daily Mail, and writes a column about parenting five children, and is the TV reviewer, for The Jewish Chronicle. Josh recently completed his first feature film script, presently in pre-production with the director of The Greatest Showman.