Big Difference Company Limited took £499,562 in the year to 29 June 2025 and spent £495,352 of it. That is the last set of numbers on its Charity Commission record, filed under charity number 1135167. It is the sort of margin an arts charity lives on happily, right up until the week it doesn’t. On 5 August, a little over a year after that year end, the announcement came. The organisation that had run Leicester Comedy Festival since 1994 said it had “become insolvent and ceased trading”.

The hundreds of acts still owed money from February’s festival stop being people waiting for a bank transfer and become unsecured creditors in a liquidation, which is a considerably worse queue to be standing in. We reported in May that 78 per cent of the festival’s 370 acts had not been paid by the 19 April settlement date. Individual sums ran from about £104 to just under £600. Benjamin Alborough, who told the Guardian he was owed just short of £2,000, is at the sharp end of that range.

None of this arrived without warning. Chortle first reported the company’s financial trouble in April. In July the charity filed a serious incident report with the Charity Commission, after the venue it also ran was repossessed over unpaid rent. Michael Day of Equity’s variety branch put it flatly in Chortle’s report of the collapse. “Despite being widely anticipated, it’s a huge blow to see Leicester Comedy Festival file for insolvency.”

What happens to comedians still owed money?

They become unsecured creditors of the liquidated company. That means submitting a written claim to the liquidator, then waiting to find out what, if anything, is left. The Insolvency Service’s own guidance is blunt about the mechanics. “A person claiming to be a creditor and wishing to recover their debt in whole or in part must, subject to any order of the court, submit their claim in writing to the liquidator.” Unsecured creditors are, in the guidance’s phrasing, “creditors who do not have security for the debt”. Those without preferential status “rank equally for dividends in accordance with their admitted claims”.

In practice, your £340 for a Friday night in a back room sits in the same pot as the print supplier and the bar stock. It ranks behind the cost of the liquidation itself, and behind preferential claims. Equity has already clawed money back for individual members through direct pressure, which was possible while the company was still trading. Day’s warning in the same statement is the bit worth clocking:

At Equity, we’ve been supporting many comedians who were left unpaid and we have secured payment for several of them. However, getting money owed to comedians will become far more difficult under an insolvency.

He also spoke about the acts who played. “There would be no festival or gigs without these comedians and it’s grossly unfair that they are the ones left unpaid in this and so many similar situations.” Jessica Toomey, director of the 1,600-member Live Comedy Association, said its thoughts were with people still owed money, “some of them a considerable amount”. Both statements are in Chortle’s 5 August report, which is where most of the trade first read the news.

The council will run a festival and won’t touch the debts

Leicester City Council moved the same day, which is faster than most local authorities manage on anything. City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said the council will work with local promoters, venues and other partners. It will draw on its own festivals team and De Montfort Hall to put on an interim comedy festival programme in 2027. A sustainable long-term operator is to be sorted out in the meantime.

He was also careful to fence off the bit performers care about, opening with an apology. “We’re very sorry that the Big Difference Company has gone into liquidation, and we understand that this is a difficult time for its staff and all of those affected.” Then came the fence: “While of course we can’t pick up the debts of a registered charity, we do want to ensure the festival goes ahead next year.” Legally he is right, and it will still read like a slap to anyone holding an invoice from February. De Montfort Hall’s team know how to run a room, at least. The get-in there is a good deal less punishing than the upstairs function spaces a lot of the February programme lived in.

The take-part page is still asking for your 2027 show

As of Thursday 6 August, comedy-festival.co.uk still carried “SEE YOU IN 2027!” across the homepage. The Take Part page still said: “Leicester Comedy Festival returns 3-21 February 2027, show registrations will open late August.” There was no insolvency notice on either page. Acts pay a registration fee up front to appear in that programme, as we set out in our earlier reporting. Which legal entity would be banking those fees in late August is, at the time of writing, an open question, and it is the first thing worth asking before any card details go in.

Money is moving in the other direction too. The Live Comedy Association has launched a campaign to raise £30,000 for acts, promoters and others hit by the collapse. That follows the £5,000 it distributed last month. Beyond The Joke reported that pot went to 18 comedians and one promoter. The LCA itself acknowledged the sums owed were far greater than what it could award. That is the same body currently lobbying MPs to treat grassroots live comedy as a recognised sector. It has now spent a good chunk of a year functioning as an emergency payroll instead. Separately, Anthony Lamb, the former manager of the Big Difference venue, has raised more than £20,000 through a crowdfunder. The plan is to reopen the building as Forum Porcorum, a name that is going to take some explaining on a chalkboard outside. That continues the story we covered when the venue went and the hardship fund arrived.

One last piece of admin, for anyone who likes their collapses documented. On Thursday morning the Companies House record for BIG DIFFERENCE COMPANY LIMITED, company number 03121538, still read “Active”. The registered office is 30 Nelson Street, Leicester, and the next set of accounts is not due until 29 March 2027. The company was incorporated on 2 November 1995 under the name Leicester Comedy Festival Limited and only became Big Difference on 30 March 2009. Nothing on the record on Thursday named a liquidator, which is about the pace Companies House works at in August.

Sources