Mike Jones Steps Down as The Stand's Managing Director

Six words in The Stand’s leaving statement for Mike Jones will matter more to the acts than everything else in it. The company says that during his time in post he held fast to its principal commitments of “paying our staff and comics fairly”. On 7 October he stops being the person responsible for that. Chortle reported the move this week: Jones is standing down as managing director of the comedy club group after seven years in the post. The report gives no reason for his departure, and nobody has been named to take the job on.

That makes three changes at the top since March. Founder Tommy Sheppard retired as chairman of the board six months ago, 30 years after setting up the club. Two comics replaced him as joint chairs: Jay Lafferty and Paul Sneddon. Sneddon, who performed as Vladimir McTavish and as Bob Doolally, died in the summer at the age of 70. If you gig in Scotland or the north east of England, that is a lot of churn in the offices directly above the rooms you are trying to get on, and nobody has sent round a new org chart.

Who is in charge after 7 October?

Nobody has said. Jones’s last day is 7 October, the statement names no replacement and no interim, and the coverage does not explain why he is going. The board is barely older than the vacancy. When Sheppard stepped down in March, comedian Jay Lafferty, Glasgow venue manager Fraser Milroy and IT consultant Gareth Hunter all joined. Lafferty and Sneddon took the joint chairs. Since Sneddon’s death none of the reports says who chairs the company now, so anyone telling you confidently is filling in a blank. An IT consultant is the least funny job title on any Scottish comedy board and probably the most useful one on it, given the group sells tickets online across three cities.

The practical question for acts is narrower than the headline. Whoever inherits the office inherits the pay line, the new-act ladder and the bookings diary, at a point when the working gig week has thinned out for UK comics. Management changes rarely arrive with a lineup announcement, and acts tend to find out when a regular Tuesday stops appearing in the diary.

From a Grassmarket basement to a church on Great Western Road

The Stand’s first night was in September 1995, in a Grassmarket pub basement. That is the detail everybody quotes and nobody quite believes while queuing at the York Place bar. Jones arrived from the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal, in Cumbria, where he had been executive director, a building-and-budgets job. His statement credits him with opening new venues, with the company not closing during Covid, and with the Newcastle club developing a strong foothold in the North East to become a successful third venue. It also credits him with the recent relocation of the Glasgow Stand and with supporting the team to deliver their most successful Fringe since 2019.

That Glasgow move, announced last year, took the club out of 25 years at Woodlands Road and into The Lansdowne Church on Great Western Road, on a new 25 year lease. Higher audience capacity, full disabled access and a permanent separate bar were all promised. Full disabled access being something you announce as a feature in 2025 tells you plenty about the rooms this circuit has been working in for decades. Jones called it “the right time for The Stand to make a new move that will allow us to grow into the future.” Fraser Milroy, then managing the Glasgow room and now on the board, said at the time that what made the old place great was the people in it: the staff, the acts and the audiences, rather than the building.

Jones’s best line in public came in March, when Sheppard went. Talking in Chortle’s report on the retirement, Jones said:

It feels like we should be erecting the blue plaque and more to mark Tommy’s amazing contribution to live comedy in Scotland and the UK since he and Jane Mackay set up The Stand 31 years ago.

Red Raw, £2,500 and the fair-pay sentence

The company picked the fair-pay phrasing itself, in its own leaving statement, which makes it fair to read it back. What sits underneath the promise is a ladder most Scottish acts use at some point. Red Raw, the new-act night, is described on the club’s own site as “regarded as the best open mic night in the UK”. The Skinny reported that “1000 hopeful comics apply to perform at Red Raw every year”, although that figure comes from an interview published back in 2015 and no newer count has been put out since. Then there is the award set up in Sneddon’s memory, where any Scottish or Scottish-based comic performing a solo show of at least 50 minutes over a minimum of eight nights is automatically eligible, with no application needed. The winner gets £2,500. Not having to apply is the rarest thing on that list, and worth more than it sounds to anyone who has spent a February filling in forms for competition heats.

Money at that end of the scale is thin everywhere, as the comedians on the Leicester Comedy Festival creditors list discovered. It is why ideas like a levy on ticket income keep coming back round. The Stand put fair pay in its own farewell notice, so expect acts to quote it back at the next managing director, probably in an email about a Red Raw spot.

“At a certain point, the ladder just disappears”

That is a Scottish comic talking to Brass Tacks Comedy, whose research, funded by the Scottish Government, came out in September. Of the 77 people who responded, 70 were comedians and the rest worked in other industry roles. Almost a quarter described “an insurmountable barrier to paid work”, some of them pointing out that new-act spots end up going to established acts trying out new material instead of to actual beginners. Sixty per cent named financial sustainability as a core struggle, citing travel costs and full-time jobs that leave people too tired to write. That is the least glamorous finding in the whole study, and the one most likely to be true of whoever is driving back from a gig tonight.

The authors describe a hidden, class-gated career ladder: acts with a financial cushion can absorb years of unpaid travel and Edinburgh Fringe costs, and acts without one cannot. Set that against a management handover at the biggest club group in the country and the vacancy is really about who controls the few paid rungs between an open mic and a tour. Anyone who has turned a Fringe budget into a finished show will recognise the shape of it.

In March, Jones wanted a blue plaque for Tommy Sheppard. Seven months on he is the one leaving, with no stated reason, no named replacement, and six words in his own farewell that acts will be reading back to whoever comes next. What he hands over is three clubs and a 25-year lease on a church on Great Western Road, where the bar finally gets its own room.

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About River Leanox

River Leanox edits Open Comedy's newsroom. Coverage runs across stand-up's full ecosystem: comics on the rise, club owners booking the rooms, festivals, specials, and the working-comic economics behind the laughs. Tips, corrections, and counter-arguments welcome at river@opencomedy.com.

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The Stand’s managing director leaves on 7 October, and nobody has been named to replace him