Banana Cabaret’s Balham room reopens at £20 with no lineup refunds

“Not sure why we didn’t have a compere,” Dave Vickers told Chortle in January. He was describing a booking habit that survived four decades in a circular upstairs room in Balham. “Andy just used to announce the acts, and that format continues, I think.” It continued right up to 30 May, when Banana Cabaret played its last night after 43 years. Vickers then went off to retire, having, in his words, “just reached state pension age”. Fourteen weeks later the same room came back with a different promoter above the door. The ticket is £20, and there is a policy page worth reading before you buy.

The promoter is Always Be Comedy, the south London operation that already runs The Tommyfield in Kennington and Thursdays at The Trafalgar in Chelsea. Chortle reported it has been going 15 years. Its residency in the Bedford’s Club Room was scheduled to open on Friday 4 September and then run every Friday and Saturday. Three acts a night, 20:00 start, doors roughly half an hour earlier. Chortle’s venue page lists the ticket price as £20 and the address as 77 Bedford Hill, SW12 9HD. That is the same postcode Eddie Izzard was standing in when he opened a set with what he later described as “St Paul’s Letter To The Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verses 1 To 17: Dear Corinthians…”. That was his first gig anywhere, trailing ellipsis included.

What happened to Banana Cabaret at The Bedford?

Banana Cabaret closed on Saturday 30 May 2026 after 43 years, because its promoter retired. Always Be Comedy now programmes the same Club Room on Friday and Saturday nights from 4 September, at £20 a ticket. That’s the short answer, and it’s the one people have been typing into search boxes all summer. The club’s own web presence never spelled it out in one sentence.

The longer version starts in 1983, when, as Chortle put it, the club “was at the vanguard of the new alternative comedy movement”. It was set up in the Bedford’s function room by comics including Paul Merton, Mark Steel and Nick Revell. Vickers joined in the 1980s to build a second space for full-length solo shows. He took over the booking in the 1990s, and had the whole thing by about 2000. The farewell ran across May as a festival: 45 acts across 11 shows, with Ed Byrne, Zoe Lyons, Milton Jones and Al Murray on it. It finished with a night somebody had the nerve to call the Banana Split. Vickers also mentioned the architecture, which nobody else ever does: “Strange having a circular balcony; again, maybe the shape of the room gives it a particular vibe.”

Three listings, three different Saturday lineups

Here’s the bit that isn’t in anyone’s press release. Checked on 5 September, the three places a punter would actually look did not agree about who was on. Always Be Comedy’s own Balham page had Saturday 5 September as Joel Dommett, Tom Davis and Blank Peng. The Bedford’s events page had the same three, in a different order, with Davis at the top, which I imagine went down fine with Davis. Chortle’s venue listing had “Fin Taylor + more comedians” on the Saturday. It put Dommett on Friday 11 September instead, a night Always Be Comedy’s own site gives to Michelle de Swarte, Helen Bauer and Red Richardson.

None of that is scandalous. Aggregator listings go stale, acts drop, agents move dates, and a room booking six acts a weekend will churn. What makes it worth flagging is what sits on Always Be Comedy’s tickets page in plain text: “Always Be Comedy reserves the right to remove or substitute acts when required. Please note that due to the nature of live comedy and our commitment to booking the biggest and best acts, line-ups are subject to change. We do not offer refunds if line-ups change.” That is an entirely standard clause across British club comedy. It is also the reason to buy off the promoter’s page rather than the first result Google hands you. Consumer pricing rules already forced clubs to put the booking fee on the flyer, though that rule governs the number on the flyer and not the three names underneath it, which you find out when somebody says them into the mic.

The room that never had a compere

The format question is the one I’d want answered if I gigged there. For 43 years the Bedford’s Club Room ran without an MC – Vickers was explicit about it, and about not really knowing why. Chortle describes James Gill as Always Be Comedy’s founder and MC. So the working assumption among London acts is that Balham now has a compere for the first time since the Thatcher government. Neither the promoter nor the pub has said so in writing. It matters more than it sounds. A room with a host has someone to burn the first five minutes, absorb a bad table and hand the closer a warm crowd. A room without one asks every act to do that cold. Whether Gill is hosting every Balham weekend, some of them, or none, nobody has put on a page.

“Banana Cabaret isn’t just a comedy night; it’s hallowed ground. What Dave built there over the years is legendary. To be handed the baton at such an iconic venue is a massive honour.” – James Gill, founder and MC, Always Be Comedy

The pub’s side of it came from Tom Peake of Three Cheers Pub Co, who said: “Comedy has always been at the beating heart of The Bedford thanks to Banana Cabaret. We are so grateful to Dave and the team for all the joy they have brought to the pub.” Handover statements are handover statements. But there is a real difference between a landlord who keeps the comedy and one who converts the function room into a padel bar. South London has watched enough of the second kind. Underbelly Boulevard is breaking its Soho lease in January, and that room only opened in 2023.

Nobody has said what happens to the July festival

The unresolved thing is the Balham Comedy Festival. Vickers and the comic John Moloney set it up in 2010, in this same room, and it became an annual July fixture. Nobody has published what happens to it now. The Bedford’s own festival page still sits there advertising “its eleventh year” and telling you: “From 7th – 15th July expect to see one of London’s finest comedy festivals in our stunning Club Room.” No year attached. Whether that’s a live plan, a page nobody took down, or something Always Be Comedy inherits with the Fridays, I can’t tell you. None of the three parties has said.

For working acts the practical questions are the ones nobody publishes: what the three spots pay, and whether the room takes submissions or runs off the promoter’s existing Kennington and Chelsea pool. There is no listed contact either. Always Be Comedy points prospective punters at an Instagram account and prospective acts at nothing in particular, which is normal and slightly maddening. It is roughly why MPs were told this summer that bookers might need a £10 licence just to make the trade legible.

Meanwhile the Bedford’s calendar has already started doing the thing venue calendars do. Wedged between the weekend stand-up there’s Dominic Frisby on Wednesday 7 October at 19:00, an evening of comedy songs and satire. It is ticketed through a completely different platform. There’s also an Always Be Comedy New Year’s Eve special pencilled in for 31 December at 20:00. Four months into a residency that hasn’t finished its first month, somebody has already sold the last night of the year.