Jamali Maddix gets the run of Hackney Empire’s 1,275 seats

The Hackney Empire holds 1,275 people. On Thursday 22 October it hands the lot of them over to a fictional pirate radio station from Brentford. Kurupt FM headline the first ever Empire Nights, and the person choosing the rest of the bill is a stand-up. Jamali Maddix lives in East London and has played the room enough times that the theatre’s own announcement calls him a “Hackney Empire regular”. That is a nicer credit than most of the ones on his Wikipedia page.

A Grade II* listed Edwardian variety house has built a new live strand around one comic’s taste, with the acts picked by someone who drinks in the borough rather than by whoever’s diary happened to line up. It has already handed the second night to Lou Sanders before the first one has happened.

When is the first Empire Nights and who’s on the bill?

The first Empire Nights is Thursday 22 October 2026, at Hackney Empire on Mare Street. Kurupt FM – Seapa, MC Beats and Steves – headline, with Maddix curating and hosting. The rest of the bill is Guz Khan, Michelle de Swarte, the stand-up Kyrah Gray, grime MC Manga Saint Hilare and DJ Lex Blondin. Blondin founded the Church of Sound club night. The second is Friday 29 January 2027, headlined by Sanders, with the remaining acts still to be announced. Both sit inside the theatre’s 125th anniversary programme.

Chortle’s write-up on 2 September notes that Kurupt FM play Hackney ahead of a UK tour of their own in December. So the October date functions as a warm-up in front of 1,275 people, which is a fairly luxurious way to warm up. Anyone who has tried to park on Mare Street on a Thursday evening will already have worked out that this is a bus night.

Three of the seven names on that bill are working stand-ups. A fourth, de Swarte, came off the circuit before she made Spent for the BBC. It’s a comedy line-up with a music headliner, which is a different animal from a music line-up with a comic compere. The ordering of those two things determines who gets the dressing room with the mirror.

Matcham built the room for this in 1901

Hackney Empire opened on 9 December 1901 to a design by Frank Matcham and was built as a music hall. It has been listed at Grade II* since 28 June 1972. Charlie Chaplin, Marie Lloyd, Stan Laurel, Gracie Fields, Stanley Holloway and Julie Andrews all worked that stage when it was doing variety for a living. A bill of one headline act, three comics, an MC and a DJ is roughly what the building was drawn up to hold in the first place, minus the performing dogs.

Becca Thomason, Hackney Empire’s Head of Programme and Executive Producer, put the reasoning like this in the theatre’s announcement:

Hackney Empire has an immense legacy as a Variety House, and with Empire Nights we wanted to take that history and reimagine it for today. We invited artists and producers across art forms we admire to help workshop the series, and we couldn’t think of anyone better than East Londoner and Hackney Empire regular Jamali Maddix to curate the first night. Each instalment of Empire Nights will be a window into the tastes and influences of our brilliant hosts, bringing together the artists, performers and things they love to create a completely unique experience every time.

Maddix’s own line in the release is shorter and does the same job: “Hackney Empire is a place I’ve always loved, so I’m excited to be curating a night there and bringing together a bunch of artists I appreciate and am inspired by.” Note the word everyone’s using there – curating. Nobody in any version of the announcement has typed compere yet, and whether that holds up in front of a Thursday-night crowd who came for Kurupt FM is another matter. If you have ever tried to hold a room together between two wildly different acts, you know the curator ends up doing the compering anyway.

Two versions of the same announcement, neither with a price

Here is the sort of thing that only matters if you’re the one buying a ticket. Hackney Empire’s own announcement says of the Sanders night: “This second event in the series will be on-sale on Friday 18 September.” Beyond The Joke’s write-up, by Bruce Dessau, frames 18 September as the date further details are announced rather than the on-sale. The theatre’s own wording is the one I’d trust. But the two readings send you to your laptop on the same day for different reasons, which is at least efficient.

What none of them carry is a price. Not the theatre’s release, not Chortle, not Theatre Weekly, not the PR version. I could not find a face value published anywhere as of 8 September. The PR version found room for a DJ’s founding credits and not one number with a pound sign in front of it. That’s ordinary enough for an announcement six weeks out. But it means nobody outside the building yet knows whether Empire Nights is priced as a comedy night, a gig, or a 125th-anniversary special. Whenever it does land it will have to land complete, because the advertised figure now has to include the booking fee rather than bolting it on at checkout.

What Kyrah Gray is doing on a bill like this

Gray is the one name on the October line-up without a returning television series attached to it. She is the reason the bill is more interesting than a press release about Kurupt FM suggests. South London born and raised, she started comedy in 2019 in her final year at university. Since then she has supported Guz Khan, Judi Love, Romesh Ranganathan and Russell Kane on tour, played the O2 as part of Mo Gilligan’s Black British Takeover, and written for Bad Education and Rosie Jones’ Out Of Order. She has also supported Maddix, which is how bills like this actually get made: a curator remembering who was good in the half-hour before he went on.

Maddix’s own credits run through Taskmaster, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Live at the Apollo. That third one is now a slightly poignant entry given the BBC has axed the show. Several producers are circling the gap it leaves, including a podcast filming eight Apollo-style shows of its own. A curated variety night in a 1,275-seat theatre won’t fill that gap, but it does put a comic in front of 1,275 people and whichever producers are sitting in row F on comps.

Sanders takes the second one on 29 January. That lands in the same month that Underbelly Boulevard, a purpose-built comedy room in Soho, shuts its doors after breaking its lease. London is losing a dedicated mid-size comedy venue and gaining two nights a year in a Victorian theatre that mostly does panto and opera. Those are not equivalent things, and I would rather have the room that runs every week. Still, the building that used to book Marie Lloyd has handed the running order to a stand-up who lives up the road. And it goes on sale on a Friday morning in September with no price on it yet.

Sources

• Hackney Empire – Kurupt FM to headline Hackney Empire’s first ever Empire Nights
• Chortle – Kurupt FM to headline Hackney Empire (2 September 2026)
• ANR PR – full announcement text and quotes
• Beyond The Joke – Kurupt FM To Headline Hackney’s First Empire Nights Special
• Theatre Weekly – Kurupt FM announced as headline act
• Wikipedia – Hackney Empire (capacity, opening date, listing)
• Just The Tonic – Kyrah Gray biography