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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.

Peter Kay’s four new Bolton shows are BL-postcode only

July 15, 2026 River Leanox

The instruction reads like a captcha with a chip on its shoulder: type your postcode in UPPER case, with a SPACE. Get it wrong and…

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The £1,000 student award behind Lycett, Gamble and Gadd

July 13, 2026 River Leanox

The cheque at the end of the Chortle Student Comedy Award is £1,000, with £250 for the runner-up. The comedians who have stood roughly where…

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Club Comedy Seattle closes July 15 after no buyer steps up

July 12, 2026 River Leanox

The last show at Club Comedy Seattle goes up on Wednesday. Once that room empties the lights stay off on a stage that spent five…

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Learnmore Jonasi beats the $27m Lion King joke lawsuit

July 11, 2026 River Leanox

Learnmore Jonasi was on stage at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles when he found out the news. A Grammy-winning composer wanted $27 million off…

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Dublin comics win planning for a 200-seat Craic Den theatre

July 10, 2026 River Leanox

Eddie Mullarkey has spent years running comedy nights in rooms he doesn’t own. Now he’s got Dublin City Council’s blessing to build one, and he’s…

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A Netflix boss will chair the Edinburgh Comedy Awards

July 9, 2026 River Leanox

The person who will chair the panel handing out the Fringe’s most career-making comedy prize this August has a day job. The rest of her…

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Five Months On: A Hardship Fund for Leicester’s Unpaid Comedians, and the Festival’s Venue Is Gone

July 9, 2026 River Leanox

When we reported in May that 78 per cent of acts at the 2026 Leicester Comedy Festival had missed their 19 April settlement date, the…

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LGBTQ+ New Comedian of the Year opens with a £1,000 prize

July 4, 2026 River Leanox

There’s one sentence in the entry rules for this year’s LGBTQ+ New Comedian of the Year that matters more than the rest. It will quietly…

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Only 16 of 402 Edinburgh Fringe shows got the £2,500 grant this year

July 3, 2026 River Leanox

Four hundred and two shows applied to the Edinburgh Fringe’s Keep It Fringe fund this year, and sixteen got the money. That’s a hit rate…

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Magners’ funded Fringe run comes with a 60% profit share

June 22, 2026 River Leanox

The funded Fringe run that five comics are fighting over on 30 June isn’t quite the free month in Edinburgh it sounds like. Read the…

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