5 Sep
07:37
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…
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
3 Sep
20:12
Fringe artist fund falls to £40,000 and comics top up the prizes
The Keep it Fringe fund paid 180 Edinburgh artists £2,500 each in 2025, a total of £450,000. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport put…
3 Sep
19:56
The Comedy Poster Awards finally pay in cash, not flyers
The firm putting money behind this year’s poster prize explained itself in a single sentence. It’s a sentence with a fight in it. “In a…
3 Sep
09:04
47 MPs sign the grassroots comedy letter, 16 more couldn’t
Sixteen MPs wanted to put their names on the Live Comedy Association’s letter to the Culture Secretary and weren’t allowed to. Parliamentary protocol, apparently, which…
1 Sep
06:29
How to write a clean comedy set that still gets laughs
Jim Gaffigan once explained his whole approach using a box of doughnuts. “It’s not really necessary to curse when you’re discussing doughnuts,” he told the…
1 Sep
05:43
Fringe sold 2.8m tickets and Assembly still wants the dates moved
“It’s the last Friday of the Fringe and people are sitting with half-full rooms,” Susie McCabe posted in the closing days of August. By the…
30 Aug
09:45
Leicester’s unpaid comics fund has £4,000 of its £30,000, and an ISH prize
Five nominees, one £5,000 pot, and a creditor owed £103 Big Difference Company was the collapsed charity that ran Leicester Comedy Festival. Buried in its…
28 Aug
23:16
BBC hands out 10 comedy bursaries worth £15,000, four to London
Ten places, eleven names, up to £15,000 apiece. The BBC named the 2026 cohort of its Comedy Collective bursary on 28 August, during the Edinburgh…
27 Aug
17:09
Kate Dolan wins the Comedians’ Choice and £500 of PR, no cash
“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, I wasn’t even this happy on my wedding day,” Kate Dolan said on Wednesday afternoon at the Three Sisters.…
27 Aug
03:16
Your comedy flyer now has to include the £1.50 booking fee
A free show with a price on it Buried in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s guidance to artists this year is a sample listing for a…
