Karen Dunbar Tour Cancelled: Breakneck Comedy Ends Fixed Fees

“I’m gutted to have to tell you this but my show has been cancelled.” Karen Dunbar said that in an Instagram video this week. Then she gave her reason: “The reason is because the promoter hasn’t been paying me.” She has pulled the final 20 dates of her Aw Roon The Hooses Scottish tour. Chortle reported her saying she had been paid for only five of the 39 shows she has performed so far. In the video she put it more bluntly still: “I’ve been paid for five shows so I can’t go on.”

Breakneck Comedy, the Aberdeen-based promoter that organised the run, says that account is wrong. Its statement, quoted by Chortle, reads “We strongly dispute the claims made about non-payment, including the statement” Dunbar made about the number of shows she had been paid for. It continues: “These claims are inaccurate, and we are seeking legal advice on this matter.” Dunbar, for her part, told followers “There will probably be more stuff coming out because we’ll be going to court.” Two accounts, one of them disputed: Breakneck Comedy says it strongly disputes the non-payment claims, including the statement about five shows. Breakneck Comedy says it is seeking legal advice; Dunbar said the matter was going to court. Nobody outside it is settling that today, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

The row itself will get decided somewhere I can’t see into. But there is one sentence in Breakneck Comedy’s statement that has consequences for every comedian the company books from here.

The sentence about future tours

Here it is, as published by Chortle, from the Aberdeen promoter’s own statement:

For future tours, Breakneck Comedy will move to agreed revenue splits instead of fixed guaranteed fees.

If you have never been on either side of that line it reads like admin, which undersells it considerably. A guaranteed fee means the promoter has priced the risk. They have looked at a 200-seat room in a town they half know, decided what they can stand to lose, and bought your night off you for a number. Whether 40 people turn up or 190, your number is your number. That is the whole reason an act can book an advance train ticket in February for a November gig. No sums about weather, bin strikes or whatever the local football fixture is. A revenue split means the act carries that risk alongside the promoter. Soft Tuesday in a wet market town, you both earn less. It is a completely legitimate way to run a tour, and plenty of rooms do nothing else. But it is a different job with a different cashflow, and the acts most exposed to it are the ones who can least afford a thin week.

Breakneck’s statement frames the change as the lesson of this tour. It says “Our proposal to renegotiate the fee to align with actual ticket sales was declined”. The company, it adds, “cannot afford to take on all the work and costs of organising a 60 show tour only to sustain a significant loss overall”. Note that the counts don’t line up neatly between the two accounts. Dunbar’s figures are 39 performed and 20 pulled; Breakneck’s statement calls it a 60 show tour. When Breakneck organised a Dunbar run in 2024, Chortle described it as her “third tour since 2023 – packing 24 shows into 23 venues in just one month”, which tells you something about the volume this operation is built for.

Can Karen Dunbar ticket holders get a refund?

Dunbar’s instruction in the video was to go back to wherever the money went: “Hopefully you’ll be able to get a refund through the promoter, through where you bought them.” Breakneck Comedy says it will “provide a further update and full refunds for those affected”. That commitment was announced on 4 November and is a promise rather than a payment. “A further update” is doing a lot of load-bearing work in live comedy this year.

If you are holding tickets, the practical position is that your route depends entirely on who took your card details: the promoter directly, a venue box office, or a third-party ticket seller. Dunbar’s own instruction was to seek a refund through the promoter or wherever the tickets were bought. I’m not going to tell you which to do, because the answer is different in every one of those three cases and I don’t know which yours is.

What I can tell you is that a refund promise and a refund arriving are not the same event. Dunbar apologised directly to buyers in her video: “I am so sorry for the people who bought tickets and won’t be coming.”

A sold-out Aberdeen diary and a checkout that isn’t working

Here is the bit that made me look twice. On the same week it promised full refunds, Breakneck Comedy’s own website was carrying this notice: “If you experience problems with our Checkout, Please bear with us while we try to resolve this issue” – and telling customers who want to book tickets to call or message the club instead: “If you wish to book tickets please call or message us.” The notice asks buyers to bear with the club while it tries to resolve the issue, and to call or message the club if they want to book tickets. Ringing a comedy club to reserve a seat is a very 1998 experience and I have a soft spot for it, but a checkout the club is still trying to resolve is a strange backdrop for a promoter promising full refunds for those affected.

The diary behind that checkout is not empty either. Breakneck’s site still lists a full November and December 2026 programme of other acts: Phil Kay on 6 and 7 November in Aberdeen, tickets from £15, sold out; Lost Voice Guy on 27 and 28 November, same city, tickets from £15, both nights sold out. Nothing in the sources above suggests those acts are owed anything or are at any risk, and I want to be plain about that. The point is narrower. Breakneck says the move to agreed revenue splits instead of fixed guaranteed fees applies to future tours. The sources above do not say what terms those Aberdeen club bookings were made on. Anyone weighing up a December booking from any promoter should be asking the same questions we set out in the Christmas party gig checklist, starting with who is carrying the ticket risk.

Company number SC549867

There is a public record worth putting on the table carefully. Companies House lists BREAKNECK COMEDY LIMITED, company number SC549867, registered at 12 Carden Place, Aberdeen, with a company status of Liquidation. The filing history for that number records an extraordinary resolution to wind up, dated 28 July 2020. Chortle’s own report notes that “Breakneck Comedy Ltd went into liquidation during lockdown” and that the operation mainly runs a club in Aberdeen.

What public sources do not show is which legal entity holds the contracts for the 2026 tour, so I am not going to assert that the register entry above is the counterparty on anybody’s booking agreement. It may not be. But the company name at the top of your booking agreement is worth reading before you sign, rather than after a payment date slides. Companies House, to its credit, is the one website in this story with a functioning search box.

Breakneck also says it was “disappointed to have learned through social media one of our main comedians has announced the cancellation”, which is its own small window into how this relationship was going. Meanwhile Dunbar’s shows next year in Greenock, Peebles and Shotts, booked by a different promoter, Punchline Promotions, are still going ahead, per Chortle. Three towns, a different company, and no word in the sources above about what the fee structure on those is. I’d love ten minutes with that contract.

Sources

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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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Breakneck Comedy to drop guaranteed fees after Karen Dunbar tour collapse