4 Jun
04:10
Jon Petrie leaves the BBC for Hat Trick in August
“A fairly brutal reminder of my age” That’s Jon Petrie, the BBC’s outgoing director of comedy. He’s reacting to taking the creative director job at…
Reporter
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.
The running order
1 Jun
01:19
Matt Hollins wins the £150 comedy prize 100 over-35s entered
The trophy is a pigeon, the prize was £150, and the qualifying rule is that you can’t be a professional. That is the Not So…
31 May
01:36
Aberdeen Comedy Festival 2026 stretches to three weekends
Three weekends instead of two Russell Howard opens the Music Hall on Saturday 19 September with a show called “Don’t Tell the Algorithm”. It’s the…
30 May
07:41
Gilded Balloon hands £2,000 each to five Fringe shows
£2,000. That’s what each of the five shows on the inaugural Gilded Balloon Show Support Fund will get this August. Tim Minchin and his wife…
29 May
12:11
Ania Magliano gets the Rose d’Or gig at Kings Place
The Rose d’Or press release dropped on 13 May with a sentence I genuinely had to read twice. Ania Magliano was asked why she’d taken…
29 May
05:07
Simon Amstell’s first Fringe headline run since 2009 is two nights long
Two nights, 7pm, McEwan Hall. £24 a ticket or £22 with a concession, 70 minutes, 16+. That’s Simon Amstell’s entire 2026 Edinburgh Fringe, on sale…
28 May
04:19
BBC New Comedy Awards pulls every 2026 heat to Coventry
Applications for the BBC New Comedy Awards opened on Wednesday morning, and the geography has narrowed considerably. Every heat in 2026 will be filmed in…
27 May
01:21
Josh Johnson left every topical joke out of his HBO special
Josh Johnson put out 38 hours of new stand-up last year, nearly all of it free on YouTube. Most of it was built around whatever…
26 May
15:16
Matt Mathews has 15 million followers and four UK gigs
Matt Mathews has more than 15 million followers online and over a billion video views across platforms, and when his first world tour reaches Britain…
26 May
03:17
Rik Mayall’s festival outsells year one before it even opens
Stuart Panrucker, who runs the Rik Mayall Comedy Festival, reckons last year’s debut shifted more than 10,000 tickets. He points to “audiences travelling from across…
