The Glee Club is a traditional event in the Liberal Assembly

Liberal Assembly

The Liberal Assembly was the annual party conference of the British Liberal Party before its merger with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats; the name is still used by the continuity Liberal Party created as its replacement...

 and UK Liberal Democrat party conference, consisting of a public singing around a piano. It is one of the most popular fringe events in British politics

Politics of the United Kingdom

The politics of the United Kingdom takes place within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, in which the Monarch is the head of state and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government...

 and was a formative event in the lives of many British political leaders, allegedly Michael Foot

Michael Foot

Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...

 amongst them. Although the Glee Club has informally existed for many years, in 1967 the first songbook (entitled After the Count was Over) was published by the National League of Young Liberals

National League of Young Liberals

The National League of Young Liberals , often just called the Young Liberals, was the youth wing of the British Liberal Party. It was founded in 1903 and by 1906 it had over three hundred branches. In 1934 it called for David Lloyd George to lead a Liberal New Deal revival based on the Yellow Book...

. Songbooks have been produced since the 1975 by Liberator

Liberator (magazine)

Liberator is a radical liberal United Kingdom magazine associated with but not officially connected to the Liberal Democrats. Founded in 1970 as the magazine of the then Young Liberals, it has often published articles critical of the party leadership, in particular over the Liberal Party's debacle...

, and in 2009 the 20th edition of the Liberator Songbook was published - the 27th songbook in its publishing history.

It is often combined with the Liberal Revue, a series of sketches

Sketch comedy

A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...

 consisting mostly of in-joke

In-joke

An in-joke, also known as an inside joke or in joke, is a joke whose humour is clear only to people who are in a particular social group, occupation, or other community of common understanding...

s and irreverent takes on political matters.