Local mom lobbies for laughs

Several years ago, Kimbles Hume was at her San Marcos home raising her twin sons.

Having relinquished her job in Los Angeles as marketing chief of the show-biz publication Variety, Hume occupied her spare time writing children’s stories and humorous poetry.

“One night I said to myself, I should do stand-up,” Hume said. “Two weeks later, I was at the La Jolla Comedy Store on open mic night.”

Comedian Kimbles Hume

(Alex Ansel)

Now, Hume not only gets paid for her own onstage performances, she produces shows through her company, Bits Comedy.

“The reason I do it is because it gets me up on the stage,” said Hume, a native of Wimbledon, England. “It also brings more comedy to the area, makes me able to pay other comedians, allows me to network with comedians from out of town and it’s making me some money on the side.”

Hume said she has five different spots where she produces live comedy. One of those is a monthly program in the outdoor amphitheater at L’Auberge hotel in Del Mar.

Sponsored by the city of Del Mar and L’Auberge in conjunction with Hume’s organization, the programs are scheduled the first Friday of the month. The next one is planned for May 6. The shows are free of charge to the public.

“It’s really a community experience,” she said. “They’re actually incredibly fun.”

Other upcoming shows are scheduled May 25 at the recently opened Mic Drop Comedy Club in Kearny Mesa; second Fridays of the month at San Diego Mission Bay Resort; and the second Thursdays of the month at Kona Kai Resort on Shelter Island.

Bits Comedy even has a regular gig in Georgia.

“I’m beginning to go national as well — bi-coastal, which is fun,” Hume said.

Also, Hume’s company produces private parties as well and those interested can contact her at kimbleshume@gmail.com

Like most entertainers, Hume experienced a loss of opportunities due to restrictions engendered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Therefore, she delighted in her March appearance in Solana Beach at the venerated Belly Up Tavern, a show headlined by nationally-renowned comedian Matthew Broussard.

Produced by Hume, the event attracted one of her larger audiences in the last couple of years.

“It was just exciting to have 200 people back in the room at the Belly Up,” Hume said. “I’ve been doing a lot of work outside as well as in a lot of smaller rooms. It was one of the biggest shows I’ve seen since the pandemic. It’s exciting to see.”

Comedian Kimbles Hume’s company Bits Comedy produces performances once a month at L’Auberge resort’s amphitheater in Del Mar, including the one pictured above with comic Nic Flair onstage.

(Kimbles Hume)

Being a 40-year-old mom doing stand-up is unique and she weaves anecdotes based on that role into her jokes.

Hume got the Belly Up audience chuckling with quips about raising her twin boys, dealing with her one son’s epilepsy, going on a family outing and dialectal differences between American and British English, among other topics.

“There was laughter so that works,” she said. “If you walk off and had a great time, you know they had an even better time. ...

“I try to be very personal and relatable, so everything I cover is about being a mom, being a wife, my twins and, of course, there’s a lot of Britishisms in there as well. People are definitely still fascinated with my British background.”

If her comedy were to be rated in movie terminology, it ranges from PG-13 to a “mild R,” Hume said. Judging by her Belly Up show, the material was adult-oriented, but not profanity-laced.

“It’s mostly innuendo,” she said. “It’s a happy medium. I’m just edgy enough. I’m just naughty enough.”

Having been doing stand-up routines for three years, Hume is still honing her craft.

“They say that it takes 10 years to find your true voice as a comedian,” she said. “I’m only three years in, so I’ve got a long way to go. That said, I had been writing comedy for many years before that and I understood my voice a little bit.”

She’s done well enough to be a finalist at Palm Springs International Comedy Festival and to appear at the World Series of Comedy in Las Vegas.

Her new career arc came after she and her family left Los Angeles, where they had lived in a beach town, and settled in the San Marcos community of San Elijo.

As head of marketing at Variety, she was immersed in the world of Hollywood personalities and celebrity events, including Oscar and Emmy award festivities.

Life became calmer when she and the family moved to the San Diego area, where she immersed herself in writing. That’s when Hume felt the impulse to do something more active.

“I was missing people interaction, which is when the idea of stand-up came in,” she said. “I’m pretty comfortable on stage. I sang in a band in the U.K.”

Before coming to the U.S., Hume attended Bristol University in England and earned a degree in international marketing, following in her father’s footsteps in public relations and marketing. She worked for a publication in the U.K. before taking the Variety position in L.A.

About 13 years ago, she met her future husband, a Washington native, in San Diego’s Mission Bay where he was living at the time.

“I was kind of this intense career woman hell bent on working my way up the marketing ladder, and yet somehow something changed, as it does with so many people when they hit this age and have kids and realize they want a change in career,” Hume said. “It was the creativity for me. I wanted to start something that was my own, but a PR or marketing company wasn’t the right thing for me. So, I went down this route of trying to become a comedian.”

Parlaying performance with production, Hume’s career reset has the makings of a smash success.

“I’m at a point now where I know I’ve got something. I know something’s going right.”

Follow @bitscomedy on Instagram to hear more about Hume’s local shows.